I was reading this article the other day on how Japan is testing the concept of sending materials to space in an elevator from Earth. They say something from Earth could reach the international space station in 8 days if the elevator can travel at 200km/hr.
In my little brain that is partially blown by the thought of this, I'm thinking - if the ISS is orbiting the Earth, and the Earth is also spinning at 1 full rotation/day, how do they manage to "catch" anything from the elevator? Based on the fact that you can watch the ISS from Earth, and it seems to be moving incredibly fast - I assume because it's orbiting the Earth in the opposite direction to the Earth's rotation? I still think it's very cool that we're even seriously considering the prospect of being able to make an elevator into space.
It made me think about how audacious the first suggestions about putting a cable between England and France must have been. The idea of shuttling cargo on a pulley line between two countries must have been far fetched and fantasy at the time. Now we run cable between all continents of the Earth under the vast oceans carrying communication information. We wear on our wrists GPS devices that determine our location from satellites orbiting the Earth, to within 3 metres of our actual physical location (and some people complain that it's not accurate enough!)
I love how each generation of humankind has been able to push the boundaries of what's possible. We will colonise Mars - maybe not in my lifetime but I hope I get to see it. The great thing about human knowledge is that it's cumulative. Once we learn something about our physical environment (or otherwise), we pass it onto future generations and they build in that knowledge. And now we live in a time where all the knowledge of the world is available at our fingertips. The difficult part these days is discerning what is fact and what is fiction. This skill will become increasingly important for the intelligencia of the future.
