Bye bye Space Elevator

Should be "Bye bye Bean Stalk", which for all the unwarranted hooplah
they've gotten, I take as a relief.

Omar E. Vega wrote:
>It seem we'll have to say good bye to space elevators for now.
>
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technovel_nanotubes_060602.html
>
>Well, there still a chance scramjets work

What about the other devices which are loosely categorized as "space
elevators"? Not all of them are ruled out.
The article talks about, and most people think of the BeanStalk when you
mention "space elevators" or tethers. If buckytubes can ever be made in
industrial quantities in the first place, what do these new numbers say
about rotavators or hypersonic skyhooks? With nanotubes which work as this
article says they will, is a Hoytether of this better than one of
polyethylene or Kevlar or fiberglass from regolith? These materials are
perfectly fine for building "Space Elevators" that would seem like magic to
us, down here, with the only means of getting into space is to strap into a
pile of explosively combustible chemicals.

Beanstalks as well as SCRamjets seem to be the ultimate unobtainable result
we'd like to wish for, but they seem to rely on achieving breakthroughs
before we can even say they're possible. There are plenty of things less
sexy but which would work. Many things.
I like laser thermal assist for spaceplanes, also a horizontal track to
boost them HTO up to mach .8 or so. Each of these alone adds ~35% to the
payload, or alternatively makes it that much easier for a single vehicle to
get to orbit (or at least to the lower end of a hypersonic skyhook). Any
kind of airbreathing to get it from zero-airspeed-zero altitude would also
be another chip out of the imense problem we have getting something going
that fast.
The Big Dumb Booster also deserves a lot more attention. There's not much
better to answer our desires to get into space than the Sea Dragon. Even the
unmanned Shuttle-C with expendable engines in place of the SSMEs would
revolutionize things right now.

If the Nixon White House hadn't saddled us with USAF requirements for a
sub-orbital/exoatmospheric interceptor/bomber in the "Space Shuttle" flying
cost overrun, we'd have probably had something a lot more like a big dumb
"space truck" -a cheap reliable vehicle tog et stuff up, come back, and do
it again. Not stay in orbit doing experiments & racking up the cost to
operate it.