Re:They can't be built (Score 1)

I do have a solid background in math and physics, being a physics major and all :). So I do know what I'm talking about. And there are plenty of other scientists who agree entirely with my points, but you don't usually hear about them, because people don't want to hear about how this really cool sounding thing they really want can't exist! And in general, you won't find scientists spending a lot of time refusing crackpot ideas, either, they mostly just laugh at them and go about their business. And don't think that because people like NASA are interested means anything, either! Government agencies have a bad habit of hiring crazy people to come in and "research" things like free energy and levitation devices because some politician wants to have a statue of himself somewhere as the person who made this magical technology possible. I'd like to also point out that I haven't seen anywhere a real analysis of these things, either. It's not good enough just to claim effect A can be ignored, you have to actually show that it can, without ignoring anything else. This isn't a high school physics class where we can assume everything works nicely, and follows nice algebraic equations like E = mgh, in real life, it's not so easy, and you usually can't even get a nice closed form for your answers! In fact, with many of the problems with the space elevator we can't get actual answers because we don't know enough about how these things behave! If you want a good example of other physicists saying it's impossible, post a question about it to sci.physics, and then count how many times "Uncle Al" calls you an idiot. If you pose the question really well, and ask why it won't work instead of trying to say why you think it should work, you might even get an explanation to go with your insults! The elevator does have to be a solid structure, you can't just dangle a rope down from space! Believe me, that idea has been around for a *long* time, and doesn't even come close to working. But even if it was just a rope it would still change sizes (and strengths) depending on it's temperature, *everything* behaves like that. Now, on something smaller, like an asteroid, something like a space elevator could work out fairly well, but not on something like the Earth. Also, I don't know where the hell space.com comes up with a length of 100,000 km for it! I mean, the Moon is only 384,000 km away, and GEO is only 36,000 km.