Astronomy Without A Telescope – Space Towers

Arthur C Clarke allegedly said that the space elevator would be built fifty years after people stopped laughing. The first space tower though… well, that might need a hundred years. The idea of raising a structure from the ground up to 100 kilometers in height seems more than a bit implausible by today's engineering standards, [...]

(Caption) The Seattle space needle pokes through the cloud tops (well, just fog really… it's only 184 meters high). Credit: Liem Bahneman, pixduas.comArthur C Clarke allegedly said that the space elevator would be built fifty years after people stopped laughing. The first space tower though… well, that might need a hundred years. The idea of raising a structure from the ground up to 100 kilometers in height seems more than a bit implausible by today's engineering standards, given that we are yet to build anything that is more than one kilometer in height. The idea that we could build something up to geosynchronous orbit at 36,000 kilometers in height is just plain LOL… isn't it?(...)Read the rest of Astronomy Without A Telescope – Space Towers (601 words)© Steve Nerlich for Universe Today, 2010. | Permalink | No comment |
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