Japan plans snail-paced space elevator for 2050
CNET – TIM HORNYAK – Feb 23, 2012
Japanese construction company Obayashi wants to build an elevator to space and transport passengers to a station about a tenth the distance to the moon.
The elevator would use super-strong carbon nanotubes in its cables and could be ready as early as 2050, according to Tokyo-based Obayashi.
The cables would stretch some 60,000 miles, about a quarter the distance to the moon, and would be attached to Earth at a spaceport anchored to the ocean floor. The other end would dangle a counterweight in space.
The elevator would zip along at 125 mph, possibly powered by magnetic linear motors, but would take about a week to get to the station. It would carry up to 30 people.
Go to story
Related:
Lift could take passengers straight into space
Telegraph – JON SWAINE – Sep 22, 2008
Scientists hope that as well as carrying human passengers, the carriages could also haul huge, solar-powered generators that could power homes and businesses back on Earth. It could also remove barrels of nuclear waste, dumping them into space. Go to story
excerpt from purport, Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 7, Chapter 13, Text 30:
As soon as a living entity is victimized by material desires to lord it over material nature, he is subjected to the control of material nature, which is supervised by the Supreme Soul. The result is that one again and again makes plans and is baffled, but as foolish as he is he cannot see the cause of his bafflement. This cause is distinctly stated in Bhagavad-gita: because one has not surrendered to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he must work under the control of material nature and its stringent laws (daivi hy esha guna-mayi mama maya duratyaya). The only means of becoming free from this entanglement is to surrender to the Supreme Lord. In the human form of life, the living entity must accept this instruction from the Supreme Person, Krishna: sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam sharanam vraja [Bg. 18.66]. “Do not plan to achieve happiness and drive away distress. You will never be successful. Simply surrender unto Me.” Unfortunately, however, the living entity does not accept the Supreme Lord’s clearly stated instructions from Bhagavad-gita, and thus he becomes a perpetual captive of the laws of material nature.
Yajñarthat karmano ’nyatra loko ’yam karma-bandhanah: [Bg. 3.9]) if one does not act for the satisfaction of Krishna, who is known as Vishnu or Yajña, he must be entangled in the reactions of fruitive activities. These reactions are called papa and punya—sinful and pious. By pious activities one is elevated to the higher planetary systems, and by impious activities one is degraded to lower species of life, in which he is punished by the laws of nature. In the lower species of life there is an evolutionary process, and when the term of the living entity’s imprisonment or punishment in the lower species is finished, he is again offered a human form and given a chance to decide for himself which way he should plan. If he again misses the opportunity, he is again put into the cycle of birth and death, going sometimes higher and sometimes lower, turning on the samsara-chakra, the wheel of material existence. As a wheel sometimes goes up and sometimes comes down, the stringent laws of material nature make the living entity in material existence sometimes happy and sometimes distressed.
