Comments on: A space elevator might arrive sooner, and cost less, than you think

By: Buffet/Gates - Hey Billionaires, give your shit away - Page 3 - Fires of Heaven Guild Message Board

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:21:04 +0000

[...] [...]

By: Neil Craig

Neil Craig — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:42:58 +0000

The Moon landings cost, as a proportion of US GNP, $370bn in today’s terms (still a small fraction of the Iraq war) & at the end they didn’t have anything tangible. At say $20 bn a space elevator could be done by any country whose economy is 1/18th the size of America’s with no greater sacrifice than Kennedy persuaded America into then.

By: Michael Nielsen » Biweekly links for 08/19/2008

Michael Nielsen » Biweekly links for 08/19/2008 — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:45:29 +0000

[...] Jon Udell: A space elevator might arrive sooner, and cost less, than you think [...]

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 04:20:25 +0000

Good for the employees of Microsoft! It’s interesting to see how tech intersects with New Space (lots of former and current Paypal, Amazon, Google, etc. money going into this).

If anyone does hit on a low cost space access solution, it’ll change many games. It’s all very exciting!

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:10:19 +0000

> Plus your first SE can slash the cost for
> building a second SE.

Right. Ted and Maurice both make that point. It scales out.

By: Brian Dunbar

Brian Dunbar — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 23:06:20 +0000

Probably more than 10 billion. That estimate (in my opinion) requires that the builder leave out a great deal of flight and equipment testing that is required. It also ignores the cost of taking what are prototypes (the FE laser, for example) and turning them into production ready hardware.

It also completely ignores the political and legal costs: lawyers are expensive, and anyone who wants to build an SE is going to need a lot of very smart ones.

And we can’t even _make_ the material that must make up the ribbon. Could be along soon – there are enough other uses for it. Or it be along later. Twenty years is a good guess (Liftport’s informed guess is 2031) but it’s only a guess.

On the other hand … the cost should be comparable to building a conventional launch solution – and a SE can scale in ways a rocket can’t. Plus your first SE can slash the cost for building a second SE.