The Pythagoras Sling has the potential to make getting into space much cheaper, safer and environmentally friendlier than rocket based systems. It needs commercial availability of graphene string but that will come.
The Pythagoras Sling, invented by Dr Ian Pearson, developed with help of Prof Nick Colosimo
More detail is here: Pythagoras Sling article
I’m an all-round futurist/futurologist with a sound engineering foundation and over 1800 inventions. I spend most of my time writing futures material for white papers or to accompany PR campaigns, but I’ve also delivered well over 1000 conference presentations and appeared over 700 times on TV and Radio, often following writing I’ve done for PR campaigns. I’ve written hundreds of commissioned reports, press articles and seven books, most recently Society Tomorrow, Space Anchor, Total Sustainability and You Tomorrow (2nd Edn). I sometimes undertake phone or face-to-face consultancy on any aspect of the future, usually from a technology perspective, using over 30 years experience as a futurologist and engineer. I have demonstrated about 85% accuracy when looking 10-15 years ahead.
I am a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society and a Fellow of the World Academy for Arts and Science and the World innovation Foundation.
My email address is idpearson@gmail.com
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Environmental, social, political, cultural and economic sustainability
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Interesting concept! What are the biggest practical development problems? Timing/coordination and materials?
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Thanks Robin, development of graphene to the point where we can make string of consistent reliability is the main issue. For very high speed, we’d also need a motor that can pull it fast enough, and I think that will need a linear motor with engineered string. Feasible but further out. That’s fine because the first wave of string won’t be able to match long term spec either.
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