All these problems we have will be over as soon as we find the Higgs boson.
When we have a space elevator, I’m going to enter it carrying a bunch of groceries and say, “Someone hit the button for ‘space’ for me.”
I noticed the Kindle version of my book
When we have the space elevator, I’m going to hit the button for every floor and run out just when Frank gets on with the groceries.
Yeah, a space elevator would be great – until you get stuck on a 500 mile ride with a couple of bratty kids and some smelly old bat with her yappy dog.
What Book?
Frank starts writing for the New York Post and Boise State moves to the Big East. cause and effect?
“Troposphere, please.”
The Higgs boson? Oh, God.
@DamnCat: How did you know I have a yappy dog?
I found the Burmashave boson, but I’m not telling where.
Yeah, Burma, the reason we haven’t found the Higgs boson is because Peter Higgs is hiding it and intends to take it with him when he goes, since it’s God’s particle, and all.
Since we don’t deserve to find a particle like that, we should rename it the “Obama boson,” since, as Frank repeatedly points out, we don’t deserve him, either.
I think we should agree, as a “peace” gesture, to build the space elevator located so that when it touches down, it will do so in the center of Tehran. We can be all like “Hey! You know, we were thinking that if you primitive tribesmen joined the 21st century, and saw how ultra cool SPACE was, maybe you’d calm down a tad.” And back home, when our fellow conservatives scream “ARE YOU MAD???” we could be all like “Just wait… just wait… oh, and here’s an electrical engineering pamphlet you might want to glance at while we’re waiting…”
Then the big day – touchdown day – would come. At last! The space elevator, begun in space, anchored so its center of gravity was in geosynchronous orbit, beautiful and miraculously long and strong, would approach the ground.
After having passed through our magnetosphere and ionosphere, of course.
I’m thinking the resulting mega-lightning bolt from heaven, astonishingly similar to placing a conductor across the poles of a fully-charged, planet-sized capacitor, would remove that little diplomatic issue we’ve been having.
Pity about losing the elevator, but it was never going to work anyway, for that same reason.
That’s an interesting thought. It sounds like a plausible concern. But there are a lot of really smart people wholly committed to building a space elevator and making it work.
So are they all nuts?
#11 – KenJackson,
“So are they all nuts?”
Not as long as they can keep getting grant money for hypothetical engineering projects.
When they can create a 22,300 (or so) mile long cable that won’t snap under its own weight, then they move on to the really tough problems! (like mega-lightning bolts).
Hmm… would you get the same mega-lightning bolt effect if you dropped a thin wire only a few hundred miles long from a lower orbit?
Because I think that’d be do-able with current technology, and if it would have the same awesome effect, Frank should definitely put that on his list of agenda items for when he runs for president, right after nuking the moon and dinosaurs with rocket launchers.
They’re not nuts, but it seems to be very common to not know that the ionosphere is mostly made of electrified plasma (I don’t remember the percentage, but enough that the region is named after it). That’s the “ion-” part of the name, and my apologies if you already knew that.
Fewer people – even among the truly brilliant ones – seem to have any understanding of the “double-layer” or “Langmuir Sheath” phenomena of plasma (I’m looking at YOU, “Magnetosphere”!). Again, not “nuts”, but misinformed or uninformed.
In their defense, I must say that partial blame has to lie with with those who DO understand (even partially) the phenomena, because they tend to go on and on, belaboring the subject, having no sense of proportion or appropriateness – even going so far as to cite obscure theories in the comment areas of humor blogs.
Normal people quite understandably tune out these geeks who apparently have such a low sense of self-awareness that… Waitwhat?