One more ladder please!

Big projects are just small projects with more money and ambition.

There will always be those who see something and want to one up it. Building a pyramid of 15 cards is all fine and well, but the next time you build one in all likelihood, you'd want to outdo what you did before. And if there is a pyramid set up already, you wouldn't want to build one smaller would you? There were those before the space race who looked into the sky, at the moon and stars and instead of residing themselves to only imagine or dream about reaching them, used those dreams to fuel an intense fight to make those dreams a reality. It's a mindset, one which as Schwarzenegger says 'don't listen to naysayers'. It's important to not settle with what is, but to rather aim for what could be. There were times when these 'futuristic ideas' were laughed at, coming from a perspective of mute rationality; one which sticks to one construct of impressions and beliefs and doesn't sway the course as new information is made available. It's important to be somewhat malleable, to change views and beliefs as we learn more about ourselves. the world and everything beyond. Resistance to change is like wearing a veil of ignorance; sifting out things which contradict your beliefs and only bearing down on those things which agree with your beliefs; a selective truth.

I love it how from simple information exchange, and unified labour, we, as people, as units of biomass have constructed incredible things. Things which, only a century ago would have been so shocking, whoever would have even proposed them as ideas would be committed to an insane asylum. We've built huge skyscrapers which strive against the forces holding them down, bridges which span miles across oceans, machines which dive through deep seas and accumulates data, cars and planes which travel at speeds faster than sound, a network of data which covers the entire planet at light speeds, telescopes which can see into the furthest reaches of space, microscopes which can see the molecular composites of your body, and rockets which can grant us freedom from the planet we were born to. And these are only a fraction of what we've accomplished as a people. It's easy to pick out the very many failures people have and our legacy has had as an impact on the natural world around us, but we shouldn't forget at the very many accomplishments. Harnessing the laws of nature to mould the world to our will and the future to our design. Man and nature are always seen as opposites; it's our way of recognising our design on things in stark contrast to the order of the things before us. We don't fit in because we use tools; things other than simply 'us' to execute our will, and can spend years using those tools to alter the world to fit our ideals (yes, other animals use tools too, but rather rudimentary to the extent we as people have and do now). Which is an incredibly short time in the perspective of world time.

The logical way is forwards and not backwards. We have something now, and we want to continue to have it as well as accumulate something more. Whether that's information or nuts, it's the logical step for any intelligent creature. And intelligence is certainly what humans have; since becoming bipedal we were able to look up and dream. So, we hold the earth in our hands, as God's of the 1927 hymn 'He's got the whole world in his hands'. We have a finite down, but an infinite up – striving into the unknown and shining a torch there to see what we find. In learning more about the world and beyond, we are in pursuit of meaning, pursuit of truth and it's that pursuit which is the most noble. To rest on our laurels and cease to improve and further our own knowledge is to give up with one of the greatest notions we were given; curiosity.

Virtually nothing is impossible when you perceive the universe as how a scientist does, and it's that mentality which precipitates progress in a changing universe. In an infinite universe, the realm of possibility is quite broad; allowing for all manner of far-fetched ideas to materialise . Anyway, I love these project ideas, these things which make people pause for thought or blurt out a series of squeaky tail-end inflective questions, and provides the moments for people to wonder and dream about possibility. I love that.

The space elevator is one of those projects; circulating as an idea for more than a century, published well before any form of rocket travel in 1895 by Konstatin Tsiolkovsky, and has been received like clotted cream in coffee; curdling on the surface for a while. It's taken a while for the concept to be stirred in, but the taste may not be that bad at all! Obviously the idea has changed quite a bit. Tsiolkovsky didn't know about the centrifugal forces of the Earth and their integral capacity involved realising the project, the use of materials weren't available at the time which we have designed now and space travel hadn't even been birthed other than on the pages of Jules Verne and other Science fiction writings.

Building the structure from the ground up proved an unrealistic task; as there is no known material which could withstand the compression of its won weight. Not only that, but the practicalities of building a tower miles high at all is virtually impossible due to weather conditions and seismic disturbances. The current material looked at as a candidate for the elevator cable are carbon nanotubes; though, to date, no-one has managed to form a perfectly formed carbon nanotube longer than a meter. A Canadian firm was recently granted a patent for an elevator which would be built to a height of 12 miles. At which point it would have a landing and docking system for rockets to take off, land and refuel; making the challenge of breaking Earth's gravity that much easier. The columns would be semi-inflatible; cutting weight down and allowing for the structure to bend in winds and other disturbances. Though, it's nothing more than a concept at the moment due to materials, funding, permissions and everything else under the sun. An idea, but one which could marinate into something tangible, and when a question of implementation hangs over it, it's maybe not as far off as you'd think. From the various proposals and detailed plans for an elevator, the factor which impedes them all is the tether. According to Peter Swan (International space elevator consortium president) the tether is the Achilles heal, and we simply don't have the material with the right amount of tensile strength for a space elevator yet.

“Finding the material to make the tether is the main remaining technological challenge, [...] All the rest are slam dunks. We can do them all.” Says Swan.

The purpose of the elevator of course, would be to transport people and goods from the ground to a geo-stationary orbit (out of the troposphere, stratosphere and mesosphere; 35,000 km latitude) without using rockets. The point of which would be for safety, efficiency, cost effectiveness and time effectiveness. Currently the cost of transporting anything to space costs in reaches of $20,000 per kilogram, a space elevator would drastically reduce that sum. It would dramatically change the way people would move into and out of space and allow for faster developments in the pursuit of space exploration and data gathering. Even if it proves that we can't make such a thing, the pursuit of trying should not be dismissed as useless; in the pursuit, materials have and will be made, technological expertise improved, designs managed and redeveloped, scientific understanding increased and a healthy amount of curiosity satisfied. Though, I imagine, there'll always be there, as a serious proposal, or a half dream. Let's not stand in the way, but help reach out our arms and brace the elevator project and rise to the challenge.

And if you're interested in the physics of it; here is the equation for the gravitational field:

g = -G. M/r² + w². r

Gravity decreases with height: gr = -G M/r²

Upward centrifugal force increases with height: a = w². R

g is the acceleration of apparent gravity, pointing down (negative) or up (positive) along the vertical cable (m s−2),

gr is the gravitational acceleration due to Earth's pull, pointing down (negative)(m s−2),

a is the centrifugal acceleration, pointing up (positive) along the vertical cable (m s−2),

G is the gravitational constant (m3s−2kg−1)

M is the mass of the Earth (kg)

r is the distance from that point to Earth's center (m),

w is Earth's rotation speed (radian/s).