From: Monte Davis 

"Geo"  wrote:

>this thing is going to CAUSE global warming..

Stolen. The logic reminds me of a moment at the space elevator conference in 2004:

Before ~2000 the "standard" science-fictional space elevator was
a massive thing with high-speed maglev transport, a century or three away.
Brad Edwards changed the picture (leading to all the publicity of the last
few years) by realizing that carbon nanotube materials might permit a
low-mass, minimalist version -- one we could  afford to build using a few
rocket launches, not thousands -- much sooner. It would use relatively slow
mechanical climbers... which means days going through the Van Allen
radiation belts... which means such an elevator would be cargo-only,
because shielding for passengers (>12" of metal) would be absurdly
heavy.

A presenter at the conference was speculating about finessing that with
very high-strength EM fields (also almost science-fictional -- it's not
clear the equipment would weigh less than solid shielding). When he
mentioned "ten million amps," I leaned to my neighbor and
whispered, "Those climbers are going to have maglev whether they want
it or not."

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