Yes, sorry the centripetal-centrifugal force balance thing was completely off my mind when I asked that question.
But with all the remaining two points look in the domain of SciFi to me. I'm sure tether dynamics are going to a materials engineering problem like never seen in history of mankind.
Plus the energy problem is still by and large a very problem. Sending electricity down the tether looks very inefficient give the article says it will 62K miles long.
In short we are still may be what, say 50 years away from this?
Quite possibly. I'm not concerned with power transmission so much; that's just engineering, and the tiny Centennial Challenge teams were doing well enough over a few years that it seems quite soluble. We will probably have UAVs flying on beamed power regularly within a few years.
The tether materials are obviously the long pile in this tent. We have theoretical materials that will work, which is great, but we really need practical materials. The day you can go buy nano tube thread you can formulate an actual timeline for a space elevator. Until then, its only a dream.
But with all the remaining two points look in the domain of SciFi to me. I'm sure tether dynamics are going to a materials engineering problem like never seen in history of mankind.
Plus the energy problem is still by and large a very problem. Sending electricity down the tether looks very inefficient give the article says it will 62K miles long.
In short we are still may be what, say 50 years away from this?