Removed:
NASA and the European Space Agencies should definitely start production of these space elevators if we are ever to exist as a race off of this planet, so that we dont put all of our eggs in one basket. Otherwise, this is great stuff! --
MichaelTinkler
Whups. I got some of the text off of a NASA web page, I guess I didn't edit it carefully enough. :) I'll check it some more for NPOV now.
To answer the next question I'm sure a lot of Wikipedians will now ask, yes, the text is pretty much verbatim from an external source, which is usually a big no-no. I can't find an explicit copyright statement on the pages. But the page in question is part of NASA's "project liftoff", which is a fully tax-funded educational project, and is hosted on nasa.gov, which is tax-funded site, and while NASA makes a bit of noise about being a semi-independent non-government entity, recent court decisions have made it clear that they are an agency of the government with regard to regulations covering agencies of the government (they are subject to FOIA, for example), so it appears that we are safe from copyright problems. --LDC
- Good to hear a second opinion confirming my understanding of the situation. I did a bunch of editing on it as well, it'd be annoying to have it turn out to be illegal after all. :) -BD
How about using fibers made of synthetic spider silk protein? I heard spider silk is stronger than kevlar.
Unfortunately, I'd bet protein-based cables wouldn't hold up very well in the vaccum and hard radiation of space. Not to mention that spiderwebs have a high liquid-water content, necessary for their springyness and flexibility. A pity since it'd be really cool to string spiderwebs into space like that.
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