OT: About Space Elevators

[Puke]

regarding the revival of old technologies to ferry cargo:

the russians had an old cold-war design for a landing craft / transport that was essentially a giant snubbed-winged jet with its engines on the front. it required very small amounts of lift, because it "flew" on a coushin of air a few (50) feet off the ground.

boeing (or LM, i cant remember) is reviving the project and is developing one that can fly further, faster, safer (and is bigger). it can also accend up to 20,000 feet (wich the russians couldnt, being mostly a landing craft) to fly with conventional air traffic and make use of existing commercial airports. The speed and low fuel consumption (less work to fly low on a cusion of air) is expected to cause a great deal of competition with existing freighters.

regarding high capacity batteries:

both the US and Russia have developed and used nuclear batteries. I would say that is pretty high capacity, though you probably cant re-charge them. if you dumped the electricity back into the power grid of whatever mini-city you had at the base station of the thing, they could probably use a good deal of it.

regarding nanotube conductivity:

it can have properties of either a conductor, or an insulator depending on how it is structured. there was a test that placed one nanotube inside another, and used the inner one to conduct electricity (by pumping electrons down the center of the tube) and the outer on as insulation. so to extrapolate a guess, i think they are all insulative, but if built right, you can shoot electrons through the tubes themselves. (regular conductivity means passing electrons from one atom to the next).