Space Elevator Rebuttal From LiftPort Founder 368
TropicalCoder is the reader who submitted the story about the possible demise of LiftPort a couple of weeks back. The resulting discussion was mostly negative about the feasibility of building a space elevator. TropicalCoder writes: "At one point during the discussion, LiftPort founder Michael J. Laine personally entered the discussion, but for the most part remained invisible since he hadn't logged in. I responded to his comment that if he would like a chance to rebut the criticisms, he should contact me and I would undertake to interview him and post the resulting story on Slashdot." Read below for the story of how Mr. Laine's detailed reply and rebuttal to that Slashdot discussion came about. TropicalCoder asks, "After reading LiftPort's rebuttal to Slashdot critics, do any of you now feel your pessimism somewhat dispelled?"
Michael Laine called me long distance via cell phone that very day from his back yard near Seattle, and spoke with me for over an hour. Michael came across as a rather sober, likable fellow, not at all like the crackpot image one would conjure up from reading many of the Slashdot comments. He was clearly wounded by the stinging criticisms in the Slashdot discussion, and I couldn't help empathizing with him. Here was man who had put his money where his mouth was, risking everything on his dream, perhaps suffering his darkest hour, and enduring ridicule on top of that.
At no point during the conversation did I get any impression of a huckster who would sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, something that I was on the lookout for. It was clear to me that he sincerely believes in what he is doing. Whether he succeeds in the end or not, I would prefer to call him a "visionary." After all, for every great visionary you can recall from history, there must have been a thousand others who tried and failed, but are no less visionary because of that. The jury is still out on LiftPort, and rumors of their death would be premature. They continue their research, and as I write are preparing for the "Tethered Towers" demo on Thursday June 28.
At the end of the conversation it was agreed that I would summarize the Slashdot discussion for him and offer him an opportunity for point-by-point rebuttal. I completed this summary (in which many Slashdot readers will recognize their own words), and sent it off to him the next day. He acknowledged receipt and promised an answer shortly. A few weeks passed, and I imagined that he must have decided in the end that the criticisms were so severe, perhaps it would be best just to try to forget it. It was a total surprise to me when a thoroughly detailed response arrived in my mailbox today, demonstrating that the people at LiftPort at least are still convinced that building a space elevator is possible.
Space elevator themes have been celebrated in science fiction and many Slashdot readers have shared the dream, only to become disillusioned with the apparent pending demise of LiftPort. After reading LiftPort's rebuttal to Slashdot critics, do any of you now feel your pessimism somewhat dispelled?"
Ok, here's my comment (Score:5, Insightful)
LiftPort: We disagree. So far as our official road map is concerned, we are on schedule - and in fact, we are even a little ahead of schedule on some projects.
Ok, that's great, but you're the ones making this amazing claim that you could build a space elevator today if only you had the money. Amazing claims require amazing proof. Your official road map doesn't exactly cut it.
Re:Ok, here's my comment (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It was doomed to failure (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
The gigantic, orbiting space stations we envisioned as children won't be possible until we can get stuff to outer space cheaply and easily. Neither will manned missions to mars.
With a space elevator, all you do is load it up onto a climber and send it up the cable. It'll get there in a few days. Not as fast as a rocket, sure, but a hell of a lot cheaper, easier, and safer.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there's some people who think we should force people to stop breeding. Put a limit on how many children you can have so that the birth rate is less than the death rate. Stop treating the sick and old. Stop giving aid to third world countries. Just let em all die so that the population of Earth gets down to a nice manageable level. These people rally under the banner of "Limits To Growth [wikipedia.org]".
Then there's the space advocates. Of which I am one. We believe that the best solution to there not being enough resources on Earth for everyone is to go get resources off Earth. There's thousands of Near Earth Asteroids [wikipedia.org] which contain hundreds of times more metal than the entire crust of the Earth is believed to hold. There are only thousands of them because the Earth has this giant deflector that thankfully stops them from falling on us (although every 60 million years or so we get a big one that nearly wipes out all life on the planet, the last one was about 65 million years ago). This giant deflector is called The Moon and it has millions of craters on it, most of which were caused by these big metal asteroids.. the metal is still up there.
Getting to the Near Earth Asteroids is considered easier than getting to the Moon, but the Moon obviously has a lot more resources on it and, hey, we've done it a dozen times already. The cost of expanding our civilization into space is great. I don't argue that. But the cost of not expanding our civilization into space may well be much much greater. We're eating up this planet, and we don't (yet) have another one.
I don't think Liftport will work and here's why... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are several things that a good entrepreneur needs in order to be successful on a project like this. The first of is he/she needs to be charismatic in person and in presenting the idea to other people. I mean, incredibly and unbelievably charismatic, so that only the most hard core doubters would walk away from a talk with him thinking "it can't be done". Frankly I didn't get that from Mr Laine. To me at least he came off as combative he didn't show me the "spark" that I would expect to see from a Steve Jobs or other figure who can really energize investors and employees.
Failing that, then they will need some hard core technical skills to work with the team of engineers who will eventually make the technical leaps required to do something revolutionary. This I certainly don't get from Mr Laine. His attitude of "I'll contract out innovation" doesn't strike me as someone who will make a small miracle happen in his woefully underfunded project.
And that's it. I don't even have to get into the technical issues in any depth and I'm already convinced that I should invest my money elsewhere. Sorry Mr. Laine, I bear no malice against you as a person, but you had your 5 min presentation and I came away unconvinced.
d
Re:Ok, here's my comment (Score:1, Insightful)
Painful Read (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading the Slashdotters' comments was really painful. Do people around here lack vision and research skills?
Carbon nanotubes are a miracle material. Not just for space elevators, but also for strengthening building/vehicle frames and nanotech. Any research on mass production of high-quality carbon nanotubes will have plenty of spill-over effect.
Unrolling the initial fabric from orbit down to the surface without snagging is a challenge, but hardly an impossible one.
Tesla was playing with remote power transmission a century ago. There's still work to be done, but all the major breakthroughs are in place.
Speed to orbit? Why do you need to go fast? People used to take months to cross the Atlantic, and the treasures offered by cheep space travel are massive compared to the treasures of the New World. Or just send up cargo on the elevator and send people on a rocket (expensive and dangerous in comparison, but quick).
In short, this wasn't Slashdot's finest moment.
Shift Key (Score:2, Insightful)
I think I lost any remaining respect I had for him when I read through his comments in the previous discussion. It might seem like a minor thing, but if the guy can't be bothered with little details like spelling, grammar, and correct capitalisation, then what were his chances of ever getting the SEC filings done correctly?
It made him look like the kind of person who constantly churns. People like that can't focus on anything but developing their latest and greatest idea, and are unable or unwilling to ever do anything because they're already onto the next thing.
Re:As a general rule of thumb (Score:1, Insightful)
Honestly, Americans are getting out of the science business. I'm getting a PhD in condensed matter physics. In that specialization, in my class, there are two Chinese students, an Armenian and one American (me). That's pretty typical.
You are right that the US government pays for a lot... all these international students sure appreciate their US grant-funded educations when they go home. Too bad our government, in all it's wisdom, requires them to do that after paying for their education.
Re:As a general rule of thumb (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it just me, or were people saying that about Japan just before and after WW II?
Re:Cyclone effects? (Score:4, Insightful)
Speculating now about the wind loading on a space elevator is akin to the last question.
Re:As a general rule of thumb (Score:2, Insightful)
Nvidia (Score:4, Insightful)
a computer program around the computers available at the beginning of the design process, or designed the program on your
prediction of the computers available at the end of the development process, the latter would be the better product - suited to
the technology available at the time the consumers were ready to use it.
Nvidia does too. Like, the GeForce FX series of their cards. They were to be released together with DirectX 9. Except that nobody knew what DX9 would support and due to some disagreement between Nvidia and Microsoft, Microsoft wouldn't tell. So Nvidia was "predicting the features of DirectX 9". That is, guessing. And guess what? They guessed wrong. GeForce FX was packed with wonderful features which had no support whatsoever in the OS, while features required by DX9 were quickly hacked into the drivers and worked at snail speed in software emulation.
Sure -sometimes- the predictions work. But when it doesn't, it fails hard.
Golden Opportunity Wasted. (Score:2, Insightful)
Venture Capitalists invest in a team, first and foremost. The inability of this 'team' to take advantage of this incredible wonderful opportunity to 'Pitch' to the entire Slashdot community guarantees their inability to raise investment capital, at least not from professional investors. Lack of a Chief Scientist with a PhD in nano-technology on their 'team' is also a guarantee for failure. Perhaps this explains why they attempted to raise money through a Reg. 504d stock offering. They don't even have bios for their 'team' on their website! A company raising money through professional investors must include their team on their web site.
Michael Laine et al have NO IDEA what is required to run a business of this magnitude. LiftPort will fail, not because their idea is impossible, but because the problem they are trying to solve is monumental and their team lacks the experience and the charisma to turn a dream into reality. As a result they will be unable to attract professional investors, and you are not going to build a space elevator by selling T-Shirts online. Mr. Laine may be a visionary, but his time and money would be better spent writing visionary books.
Re:Ok, here's my comment (Score:5, Insightful)
What DID this guy DO to you and all the other moaning slashdotters? Yeah probably like me you grew up post-Apollo and parte-Shuttle and wanted to be an astronaut when you were a kid, so I guess you're a little bitter that the whole spage-age thing hasn't really happened. But hey, why is it all directed at these guys? Did they sneak into your room when you were a kid and molest you, promising that if you kept it a secret from mommy and daddy that you'd get the first ride into space on their space elevator?
Are they making outlandish, unfounded claims with the sole intention of scraping money from willing idiots? Possibly, I don't know for sure, but I'd love to see a space elevator go up, and the technological and exploratory benefits to mankind that followed. So let's give these guys a chance, even if all they're doing is collecting ideas, theories and munging it together with some nice 3d graphics the more people take notice and take the idea seriously the better. But so what if they don't shit one out of their assholes tomorrow morning just for you personally to ride on, give it a rest.
Critique, debate and peer review on any matter are always warranted but shooting insults and slander from the hip because, well, presumably you expected a LiftPort TM by 2005 and free trips to space or something is frankly unwarranted, childish and should be moderated into oblivion.
Re:Increased Pessimism (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, it was a lesson taught when I went to engineering school. The Tacoma Narrows engineers f*ed up and didn't take all of the variables into account.
Re:Ok, here's my comment (Score:3, Insightful)
False hope, lies, and scientific hogwash ARE dangerous. It's the same crap that gave us Eugenics, and had the CIA wasting millions of $ on psychics, and has Bible-thumpers running around claiming that the earth is only a few thousand years old.
In other words, bullshit doesn't just smell--it can also waste money, lead people to irrational behavior, and divert resources best focused elsewhere.
Re:Alternatives (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:But what next? (Score:3, Insightful)