WC Archive

Of course, Brooklyn has the Gowanus Canal, besides which even a space elevator woven out of PCBs and plutonium would look benign.

At the risk of seeming stuck in a fluctuation in the space-time continuum, I must admit that I'm a Williamsburger who found this flyer perplexing. At first I admired it as an attack on developers. Then I began to wonder whether it wasn't actually ridiculing neighborhood residents for being against almost any change in the community. Then I began to wonder about the role of art in poor people's struggles. I guess this means the flyer was successful. But here's the thing: it probably mystifies most people in the community. Sadly, artists seem to like staying above the fray.

Stefan, the Gowanus is a health spa compared to Newtown Creek. Check out the info at the Newtown Creek Alliance.

I thought space elevators were crazy, now I'm not so sure. Brad Edwards ribbon design is much much lighter that Clarke's design that looks like a mountain 25,000 miles high. If that falls it will create a huge disaster. The smaller space elevator
is constructed of buckytube ribbons embedded in polyethylene plastic. If the small asteroid at the end is dislodged, the ribbon will flutter to the ground harmlessly. Edwards design has other problems though. The plastic is conductive and lightning strike might burn it up. Lightning can strike it from clouds 30,000 feet up and lower.
The flat sheets will catch the wind and wind might blow it off course.

The big rock at the end of the tether might fall back onto the Earth like a natural asteroid if a plane hits the space elevator's ribbon, pulling the asteroid at the end lower. It might hit a city. Terrorists might hit it with an airplane on purpose. Strong winds in the sratosphere blow 150 miles per hour. They will ruin the composite ribbon structure, twisting it around itself making it useless for lifing space elevators. A bumpy rope might enable a ratchet device to lift it up like a person climbing a knotted rope.

The dynamics of the space elevator are such (i.e. that the cable experiences considerable tensile, not compressive forces), mean that even in the event of a complete severing, the counterweight (which would actually probably be made up of discarded elevator cars), would fly off into space, not fall to Earth. For a plane to pull the counterweight down, it would have to do the impossible: pull the ribbon along sideways for tens of thousands of kilometers. The tensile forces will also keep the ribbon from kinking, in much the same way that spinning a yo-yo around your head will pull the string taut.