There’s another slight problem: the elevator doesn’t exist.
And neither do the supermaterials that could make it a reality. The elevator community’s oft-quoted carbon nanotube fibres languish in labs unable to stretch more than a few tens of centimetres without breaking.
All the more reason, says Swan, to get serious research into elevator technology underway. “We should initiate the space elevator project now and have the space solar power people buy into the concept that we’ll have one by 2030 and start planning for it. Instead of a 50-year horizon, let’s have a 20-year one.”
Stirring stuff. The space elevator is in the class of things I definitely hope to see within my lifetime.
We’re all fairly accustomed to the idea of counterfeit goods made in the far East being passed off as the real thing in Western countries, but we tend to think of them as being things like designer clothing brands or consumer electronics.
The drugs in question have been so well cloned that they’ve even found their way into chemists and doctor’s surgeries, and their high price-tags in the UK market ensure there’s a good profit to be made – which suggests the problem will spread to other countries, too. Will the counterfeit drugs market ever eclipse the illegal drugs market?
One of the most curious aspects of the United States for an outsider like myself is the way that different states – and even counties, so I believe – can have their own legal framework in supplement to the one that governs the whole country. It makes a lot of sense from a sociological point of view, though; different regions will inevitably have different political characters, and the law should logically accommodate that.
Struggling with that new year’s resolution to write more every day? Sat staring at a blank screen that mocks you with its existential emptiness?
Maybe One-Two-Fiver can help; it’s designed as a warm-up exercise to get the writing muscles stretched up and ready to run. The instructions are pretty simple:
Start with a single word.
Type it like you mean it.
Now write two words.
Move on to five…
Keep typing until you are writing.
One-Two-Fiver can even email your output back to you! No ads, no gimmicks; give it a spin. [via MetaFilter]
The title says it all, fictioneers – hard-workin’ fiction editor Chris East’s batteries are fully recharged, and so Futurismic is open to fiction submissions once again. Don’t forget to give the guidelines a thorough read before you submit – good luck!
Presenting the fact and fiction of tomorrow since 2001
A nice confluence of Clarkian techno-positivism and 21st century orbital solar power in this post on Short Sharp Science:
We’re all fairly accustomed to the idea of counterfeit goods made in the far East being passed off as the real thing in Western countries, but we tend to think of them as being things like designer clothing brands or consumer electronics.
One of the most curious aspects of the United States for an outsider like myself is the way that different states – and even counties, so I believe – can have their own legal framework in supplement to the one that governs the whole country. It makes a lot of sense from a sociological point of view, though; different regions will inevitably have different political characters, and the law should logically accommodate that.