Space Elevators
One of my secret dreams is to become an eccentric billionaire and build a space elevator in Sri Lanka. You know, a set of tubes that go all the way up to space, hanging out there like … I dunno, waving nunchuks around your head? The general idea is that if you build a string out to space, the force of the earth spinning will keep it there. Just twirl your keys around your finger to see. If there’s the right speed and weight, a string will stay suspended around a thing, being it your finger or the earth. Then you can just scurry robots up and down the thing without flying all the way.
These futuristic engineering feats consist of a cable – also known as a ribbon or tether – of material stretching from the Earth’s surface into orbit. An anchor and Earth’s gravity at the lower end, and a counterweight and centrifugal force at the top end keep the elevator’s “cable” taut and stationary over ground station. Robotic ‘climbers’ would then pull themselves up the ribbon from the surface, through the stratosphere and out into space, potentially powered by lasers. The climbers could carry satellites up and bring minerals from the moon, or asteroids, back. They could take tourists into orbit or convey astronauts on the first part of their journey to the stars. No longer would space exploration be held back by gravity or rely on smelly, dangerous and expensive rockets. (BBC)
According to the BBC article above, which a friend kindly sent, such a project could cost $10-50 billion, or about the current price of the International Space Station, and reduce costs of getting to space from $16,700 per kilogram to about $100 per. ie, you or I could lose some weight and go to space. And it could be in Sri Lanka, which is near the equator. Or I guess Ecuador. OR, we could all get space elevators, and then move goods and people through space rather than over land. As in, you’d take the elevator up to space, and then take a serious of horizontal tubes to South America. Oooh, the possibilities. Arthur C. Clarke popularized the idea decades ago and, honestly, it’s really a matter of when rather than if. We won’t keep lighting fires to shoot stuff into space. For Sri Lanka, the relevant question is where. I’m not sure if this helps our case or not, but the youngest Rajapaksa son is reportedly trying to become a cosmonaut. As recently as 2007 it was reported that about 11% of NASA scientists were Sri Lankan. It’d be cool if they could do something awesome here.
Not to quote Ice Cube, but the Sri Lankan police are hardly beloved. A 
I just gave a talk at the University Of Sri Jayawardenapura along with Reeza Zarook of Anything.lk and Rohan Jayaweera of Google. These are my notes: Devin Jayasundara asked me for a subject for this talk and I told him Internet property. But I talked to my fiancé Shru and she had a better idea. Startups aren’t about creating property at all, not really. They’re about creating territory, about creating land.
I haven’t been blogging much, I know. It’s partly because we’ve been doing a lot of work on YAMU, especially shipping 1.0.1 of the Android app today. It’s on the 
I met an old-timer who said they used to drop acid and sleep atop Sigiriya, but the place has taken on a more commercial and quasi-spiritual role now. It was built by a king as a sort of retreat and used as a monastery. Now it’s a prime tourist and cultural destination. Hence it’s a bit odd to see a Japanese beer commercial shot up there. There’s a bunch of people eating, um, deep fried cream filled coconuts and then drinking some bracing beer. I hear the whole thing cost Rs. 25,000 (I’m presuming they used stock images).
Clarke’s 3001 featured space elevators, if anyone’s interested.
Clarke’s Foundations of Paradise, no? The elevator is located at Adam’s Peak. Brilliant fucking novel too. If this idea should come to fruition, it is yet another reason to deify Sir Arthur.
do u know any place i can get this novel? i checked in some book shops, it wasnt there
A cable into space sounds like a bad idea – what if it snaps or breaks? Or other satellites run into it? Makes more sense to have a laser guided system instead but that would involve propulsion.
check this out :D
That sounded like a crowded private bus to me.
Well that is what’s stopping them from building one so far. As mentioned above the idea is decades old but we lack the technology. Clarke’s idea was to use nanotechnology to build a “rope” made of pure carbon. Supposedly that would be strong enough to function as a space elevator. At least that is what I remember from his book “Songs of distant Earth”.
^ This was supposed to be in reply to tastyjujubes comment above.
Why not spidersilk? Strong, flexible and shock-resistant.
Get rid of all the spiders who spin where they’re not wanted. Feed them all the crop destroying pests and make them weave.
R-e-a-l-l-y? 11% of all NASA scientists? Did you mean Jewish Sri Lankans?
I have serious doubts about this…
11%? 2007? About the time that the Indian govt claimed 36% of NASA employees were Indian and were then proven to be the victims of an email hoax? For the record, it seems NASA doesn’t keep these details or publish them. If you go to their website there’s only a broad ‘asian and Pacific islander’ group demarcation.
Not that it matters – build it here anyway, dammit! Our new Chinese overlords will be the next spacefarers. Or maybe not.. they don’t seem close to landing rovers on Mars yet. Maybe they need the help of those 263 scientists.
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