Can scientists make a space elevator?

Answer: Um, no.

"Wind turbines that provide energy by spinning 24 hours a day. "
Air in the outer space? Really?

In as long as it is big enough to hold both Pelosi, Reid and the rest of the dems in Congress I'm for. Don't bother putting a stop button.

"Bang, zoom, straight to the Moon!"

First, I think the question should not be "Can scientists make a space elevator?", but "Should scientists make a space elevator?"

I dreampt up a space elevator in '82, from never hearing of the idea. There are physics aspects that I conceived and answered that remain of un-thought of, by all these "designers", still.
The mass of all elevators so far expounded would pull their structures apart. Utterly.

But I know the way... :-}

I think we should focus on the problems of the world and solve them before we invest millions more to space research...

The main thing I worry about is how ugly that thing would be. A seemingly endless tube in the sky. Who would want that in their view?
Plus there's a ridiculously large amount of manmade refuse stuck in orbit around this planet. It seems like it would pose a bit of a threat.
And what if it fell over? Haha.
Okay. It's exciting.

"A merely clever man could never have thought of it" lol... I thought about this idea when I was 14, now that i'm 33, I don't see this happening at all. We might support it, but the government and it's old farts some of you keep electing, won't do it because it's not profitable enough.

Our government is made up of millionaires, they would only do this if they can make money out of it.

Except that would be physically impossible. Sure, we could have the capacity to build one. But, mind you, the planet is rotating and there are asteroids and comets passing near our planet all the time. Even if we DID build one, it will most likely be destroyed within months.

Would it be futile to create a space elevator? How will it work and will it rotate with the earth?

However, I do love the space hotel idea. I wish I was filthy rich to stay there just for 1 day. I don't even like to fly and I still want to experience space.

I want a teleporter.

That would be one hell of a ride to the heavens....

what we need is skrith ( ring world engineers).
where do we put it? the equator has a bulge due to the spin and is shorter but the spin is at 1000mph.. the poles rotate once a day at almost 0 speed but the problems there are legion. i think maybe jim kirk's home town in iowa.
our tower of babble might be made of diamond, at 22,000 miles that's a lot of carbon. 90% of diamonds are artificial and are industrial not gem quality. actually most diamonds mined are used industrially. a diamond tower could transmit energy and even cool the earth as diamond has the greatest heat transfer( that's why their called ice, they are always cold to the touch).

I'm a huge fan of this idea because its very theoretically possible. Geostationary orbit is about 222,236 miles above sea level so it would be an incredible engineering accomplishment, but it would save a ton of money since most of the fuel in our rockets is just to get through the atmosphere.

Arthur C Clarke had to have been an alien. His books accurately predicted iPods, external hard drives, Skype, flash memory, search engines like Google, email, and more, back when computers were the size of buildings and could barely compute 2+2.

He also holds credit for inventing the communications satellite. Brilliant man.

jeez, not for the claustrophobic

sauce of teh sauce is on teh sauce imo.

i don't know but that would be badass!

i wonder how long it would take to ride the thing into space? decent elevator music is a must.

A space elevator will be seen by 2030. Unless of course we kill ourselves off with pollution and/or disease.
Self replicating carbon nano-tubes were looked at a few years ago. Don't know if anyone is still working on it from that direction.
Wonder if they'll let an old lady like me up there when it's built?

Probably, if we took what we spend in Iraq for a week. Piece of cake, but, oh we might have to stop killing people, forget it.

holy crap... this i want to see

Yeah, but can you bungiejump off that thing?

Nano-tech and buckyballs and buckytubes MIGHT do it, once we already have a manufacturing colony on the moon or asteroid belt, but not any time even remotely soon. With fusion plants to provide energy on a colony,...really really efficient batteries and conductive materials,..... Basically its hard to get a handle on how advances in multiple fields will reinforce potential.

No, final answer.

Even with carbon nanotubes.

HOLY CRAP! Beam me up Scotty. I'm in.

The ultimate Tower of Terror!

i dissagree. if we're seeing a space hotel in 2012, then i see this happening in my life time. This race is getting smarter and smarter then ever before. We're going to be the death of our species..

"A merely clever man could never have thought of it"

lol

not in our life time.......................