Posthuman Blues

Carbon strips could build elevator to space

"The research could also revive interest in the science fiction concept of a space elevator, as nanotube ribbons are the only material strong enough to make a track that would stretch thousands of miles from the Earth's surface along which electrical cars could speed into space.

"'I believe that our carbon nanotube sheet does substantially improve the possibility,' Professor Baughman said. 'It does not enable a space elevator to be constructed, but we're getting there.'"

I guess I've been savoring the implications of this breakthrough when I should have been posting about it. Or just slacking.

The "space elevator" is a concept so profound -- yet so ironically simple -- that it seems it must happen if we're to continue as a spacefaring species. But then I remember heady ambitions for L5 colonies and other amazing things that never were and wonder if my yearning for cheap, democratic space travel merely reflects my own desires and not the mandates of stark reality.

After all, Robert Heinlein wrote about highways modeled after factory conveyor belts and made them seem, if not inevitable, at least plausible. And how many children growing up in the 50s more or less expected to be piloting flying cars in adulthood?