December 9, 2008

More problems for the Space Elevator

By: Daniel Kennelly

A report about Coriolis-induced instability in an orbital tether and climber contains this understatement of the day:

I think we are finding that building a space elevator is a lot more complicated than simply stringing up a ribbon and whizzing up and down it,” says Anders Jorgensen of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, US, who has studied space elevator stability.