On 8/1/06, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
I noticed that 1) all of the proposals involve starting the elevator cable at the ground or some high tower, and 2) the exponential taper means that even small increases in elevation of the base of the elevator help a lot.
So, why not start from a balloon which is itself tethered -- alternatively, include balloons along the lower portions of the elevator to increase the effective height of the beginning of the elevator ? Weather & winds would affect the balloons, but some sort of active station-keeping scheme could be used, because it could now be powered from the ground (most of the other proposals don't have enough lifting capacity to include a power cable from the ground).
This has been proposed several times, e.g. http://www.mill-creek-systems.com/se/balloon.html -- Mike Stay metaweta@gmail.com http://math.ucr.edu/~mike