Japanese Company Aims for Space Elevator by 2050

[Greji]

...until he finds out how much more dangerous the pink holes are

They're all pink inside. BTW I wonder where Russell got the pic of me. I was on vacation and all.......

[sublight]

I'm no scientist, but what if even slightly this so called "space elevator" somehow nudged our planet out of its orbit, because it is fucking up our planet's revolutionary (orbital) path around the sun. Then we are really fucked. I don't even want to imagine the affect it might have on the rotation on its axis, which is responsible for the seasons we have.

It would obviously poke a hole in the ozone layer, allowing all the UV radiation in the universe to rush in and take global warming to it's gruesome finale in a matter of seconds!

Between these, I think we have Michael Bay's next few summer blockbusters.

The biggest expense of space flight is the first 50 miles (the shuttle needed two of the biggest single-chamber rocket engines ever built, and burned through a fuel tank almost twice the size of the spacecraft itself before it even got that high). Being able to start from a platform that's already thousands of kilometers out of Earth's gravity well would make future deep space missions far more feasible.

[sublight]

And that's not even beginning to consider the bungee jumping possibilities.