Our generation will go to space...

 

Don't tell me that the concept of a space elevator doesn't fill you with thrills...
Some years ago (checking my archives, I find it was actually way back in 2006), I championed Liftport's Space Elevator programme, believing that—amongst other things—the whole concept was incredibly cool. Although they ran into difficulties at one point, Liftport is still going and still keeping the space elevator dream alive.
There are times when the world conspires to remind you of certain things, are there not? I have just started re-reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars—which features a space elevator—and now I have just stumbled across this fantastically enthusiastic post over at Counting Cats.

In 1995 I started my MSc in astrophysics (yeah, I have a dog in this fight but mine really is worthwhile—do I need to say why? If so I have lost you and you can grab your coat on the way out and basically I hope the door doesn’t bang your arse) at Queen Mary, London. I met a Spaniard there and you know what? She’d only written her undergrad dissertation on the space elevator! I was like wow! I really was. The idea, like so many others, like the Silbervogel or whatever had just been in the aether (which Einstein demonstrated doesn’t so much not exist as just not matter—ouch!).
Whether or not great minds think alike is irrelevant. Competent ones can do and we were far from alone. Both Agnetha and I had dreamed independently of something grand and this was not the meeting in a pub in Stepney of two geniuses. It was better than that for it was written on a beer mat. It was simply the realisation that it could be done and that we were not alone in conceiving this scheme. Yeah, I know it was not original but it honestly had been to me and her. That is my point. If the idea can occur without separate cause to the likes of me or Agnetha then…
… Maybe it’s a good one. Not an Earth-shaker. Not a Quantum Mechanics or whatever but basically, physically, (the engineering is as ever something else—I have have the greatest respect for engineers—they make dreams real—and that is way cool) absolutely obvious.

NickM finishes his post with this extraordinary video: it seems that the designs have not much changed since those that I saw in 2006, but the technology has finally arrived. It's time...
So, so cool...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDevilsKitchen/~3/pRZ-DpGvkks/our-generation-will-go-to-space.html