The Nitty Gritty Engineering Challenge of Building a Space Elevator

[Buster's Uncle]

The Nitty Gritty Engineering Challenge of Building a Space Elevator
​​Nothing's impossible, but this would be really hard.​
Popular Mechanics
By David Grossman  Apr 21, 2016






A space elevator would permanently change mankind's relationship to leaving the planet. It would be so much easier if we could simply carry payloads into orbit, space travel would become common. Carrying a payload into space on an elevator would be wildly cheaper than using  a rocket.  But it would also be really hard.

Grady Hillouse, a civil engineer out based out of Texas, approaches the problem by breaking the problem down to its most elemental realities in his latest episode of Practical Engineering, which aims to find the relatable aspect of engineering problems both complex and seemingly simple.

What is a space elevator? It's a static, unmoving structure, for one thing, which means that for a successful construction, all forces within the structure must cancel each other out. It's that balancing that makes the whole thing such a challenge.

The chief problems, Hillhouse establishes, are what he calls "the fundamental elements" of the space elevator. Powering the lift through the atmosphere, building the top with enough stability so it doesn't collapse. He puts his best hopes on further nanotech developments, which gives cause for hope. Engineering  problems, after all, have always seemed impossible until they're not. The Eiffel Tower was considered impossible for most human history, but it got built. And in 1895 Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky looked at the Eiffel Tower and suddenly imagined it attached to a "celestial castle," leading to the first conceptual design of a space elevator. The only truly impossible engineering challenge is the unimagined one.


http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a20484/space-elevator-specific-engineering-challenge/