[spinestein]

[...contrast it to Nasa's announcement last week that it will be relying on 40-year-old technology from the Apollo programme...]



The "space elevator" is an ingenious idea and I hope it becomes feasible someday, but this dig about NASA using 40 year old technology is just plain wrong. It's like saying your 2006 model car is using Model T technology. It may be true in a vague way, but not in any practical real world sense.

[spokeshave]

62000 miles of conductive tape sweeping through space will generate enough electricity to melt it

[GSHastings]

The "space elevator" is an ingenious idea and I hope it becomes feasible someday, but this dig about NASA using 40 year old technology is just plain wrong.

It's that, and idiotic as well. There IS no other technology that will do the job.

Sadly, although the X-Prize successes were entertaining, they really did nothing to advance the state of the art in space access. I know I'm jumping to a slightly different topic, but the same idocy seems to surround that event as well.

Building a two stage vehicle (yes, it was two stages, the first being very slow and powered with turbine engines), which goes up to the edge of space, and then falls back down is of little value.

To compare the relative cost and complexity of the X-Prise vehicle with the original Mercury flights is meaningless. Those first few flights were just baby step tests of a vehicle which was intended to go into orbit, and return.

Had the X-Prise required orbit, then the X-Prise winner would have been very similar to either a Mercury like system, or a Space Shuttle like system.