Japanese construction company Obayashi wants to build an elevator to space - and they want to use carbon nanotubes to get there. The Tokyo-based company plans to use 60,000-miles of the cylindrical carbon structures, anchored to Earth's surface, to shuttle an elevator to and from a distance about a tenth of the Moon's distance from the Earth.
Here's why that probably won't happen.
Based solely on the company's meager description - published two days ago in the Daily Yomiuri - it sounds as though Obayashi is flirting with the idea of using the carbon nanotubes in a "ribbon" setup - a popular concept among those familiar with space elevators. The basic idea is to use strong, light, and almost inconceivably flat sheets of carbon nanotube ribbon (think several meters wide, and thin enough to make paper seem bulky) as a rail system that runs perpendicular to Earth and keeps hold of robotic cars that glide along the ribbon to and from the planet. (io9.com)
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