David Horn works with Microsoft in Seattle and is one of the organisers of the 2009 Space Elevator Conference. What is a “space elevator”, I hear you ask? Only the coolest idea you’ve ever heard! Imagine a day in the not-too-distant future where getting into space involves jumping into something like a luxury train that travels VERTICALLY – up into the air – traveling along a ‘ribbon’ made of carbon nanotubes – for a week until you get outside of the earth’s gravitational pull and THEN you jump in your space vehicle, which is attached to the other end of the ribbon, detach, and get flung into space via centrifugal force!
Links:
Wikipedia entry on Space Elevators.
Book your ticket for the 2009 Space Elevator Conference here.
Music:
Chris Garneau
“Fireflies” (mp3)
from “El Radio”
(Absolutely Kosher)
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Ok, wow. that’s really, really cool. I had no idea how close to reality this is. Looking forward to the conference next week in Redmond, WA, at Microsoft.
I’m gonna have to see if I can make it to the conference. GREAT guest Cam! I have always been very interested in the space elevator and it was good to hear from someone involved in this conference. I had no idea it was becoming this well organized.
Science Fiction authors have been kicking this idea around for years. I thought maybe this was an idea by our friend Buckminster Fuller, but Wikipedia says it was a Russian scientist named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. The idea itself was amazing, but technology is holding us back. We simply don’t have the materials needed to build a cable that could withstand the stress… Which is where carbon nanotubes came in.
What a great podcast