Any Thoughts on the Patented Space Elevator (Whacky Canadians)

[-Olen-]

I love Canadia - they are interesting thinkers / innovators.

Canadian Co. gets patent for space elevator. Here is a link to read the patent spec and claims: (LINK)

The patent was pending for over 7 years - which even by USPTO standards is long (3-4 years is typical for complex mechanical devices; 7 years is getting to be the norm for pharmaceuticals, biotech, software, and business methods).

Impressively, one of the inventors prosecuted the application (no US attorneys were used or harmed in the issuance of this patent).

Thoughts on the practicalities of implementing this technology?

 

[GK4Herd]

What do you know about patents? Oh...Olen. Good to see I'm not the only early bird. Let's see...space elevators and filming light. Early must be a nerd thing.

 

[-Olen-]

What do you know about patents? Oh...Olen. Good to see I'm not the only early bird. Let's see...space elevators and filming light. Early must be a nerd thing.

I prefer geek (as compared to nerd). Geeks are at least left alone if not begrudgingly admired by most, where as Nerds typically get the snot beat out of them and have their underwear waist bands wrapped around their ears on a pretty regular schedule.

I'm still trying to grasp the mechanics of how this thing is going to get assembled. I've understood it to have a self-assembly aspect, in that there is mechanism for advancing each "section" of the tower along a track that advanced with each addition -- but the illustrations are not quite clear that this understanding is clear. And I haven't had a chance to read the specification to see what it says on that front (and probably won't for a few days -- got grass tomorrow in about five minutes, and painting at wifey's new dance studio space on East Pea Ridge: Saturday is jammed with not-much-fun work).

 

[HerdandHokies]

It isn't really practical yet (unless they've made some very big recent advances) mainly because we can't make the materials required to do it in large enough quantities. The theory behind it is solid and has been well known for a long time though. Clarke at least predicted it.

 

[GK4Herd]

From what I understand graphene changes the issues with tensile strength in a material needed for a space elevator. I've been reading articles through the years on space elevators and it seems like each one has a different approach to how one would work.

 

[HerdandHokies]

Yeah, we have materials that work, the issue is having the ability to make them on the scale necessary to do this sort of thing. We're getting there, but as of now as far as I know we haven't made anything more than a few inches long out of graphene.