Space elevators, death rays, are duds
Two different Silicon Valley experiments this weekend failed outright.
First, there was the space elevator competition at NASA. Nobody won the $50,000 prize because no one figured it out (free registration). Brad Edwards, former staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said it will be "one or two years" before a space elevator becomes a reality, as quoted by a Merc reporter. That seems pretty optimistic, no?
Second, an effort to set fire to a fishing boat by directing a sun beam from 150 feet away proved a dud. The idea was to reflect the sun's powerful rays with a mirror-like device made of glass and bronze, in an effort to replicate the fabled "death ray" recounted in historical accounts about Archimedes' contraption used to torch a fleet of invading Roman ships. It failed to spark an open flame.
http://www.siliconbeat.com/cgi-bin/mt331/mt-tb.cgi/809
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The MIT 2.009 class got the death ray to work:
http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/lectures/10_ArchimedesResult.html
Comment link
Making a car zip up and down a ribbon is - as we've been finding out for the past 18 months - one of those 'harder than it looks' deals. This is the way you build reliable system - try it, break it, try again.
I agree - next year seems optimistic. We're aiming for 2018.
Brian on October 24, 2005 10:04 AMComment link
