we also didn't have an abundance of fossil fuels in the last ice age to fuel our tech. course we won't have one of those in the near future either.

yep, i can vouch. in my world they see you as requiring the minimum amount of information that they can possibly provide - no matter what your experience level. they respond only to people who have the power to fire them, and everyone else is ignored. requests that are in any way perceived as impinging on their territory, or that they don't want to deal with, are treated smugly or ignored. No project matters to them unless they have ownership of it, and if they have ownership or a project, then no-one can possibly provide any information or support or input, as all non-IT people are ancillary to the goal of keeping everything under the gnostic control of the IT people. If they include others in their important business, it is only to require them to regression test their work. The worst part is that all this private, petty knowledge and control allows them to develop a sense of supreme superiority over their co-workers - they are gods, lords of all they survey, and you are a peasant. And indeed, it is quite easy for a competent IT manager to block whatever project isn't in their best interest, if the administrators have no clue what is going on.

So F*CK those controlling bastards, is all I'm saying.

i say all this with respect for certain IT people. My workplace however, is particularly dysfunctional and has fallen under the control of IT contractors. So to that particular IT bureaucrat: being in the "IT" crowd doesn't mean you automatically know more than everyone else, it makes you a smug ass who will eventually get theirs.

depends on the length - if velocity could be reached by gradually accelerating in on a circular track you'd be ok.

I wonder if it's more complex to build than the Large Hadron Collider - i don't think it should be. definitely not as complicated as teh space elevator.

i've been wondering about this as well - the issue with fiber material as i understand is that it has to be strong enough that it won't snap under the range of pressures that it will be under in construction and operation, but also light enough that it won't collapse under its own weight.

I've also read about tapering so that thickness of the cable increases towards the middle, where stress will be greatest, but also where weight will be be diminished with gravity.

What I wonder is if it would be possible to overcome some of the strength and weight issues by weaving the strands of fiber around a tube shape, and filling the tube with gas so that the weight, to a significant height in the atmosphere, would be negated by the volume of low density gas- basically creating a multi-stage ballon for the part that hangs in the atmosphere.

It seems like this would provide some stability and safety at the ground level, and would balance out some of the pressure and weight issues. Since the thickness of the fiber would be tapered already towards teh top, it seems that using gas balloons in the lower parts could provide and effective stabilizing force to the bottom, allowing for a uniform thickness, and with the possibility of using a slightly weaker fiber as well.

nah, we can haul our asses to the moon and back - we just don't have a good reason to go there.

wikipedia:

Some day, the platinum, cobalt and other valuable elements from asteroids may even be returned to Earth for profit. At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (0.99 mi) contains more than 20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals.[1][2] In fact, all the gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, ruthenium and tungsten that we now mine from the Earth's crust, and that are essential for economic and technological progress, came originally from the rain of asteroids that hit the Earth after the crust cooled.[3][4][5] This is because, while asteroids and the Earth congealed from the same starting materials, Earth's massive gravity pulled all such siderophilic (iron loving) elements into the planet's core during its molten youth more than four billion years ago[6]. Initially, this left the crust utterly depleted of such valuable elements[7]. Asteroid impacts re-infused the depleted crust with metals.

this. i don't know why we don't develop magnetic rail launch - just for putting matter in space it seems like the most efficient method.

>>>They are going to need to be able to generate nearly perfect strands before that becomes an option. that depends on the strength required by the tether, which is tied to other engineering puzzles - no pun intended - it might be that far from perfect is perfect for the job

well... everything is *almost* trivial, if that's any comfort