Rand Simberg wrote:

On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 14:18:16 +0200, in a place far, far away, Steen
Eiler Jørgensen made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:



Thousands, if not millions will travel into space.


Why? Where should they be going? To GEO? Wow. Remember (even if you
build the darned thing), travelling at 65 mph, it's going to take two
weeks to get there!



Why would one only travel 65 mph? Where in the world did you come up
with such a ridiculous number?


The speed up the elevator will probably be dictated by issues related to
wear of the cable.
Until we know how to build the cable it is difficult to know how fast we
will be able to go
up without damaging the cable. I hope (and think that it is likely) that
we will find a way
of building a cable capable of higher transit speeds but that is not
obvious.

Do you have information indicating that it is possible to build an
elevator which wouldn't
wear down too fast with high transit speeds?

Alain Fournier