In the past I seem to recall some forum members debating the existance of time and nuances of quantum mechanics. If you're still out there I thought you might be interested in this article from the NY Times. Could be a major breakthrough for getting stuff into space. I put the whole article here because to use the NYT website you have to register, and you may not want to do that.

Not Science Fiction: An Elevator to Space
By KENNETH CHANG


ANTA FE, N.M. — With advances toward ultrastrong fibers, the concept of building an elevator 60,000 miles high to carry cargo into space is moving from the realm of science fiction to the fringes of reality.

This month, the Los Alamos National Laboratory was a sponsor of a conference to ponder the concept. Yet, the keynote address was by a titan of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke, speaking via satellite from his home in Sri Lanka. "I'm happy that people are taking it more and more seriously," said Mr. Clarke, whose novel "The Fountains of Paradise" (1978) revolved around such a space elevator.

The discovery in 1991 of nanotubes, cylindrical molecules of carbon with many times the strength of steel, turned the idea from a fantastical impossibility to an intriguing possibility that could be realized in as little as a decade or two.

Proponents say the economic and technological advantages of a space elevator over rockets make it inevitable. They predict it will lower the cost of putting a satellite into space from $10,000 a pound to $100.

"As soon as we can build it, we should build it," said Dr. Bryan E. Laubscher, a scientist at Los Alamos who organized the conference. Just as the transcontinental railroad opened the West in the late 1800's, "I feel the space elevator is going to be such a paradigm shift in space access," Dr. Laubscher said.

Easier economical access to space might also make practical other grandiose projects like solar power satellites that could collect sunlight and beam energy down to Earth.

The conference, a three-day session here, drew 60 people, a mix of scientists and engineers who are working on the concept, space enthusiasts who wanted to hear more and dilettantes from nearby Los Alamos laboratory attracted by curiosity.

"The first thought is, Is this really going to work?" said Dr. Steven E. Patamia, a researcher at Los Alamos, who was enlisted into performing space elevator calculations a week before the conference. "When you get into it, it begins to make sense. There are a good number of technical issues. They are probably all `overcomeable.' "

The original idea of a space elevator is more than a century old. In 1895, Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, a Russian visionary who devised workable ideas for rocket propulsion and space travel decades before others, proposed a tower thousands of miles high attached to a "celestial castle" in orbit around Earth, with the centrifugal force of the orbiting castle holding up the tower. (Imagine swinging a rope with a rock tied to the end of it.)

But the idea was fundamentally impossible to build. Steel, then the strongest material known, was too heavy and not strong enough to support that weight.

Other scientists periodically revisited and reinvented Tsiolkovsky's idea, inspiring science fiction writers like Mr. Clarke.

Nanotubes spurred NASA to take a more serious look in 1999. A team of scientists envisioned huge cables of nanotubes and magnetically levitated cars traveling up and down. The structure would be so large that it would require grabbing an asteroid and dragging it into Earth orbit to act as the counterweight for holding up the elevator.

To avoid weather, especially lightning, the NASA scientists envisioned the base station as a tower at least 10 miles high.

"We came out of that workshop saying the space elevator is 50 years away," said David V. Smitherman of the Marshall Space Flight Center, who led the study.

Around that time, Dr. Bradley C. Edwards, who was then a scientist at Los Alamos, read an even more pessimistic assessment, that a space elevator would not be built for at least 300 years.

"But there was no information why it couldn't be built," Dr. Edwards said, and he took that as a challenge.

Dr. Edwards simplified the NASA idea to what he calls "the Wright brothers' version," a single ribbon about three feet wide and thinner than a piece of paper, stretching 60,000 miles from Earth's surface.

He sent a proposal to the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, which provided him $570,000 to flesh out the ideas. His results are described in a book simply titled "The Space Elevator" (Spageo, 2002).

Instead of using magnetic levitation, the apparatus would lift up to 13 tons of cargo by pulling itself upward with a couple of tanklike treads that squeezed tightly onto the ribbon. Up to eight would ascend the ribbon at any one time, powered by lasers on the ground shining on the solar panels on the rising platforms.

It would take about a week for one to reach geosynchronous orbit, 22,300 miles up, where a satellite circles the Earth in exactly one day, continuously hovering over the same spot on the Earth's surface.

The first elevator would go up only. At the top, the platform would simply be added to the counterweight or be discarded into space.

All the necessary underlying technology exists, Dr. Edwards said, except the material for the ribbon. (The longest nanotube to date is just a few feet long.) But he said he expected that scientists would develop a strong enough nanotube-polymer composite in a few years.

"There's a clear path to building this," said Dr. Edwards, now director of research at the Institute for Scientific Research, an independent organization in Fairmont, W.Va. The institute sponsored the conference with Los Alamos.

Dr. Edwards estimates the cost to build the first elevator at $6.2 billion, although with the uncertainties in forecasting a decade or two of research and development, "doubling this is probably a good first cut."

"It's gotten to the point," he added, "where we can say it's closer to $6 billion than $600 billion."

Building subsequent elevators would be cheaper, $2 billion each, because the first elevator could lift materials.

By comparison, the estimated cost of building and operating the International Space Station is widely expected to exceed $100 billion.

Dr. Edwards says he has reasonable solutions for other concerns. The elevator base could be a movable ocean platform in the eastern equatorial Pacific, hundreds of miles from commercial airline routes and easy to defend from terrorist attacks. Hurricanes never cross the Equator, and lightning is sparse in that region. By moving the base station, the elevator operators could drag the apparatus around low-orbit space debris. An aluminum coating could be added to parts of the ribbon to combat decay from the reaction of oxygen with carbon atoms in the nanotubes.

More futuristically, Dr. Edwards imagines that additional elevators can be built on the Moon or Mars, vastly simplifying and speeding spaceflight through the solar system.

"What a wonderful idea if you could ever make it work," said Gentry Lee, the chief engineer of planetary flight systems at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who pushed for financing Dr. Edwards's initial studies. "It is plausible. It is not implausible. I think that the idea has so much promise a couple of million dollars a year aimed at the enabling technologies is not too much to ask."

At the conference, scientists presented calculations that examined details. Vibrations in the elevator ribbon, which would act like an extremely long plucked guitar string, appeared manageable.

Dr. Anders Jorgensen of Los Alamos raised concerns that as the ribbon swung around through the Earth's magnetic field, it would create strong electric currents. Because of the elevator's relatively slow pace, a larger problem could be that any human passengers would receive dangerous doses of radiation as they passed through pockets of high-energy particles trapped in Earth's magnetic field.

The first space elevator would be built to carry only cargo, not people, Dr. Edwards said. The dangers could be reduced on subsequent elevators by speeding them up or providing shielding through magnetic fields.

The logistics of construction "appear to be an interesting problem, as well," said Carey R. Butler, a program manager at the Institute for Scientific Research. The idea is to launch a spacecraft with the initial spools of ribbon into geosynchronous orbit. As the ribbon unspools and falls to the ground, the spacecraft moves higher to keep the center of mass, or balance point, at the same geosynchronous height. By the time the ribbon reaches the ground, the spacecraft has reached an altitude of 50,000 miles.

After the ribbon is attached to the base station, the spacecraft unfurls another 10,000 miles of ribbon. Then a series of about 230 mechanical construction platforms will ascend to stitch on additional ribbon.

While technologically feasible, years of engineering will still be needed. "There's a lot to be done, obviously," Dr. Edwards said.

Nonetheless, Mr. Clarke, who came up with the idea of using satellites in geosynchronous orbit for communications long before any were launched, thought that he might live to see to live this science fiction idea come true, too.

"I'm 86 now," Mr. Clarke said. "So in 20 years' time, I'll only be 106. So maybe I will see it."

...Interesting idea...and just as every cut pound of weight from anythng going into space requires less rocket fuel to get there, how can a three foot wide ribbon (how much does that weight?) stay light and super strong, and ...in one piece?

Anyone riding a windsurfer, even in light winds knows that the force on the sail is much greater than if you were standing alone in the breeze. How can a three foot ribbon, even just 22,500 miles long, withstand wind force? The concept of using geosyncronous orbit to keep the satellite stationary is great...as long as no other forces act on it.

Say you actually could keep a satellite attached to Earth via a string or ribbon. How would you climb the string without changing the mass and pulling the satellite down? Some would say, a person's mass is nothing compared to the weight of the satellite and the string. Certainly the wind itself would be enough to throw things out of equilibrium. I don't see how it could be strong enough or stable enough to stay in the same place.

The idea of space travel using this elevator did not make sense at all to me. The distances between the planets is constantly changing.

Think of if you did have a tiny sting that was 20 miles tall that could stand on it's own weight. How would you keep it from falling over? It would require bracing which would increase the weight even more.

Blah Blah Blah, I say: impossible.

jcs

Originally posted by QuantumTheory08
How can a three foot ribbon, even just 22,500 miles long, withstand wind force? The concept of using geosyncronous orbit to keep the satellite stationary is great...as long as no other forces act on it.

Say you actually could keep a satellite attached to Earth via a string or ribbon. How would you climb the string without changing the mass and pulling the satellite down? Some would say, a person's mass is nothing compared to the weight of the satellite and the string. I don't see how it could be strong enough or stable enough to stay in the same place.

The idea of space travel using this elevator did not make sense at all to me. The distances between the planets is constantly changing.

Think of if you did have a tiny sting that was 20 miles tall that could stand on it's own weight. How would you keep it from falling over? It would require bracing which would increase the weight even more.

Blah Blah Blah, I say: impossible.

Dude, think outside the box. I'm not even a physicist and I can see beyond these problems.

First, the ribbon is not solid. In fact, it is mostly empty space with carbon fiber filiments loosely woven so that wind mostly passes between the fibers just like a net at a driving range.

More importantly, as they said, the base station is ten miles high meaning that wind (air density) is very slight at that altitude and rapidly diminishes with altitude. This would give very slight wind resistance. Personally, I would build this in the mountains of Equador or Kilamanjaro which is already high altitude and on the equator.

As you say, any load you lift would be very slight as compared to the total mass of the elevator, so nothing would be out of alignment. You can offset heavy lift by raising satellite altitude at the high end of the ribbon so everything stays in balance.

Regarding planetary distances, this is not to connect earth to another planet. It is to connect earth to an imaginary geostationary point in space. Their comment about Mars and moon suggests similar elevators could be built on those bodies separate from the space elevator on earth.

"Think of if you did have a tiny sting that was 20 miles tall that could stand on it's own weight. How would you keep it from falling over?" Answer: The string is supported from the top end, not from the bottom end. It is not standing up, it is hanging down just like any ordinary string. Virtually no structural strength is needed.

"We choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard." This continues the great challenge from JFK. We not only should do this, we should do it within the next 20 years. Talk about economic and technological stimulus; this would get the juices flowing.

...man I see your point

you could be right.

they said that the base station would be on the ocean in the eastern pacific @/near the equator

changing the hight of the original rocket that takes the thing up would require a fuel supply, you can only have so much fuel to begin with, but that could easily be overcome

plus the lasers would have to be super-powerful to power that amount of tonnage up into outerspace, the current laser propulsion unit only weighs a pound or so, and that cant go all that high, though i can see how it COULD be made to work

at first i didnt like the idea, but now that i think about it in conjuction with a good space station im starting to like it more. if they had like a docking station attached to it it would be great

it can be done
hopefully it will be, though itll look weird

stuff should be done on the moon also, more permanant thigns, like construction of power plants or what have you, i think mars is too far for that, at least of yet, and too much of an inconvenience, plus itd be good to have something on the moon as a stepping stone
________
Body science (http://bodyscience.ws/)

This concept has facinated me since I first learned of it about 20 years ago. The most difficult thing in space flight is getting off the surface of the earth, one you get past geostationary orbit you are half way to anywhere, all that it takes to complete the journey is time (Ok we are talking about a lot of time if you are talking interplanetary let alone intersteller). The concept that you can basically climb up an "Indian rope trick" at your own pace (don't have to do it fast since you can hang on to the rope and not fall back to earth) is brillant.

However there are some practical problems and concerns. First of all the "rope" has to be amazingly strong since to support the weight of 50 to 60 thousand miles of itself. As the article pointed out this has been the real show stopper. Secondly the consequences of failure of the "rope" are severe. If the rope breaks it starts falling back to earth, however since the earth is turning it doesn't fall all in one place put in a line along the equator. If the rope fails right at the counterweight end it is long enough to wrap around the earth TWICE!! The rope would build up tremedous velocity as it fell and would enter the atmosphere at well over supersonic velocity, creating a massive shock wave that would flatten everything along the equator for possibly 100's of miles each way. Of course atmospheric friction would heat the rope to thousands of degrees and the impact energy would be equivilant to a nuclear weapon. So imagine a line of fire wrapping around the earth twice! So another major difficulty in building the "sky hook" is convincing all the nations that happen to be on the equator that a failure could not ever happen, I imagine it would be a pretty tough sell.

The concept itself is great, however even if we could technically build it, I doubt that the project would ever get off the ground due the above concerns.

That doesn't mean that I'm against the idea, just that we can't ignore the problems.

Originally posted by Zoom2X
the consequences of failure of the "rope" are severe. If the rope breaks it starts falling back to earth, however since the earth is turning it doesn't fall all in one place put in a line along the equator. If the rope fails right at the counterweight end it is long enough to wrap around the earth TWICE!! The rope would build up tremedous velocity as it fell and would enter the atmosphere at well over supersonic velocity, creating a massive shock wave that would flatten everything along the equator for possibly 100's of miles each way. Of course atmospheric friction would heat the rope to thousands of degrees and the impact energy would be equivilant to a nuclear weapon. So imagine a line of fire wrapping around the earth twice!

Sounds like a great terrorism target. I don't think locating at sea will be much of a deterrent. Not like they're gonna be able to maneuver it very far or very fast. Maybe you keep the bottom end hitched to a rocket. In case of a break, shoot the bottom end into the sky. If the break is high enough, you get the whole thing back into upper atmosphere where it'll burn up in re-entry; don't forget, the filiment is way small and light. Still, I don't know how you're gonna get someone to finance and insure this project if you expect catastrophic failure like this.

Actually.....

Couple things....

1. The way that you ascend mass up the cable would be performed in one of two ways. Either with a simultaneous lowering (counterweight) or, more likely, through centrifical force. "geosynchronous orbit" is not just one altitude. It depends on mass and speed. Take two different masses; one large and one small. Put them at the same altitude away from earth in space. In order to stay in orbit, the larger one must travel faster so that it misses earth when it gravity pulls it down. But at the same time, it cannot be traveling too fast or it will escape Earth's gravitational pull all together and fly into space. Conversly, the lighter mass can travel slower and still stay in orbit. The magic comes when you find a masses orbital period (time for one orbit) that equals one revolution of the earth or 24 hours. When that is found, that mass in then in geosynchronous orbit.

Now let's look at it another way. Take a mass in geosynchronous orbit. Now instead of just leaving it alone, we are going to lower it's altitude and speed it up. Now tether it to the ground. Now you have a rock at the end of a string with more velocity than Earth's gravity can compensate for. What you end up with is a version of swinging a bucket filled with water over your head. You end up with vertical tension on the tether.

What's interesting is that this vertical tension could be changed. Your mass at the end remains constant. But what if you had a pulley with extra cable on that mass. The mass could be lowered or raised, thereby changing the radius of your orbit, thereby changing the speed of your mass, thereby changing the centrifical force.

So you could account for not only the weight of the cable, but the weight of the cargo that you wanted to put into orbit.

2. Cable catastrophe. Yes the cable would be long enough to wrap around the planet. But, if the cable's arc speed matches the earths rotation (which is a given) and the cable is cut, one of three things could happen.
a. The cable would fly into space
b. The cable would crash straight down into the ground (no wrapping)
c. The cable wouldn't move an inch (perfect case scenario if all in equilibrium)

Now as for location, I agree with some of these articles.....the ocean is the best.....for a number of reasons.
1. International waters.....world project
2. Limited accessability....lowers terrorism
3. Easier cargo transport to and from platform rather than accross land.
4. Limited damage in case of cable failure

Overall, I think there are a number of hurdles, but it would be well worth it and make space affordable over the long run.

Sorry for the long post, hope you enjoy.

Untill proven otherwise...I think this sums up the discussion.

...sure hope no one has scissors at the equator.

Good one, quantum. Keep your revs up, your moonroof shut, and I suggest run-flat tires for the 0 psi environment.

Geosationary orbit is just one distance, the mass of an object in orbit makes no difference (Unless it exceeds a significant fraction of the earths mass, at which point the the earth and the other object actually orbit each other). As Galileo proved by dropping objects off the tower of Pisa, all objects fall at the same rate regardless of mass. The acceleration due to the earths gravity is 32 ft/sec(squared). You'll note that the mass of the object is not in the equation.

In order for cable to stay vertical, the center of mass of the cable and the counter weight must be at the geostationary level. In fact the only feasable way I can see to build the cable is to start at geostationary and build both inward and outward at the same time in order for the center of mass to stay in the right place.

Objects in orbit below geostationary have period of less then one day (low earth orbit about 200 miles or so takes 90 mins to go around once), objects in orbit above geostationary have periods greater than on day (the moon at about 250,000 miles takes 27.5 days to go around once)

Objects in higher orbits are travling at higher velocities than object in lower orbits however the distance they have to travel increases by the square of the increase in distance. Doubling your orbital velocity will about double your orbital height, but you will be going 4 times further around so it will take you twice as long to go around. (Yeah that's confusing, one of the odd things about orbital mechanics, going faster makes you take longer to go around the earth, going slower takes you around in less time) If an object does not have the orbital velocity to maintain it's orbital height it will fall into a lower orbit which has a shorter period. If you lose the counterweight of your rope the center of mass is now inside the required geostationary orbit, the rope will fall inward to a lower orbit and will start to move east, but since it's tied to the ground it can't go very far and get's wrapped around the earth.
As for small and light, 50,000 miles of cable is anything but. If your cable weighs 1 pound per foot (that's VERY light) then it weighs 5280 pounds per mile or about 2.5 tons per mile, at 50000 miles your cable weighs over 125,000 tons, that's more than an aircraft carrier! And remember an estimated 80 to 90 percent of the Colombia survived the re-entry breakup, most of the superstong cable is going to hit the ground. The weight of the length of cable is why it has to be so strong, at the geostaionary point the entire weight of that cable is hanging, the one pound per foot cable has to be able to support 125,000 tons (actually you'll want to have a least a 3X safety margin so the cable needs to be able to support 375,000 tons.)

The intent of this post is to educate not to flame. To me this is a facinating subject. Anyway it's late and I haven't proofed for spelling or anything so forgive any typos. Hope to see more in this thread.

ROFL Quantum

Fellow Forum Physicists:

No flames intended. That was the whole point of the photo.

Now:
If something is in geostationary orbit (what I believe to be ~22.500 miles up from the equator). then that object and it's mass will rotate over a fixed position over the Earth (Direct TV, other communication satellites, blah, blah, blah, it's a traffic jam up there in the orbit).

The real problem with this concept is that you must take into consideration the weight of the cable (ribbon, whatever). Realize that at every altitude of the 22,500 miles, gravity acts differently on the cable.

If the cable were only 20 miles high, the force of the cable on the ground from all the cable's weight above it would be tremendous.

Let's take the example of something more significant in mass - say the Moon - now it and the Earth do have a "wobble".

In other words, relative to the Earth and the Moon, there is a "center" of gravity. Because the mass of the Moon is significant enough, the Earth does not just stay in the center, but wobbles around this "center" point as the Moon revolves around the Earth over an ~ month's time.

A good example is tying to shoes together by the laces and "spinning" them. The two shoes will rotate around a common center of centripedal force. Take a child's shoe and an adult shoe and do the same "spin"; you'll see that the CG is off center now.

...Now back to that insignificant weight of the car or elevator thing. Let's name three posibilities and their result.
1. At geosynchronous orbit
2. Below geosynchronous orbit
3. Above geosychronous orbit.

#1. If you are at this orbit AND you have the weight of the cable connected to you; it will pull you down to Earth since you don't have any force to counter-act the force of the cable.
Answer: you fall to Earth.

#2 You are moving faster in this orbit since you are closer BUT, the cable slows you down keeping you from maintaining your speed.
Answer: you fall to Earth.

#3. You are moving slower than geosynchronous orbit since you are farther out BUT , you are now pulled along by the cable to stay up with the Earth's rotation. The forces on the cabel are HUGE since the center of gravity between the two objects is probably not far from the center of the Earth due to mass difference.
Answer: if such a cable could hold the equilibrating weight of the cable up to geosynchronous orbit, and the weight beyond Geosyn. orbit, it effect, "slinging the end of the elevator like a water skier on a rope, then MAYBE it could work. My answer is that the forces are way to great and it would break the cable.

Newton's Law of universal gravitation is:

"F" = The force between mass 1 and mass2
"G" = The universal gravitational constant
"R" = The radius between the two masses
"m1" = all of the cable and elevator above geosync. orbit
"m2" = The Earth

Um...I should've gone to college. At least Community College for crying out loud. I'm sooo lost. Im running away and hiding.

(Hooked on phonics worked for me)

Zoom2x......you are absolutely correct....my bad.


My point still stands regarding centrifical force, though....along the lines of what quantumtheory08 outlined.


I tend to be a backyard physicist myself.....can't believe I screwed that one up! :(


Anyway, this is also a very interesting topic for me. Let the equations commence!:D

Me thinks someone is cutting and pasting here :D

Can you all guess who?

Anyway, this sort of thing will be cake if nanotech ever gets going into high gear. Or any of a ton of other new technologies. As long as someone can make money from it, it will happen. ALthough I have been interested in a lot of this stuff for years and the beanstalk idea has always apealed to me. I would love to ride an elevator to space.

I have a cat and his name is Whiskers. :)

QuantumTheory08, you are quite the artist. You placed me where I feel I am most of the time......

I do believe that a key to all this will be the mobility of the "stationary" object in orbit. They will need to account for the change in the tilt of the earth and other "wobbles" to keep it afloat.

The big problem I see is that the argument that money spent on space issues is wasted and that we should use the money to benefit people on earth That argument must be overcome. We are so short-sighted. We need to prepare for the next big "hit" from some crap in space. If it comes from the direction of the sun, we won't even see it until it's just weeks away.

Not to sound like a nay sayer but there are a few other difficulties that have to be overcome.

1) If the cable is 12 inches across (that seems pretty thin to me) then at 50,000 miles long it has an area of about 9.5 square miles. Sooner or later something that big is going to get hit. The object that hits it will most likely be traveling a pretty high realitive speed (tens of thousands of miles an hour). If the object that hits weighs more than a few ounces thats gonna hurt, will the cable be able to take that hit? If the object is detected early enough then the cable could possibly be bent out of the way to avoid the collision.

2) Vibration, a long thin cable like this is going to be subject to vibration due to many sources, this vibration must be damped out. One way of damping this vibration is by a series of rocket thrusters mounted along the cable and controlled by a computer. These same thrusters could be used to move the cable to avoid collisions with large objects. Coming up with a means of getting fuel or reaction mass and power to all of these thrusters spaced along 50,000 miles of cable is left as an excercise for the student.

Originally posted by 8_wannabe
I have a cat and his name is Whiskers. :)


LOL...That is classic.

...Originally quoted by 8_wannabe:
I have a cat and his name is Whiskers. :)
...I don't get it.

Maybe you were refering to schrodinger's cat

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci341263,00.html

Genom quoted:
Me thinks someone is cutting and pasting here :D

Can you all guess who?

No; tell us more.

Originally posted by QuantumTheory08

...I don't get it.

Maybe you were refering to schrodinger's cat



Uh, yeah.... that one. That's what I was talking about. :p

...do diamonds and Debeers accusations have anything to do with it, or should we just get the tape out?

Thread hijacked by a cat??!!


(I have a black cat named Mercedes. Probably the only black Mercedes I'll ever own.)

have any of you read the sci-fi book series red mars, green mars, blue mars? space elevators are used thru-out the books and are described in great detail, as far as object avoidance, vibrations and what happens when one breaks- you don't want to be in the path of it coming down and you don't want to be on the anchoring sattelite either. i'll get some info fromthose books and post it here. i realize it's fiction but some of the ideas used to make it work there seem to coincide with the questions raised here.

I have read the red mars series. And yes that what focused my attention on th e problems of space elevators.

more news-sort of. if they get this "space tug" idea off the ground then we could have a way to get a nice big anchor into orbit.

story here (http://www.msnbc.com/news/980685.asp?vts=101620031601)

An asteroid would make a dandy anchor. You could also mine it for materials to make your cable. The fun part is finding an asteroid in the right orbital plane that is small enough to move and it made of the stuff you need to make your cable out of.

Of course if you can move asteroids to earth orbit, you might eliminate the need to have an elevator, since the main reason to have an elevator is to move large amounts of material into orbit. If you have an asteroid then you already have almost all the raw materials you need, already in orbit. You just need to lift the intial tools you need to start your mining and manufacturing.

About 24 years two novels were published within weeks of each other, both about building the first space elevator (just coincidence). I read them both that same year and heartily recommend them, especially the Clarke. Both authors did a tremendous amount of research and calculation prior to writing (Sheffield was President of the American Astronautical Society and everyone knows Clarke invented the concept of communication satellites in geostationary orbit).

1. The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C Clarke

2. The Web Between the Worlds, Charles Sheffield

Read these books if you are interested in getting to space cheap. I also recommend Jerry Pournelles 'A Step Further Out' for realistic ideas like laser launcing systems as well as more 'interesting' thoughts.

So, China is struggling to get into orbit. Suddenly they have a great technological leap and not only get into orbit, but launch a spy satillite at the same time (reported by NASA today).

Flash back to a couple years ago when Billy-Boy Clinton received millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from the Chinese and, by the account of some, he shared classified scientific information with the Chinese. Can these events be related?

Yet another example of how the worst president in US history hurt our country.