Seriously... the Space Elevator!
 

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe...tor/index.html

It's about friggin' time they got serious about this! :up::up::up:

What will happen if you get stuck in the elevator? :hmm:

With a Hot chick half way to the station? ;)

Oh the madness..:rotfl:

This reminds me of reading those popular science magazines...

And if the cable breaks halfway up?:p

Which way do you fall up or down? hmmmm:hmm: :damn: ;)

Good question:hmm: Maybe you don't fall? You just sit there waiting for the repair person:rotfl:

I can see it now.

Person a: D** we just got stuck in the elevator, It cant take long for a repair man to get here.

Person b: I dont know about that, there slow enough in my three story apartment.

Three days later, both people are starting to go crazy from dehydration and hunger.

Person A: do you hear that!

Person B: yes I do I think its that repair man, It took him long enough!

Repar man: You mean I came up here for just this, Its just a spring.:lol:

good one TF.:up:

The whole logistics of the thing to me make it un likely.

It would have to be insanely fast or it would take months to reach the top.

Exactly.:yep: This will never happen, Just think what would happen if a plane crashed in to it.:huh:

Looks like something that should be in a Douglas Adams book.

Actually, the space elevator concept is entirely viable. The biggest issue has been the lack of a material strong and light enough to span the distance. Now that nano carbon tube technology has taken root, it's only a matter of time... The physics to operate it are dirt simple, mass and centrifugal force... "the flywheel effect:...

As for aircraft crashes, I'm pretty sure there would be a "no fly zone" installed... ;)

Terrorists dont care about no fly zones.:yep: Look at 9/11.;)

We're not talking about a thin wire here however (more likely it would start with a single strand and later be built up into a large, bulky structure), and we're also talking the strongest material in the world (which is exactly what they're working on for it). An airplane crashing into it might destroy communications and disable the operation of the elevator for some time, but it wouldn't seriously damage the structure itself.

This is the company that's working on the project. I've been following them and their research for YEARS.
http://www.liftport.com/

Ill let you all take a ride before me.;)

The first version of the space elevator will be retractable. They plan to reel out the cable from a station in the middle of the Pacific near the Equator. It will be pointed pretty much in the East direction as the rotation of the Earth will hold it up and help keep it stable. Once it's unreeled, they can send payloads up the cable into space and then just retract it so it won't be up all the time. It's not going to be permanently unreeled and reaching to space all the time.

The real question is. Who would want to spend money to go up in a elevator to space? Would the cost realy be worth it.:-? I mean theres nothing to see in space, except. well space.

Or alternatively, it would cut the cost of making orbit (the most expensive part of any space operation) many times over.

"Seeing" is not the important part. The space is full of potential for exploring resources, many of which are rare on earth - the problem is that it's just been too expensive to obtain them. And as the article linked in the first post suggests, even putting solar energy farms at the top of space elevators may be a very shrewd decision. Whatever the case, this has the potential of making space accessible without the need for extremely expensive, dangerous, polluting rockets.

Currently it costs over $5000 to get a kilogram of useful payload into Low Earth Orbit (and several times more than that to geostationary orbit, which is where this space elevator would be anchored). A space elevator would could one day cut that cost by hundreds of times.

I don't know about that. I think we will see a space elveator once space travel becomes comonplace enough for it to be feasible.

But the time is not now. We have more pressing issues to deal with.