I remember describing the cover of White Heart's Don't Wait for the Movie as showing an "old-fashioned satellite dish."
The seeming oxymoron actually fit, as technology had taken us from the ten-footers of the 80s to the modern home dishes that are about two feet wide.
That came to mind as I was reading this CBC piece on a Canadian guy who is proposing an inflatable space elevator.
The patent, which has been granted in the U.K. and the U.S. so far, describes a tower with a space launch platform on top that would initially be built to a height of around 20 kilometres high, but could theoretically be built to more than 200 kilometres high, and reach into low Earth orbit.
It would be made of stacked rings of Kevlar cells inflated with hydrogen or helium to an extremely high pressure. An elevator could ride up the tower, carrying spacecraft, satellites and other goods to be launched into space – along with tourists looking for an extraordinary view.
This is the paragraph that prompted grabbing the YouTube of Maybe Today to provide the graphics above-
Quine's invention isn't a traditional space elevator, an idea that has been kicking around since the late 19th century. The traditional concept consists of a fine cable with one end attached to weight in space, orbiting the Earth, and the other end tethered to the ground. The cable would be used as a track for attaching "climbers" carrying goods from one end to the other.
This isn't a traditional space elevator, it's a newfangled space elevator.
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