Wall Street Journal Reports: Is the Final Frontier Just One Ride Away On a Space Elevator?

Lee Gomes reports today on the Space Elevator and it’s future in the Wall Street Journal.

“Tie a rock to the end of a piece of ribbon, then spin it over your head. It will be pulled taut as the rock circles about. Now, imagine a ribbon 62,000 miles long, anchored near the equator with a weight on the other end. The centrifugal force of the earth’s rotation will make it behave the same way. You’ll end up with not only the world’s biggest nunchuck, but also a kind of elevator to outer space.

A space elevator is one of those ideas from 1950s-style futurism that are so whacky they might just work. A thriving community of elevator buffs certainly thinks so; they meet online at sites like spaceelevator.com.”

Also in the Edmonton Journal a story on the University of Alberta entry in the Space Elevator games.

“While seemingly drawn from a science-fiction author’s imagination, researchers are actually hard at work developing the “space elevator” as a cheaper, more efficient alternative to rockets.

This fall, teams of engineering students, including one from the University of Alberta, hope to contribute to the project by entering their devices in a prestigious NASA-sponsored competition.”