"Two years" translates to 10 years, at least -- he's only talking about the basic materials research, and it would probably take more than two years. After that, he's still got to find a way to create, not to mention test, 20,000 flawless miles of this stuff.
And his $10 billion is also undoubtedly way off -- probably by at least a factor of 10. It would cost a lot more than that just for the rockets to launch the material and dispenser into space (you have to drop it down from GEO; you can't put it up from the ground.)
Not to mention R&D on the enabling technology -- cable manufacturing, the dispenser bus, ground receivers, "elevator" stabilization technology, shielding, repair vehicles, figuring out how to repair the cable when it's under tension, and whatever other stuff needed to create and deploy a long, continuous cable, and so on.
It's a great idea, but there's a lot of stuff that needs to happen before this can be made to work. This guy's shading the truth, which is too bad.
It's a great idea, but there's a lot of stuff that needs to happen before this can be made to work. This guy's shading the truth, which is too bad.
And you claim to have as much or more knowledge than Bradley Edwards who has been researching the project for years. BTW, he won't need government funding as there are more than enough venture capitalists which is what Edwards is counting on. That said, venture capitalists don't waste money like governments though they do risk capital. For the vast majority they're not fool hardy, lacking due diligence. Least wise not since the dot com bubble burst.
Not a chance this will be built even if the engineering problems are solved.
We would do much better to use the Moon as our jumping off point. Much smaller gravity well and plenty of material to build "stuff".