Space Elevator.....

[trekkiedane]

Ok, so perhaps I don't really have an idea about how little the thing eventually falling down will be, but when a sheath that thin spaghettis around your house you sure don't want a few hundred miles of it in the wind
-could do some damage (yeah, that's not a hard one to circumvent).
When I mentioned the coriolis effect, I was actually thinking of the westward drag of some payload on the entire thing.
I'm pretty sure your damage assertions are rather valid though.
Smaller pieces from higher up falling down is what I meant, of course it has to do with how the 'car' is going to be powered; if by light onto some sort of sails: no problem, if by electricity supplied by wires on the tether: big weight addon.

Still, why even contemplate an elevator design when we don't even know if we're ever going to have the proper materials to build the darn thing?
The loop still makes the most sense -we could probably even build it with materials we have today!

 

[All Seeing Eye]

SamuraiBlue said:
Possession of a space elevator by a nation or group of nations will upset the balance of world economy seriously. The one possessing it will gain access to virtually free energy and raw resources, the secondary nations will become dependant on the first tier nation(s) and nations that does not have access will be proverty stricken(like NK for example).
A proverty stricken dictatortion nation will have ample reason to launch an assault on the elevator and will have just enough technology to do it.
That is just one scenario out of many.

Any future space elevator is more likely going to be a joint multinational endeavour encompassing mainly NASA, The ESA, Russia, China and Japan but many more, with access by all. Access to it would be international but its possible that further elevators might become more national than international but there'd be more than one country capable of building one, I can imagine America, The European Union and Russia having the first national ones but I cant see it causing any economic problems to countries without them, if anything the access to abundant raw materials would lower costs to the countries without Tethers.

 

[SamuraiBlue]

Fire said:
Any future space elevator is more likely going to be a joint multinational endeavour encompassing mainly NASA, The ESA, Russia, China and Japan but many more, with access by all. Access to it would be international but its possible that further elevators might become more national than international but there'd be more than one country capable of building one, I can imagine America, The European Union and Russia having the first national ones but I cant see it causing any economic problems to countries without them, if anything the access to abundant raw materials would lower costs to the countries without Tethers.

It probably be an multinational endevor with TONNES of TAX MONEY invested.
Tell me, do you think a nation that invested that much money will allow another nation that have not paid a dime free access to that technology?
Another thing is a paradigm shift in energy resources, oil and/or nuclear fission will become completely obselete.
A nation that depended soley on export of those natural resources will become bankrupt overnight.Those nations will be followed with nations depending on export of other natural resources when mining of other celestial bodies begin.
I wonder what the welfare of those nations become?
It is always the same the rich becomes richer as the poor becomes poorer as long as Capitalism rules.