Nope, we've read a lot about space elevators. We know how many billion tons of mass must be put into GSO in order to build one. We know the tensile strengths of carbon nanotube, both theoretical and actual, and the current state of the materials science of it and how it is progressing.AcesHigh wrote:who is talking about sketptics here? GIThruster just proved to be a skeptic about space elevators and lightcraft. He tells the guy to read about ME-Effect, but it seems some people here havent read enough about space elevators...Betruger wrote:I don't think you can bet on such a skeptic paying a hundred bucks to supposedly read something that defies everything he knows. There's lots of free resources e.g. all the papers and powerpoints and articles for free on the net, that e.g. Paul March has linked to.
e.g.
STAIF-2007 MLT Powered Spacecraft
From this page with more resources to choose from.
The best carbon nanotube today cannot achieve more than one quarter of the minimum tensile strength required of a space elevator, and that is over an extremely short distance. Making thread from these nanotubes is difficult at best and the tensile strength goes down the longer the thread is, so there are some very vast distances to go in advancing the state of the science before you are even ready to start building it.
Once you achieve that point, you still have to plan on how you are going to manufacture and move many billions of tons of this material up to geosynchronous orbit. That is an economic problem that will NOT be solved until after mach effect thrusters make space elevators obsolete.