the space elevator is a big deal

my friends trevor and camille introduced me and marc to their friend josko a while ago. he doesn’t live in san francisco, but he visits often, and everytime i see him, he has some interesting stories to tell.

one of such is his visit to seattle to attend conference about space elevator. he and some other people are working on a documentary to capture this discussion.

my initial reaction to this is, “wow, it’s kind of crazy that bunch of science heads are talking about…ahem, *SPACE* elevator”. given the fact that i 1)absolutely suck at physics, and 2)have difficulty visually understanding some sort of uber long rod stuck in the earth soil and can somehow stay straight despite its length and from influences such as bad weather, and 3) (i may be wrong about this but) having an elevator that goes nowhere (i mean…whats the destination? the moon?) just sounds absolutely ridiculous to me, i was thinking “this is crazy talk”.

well, turns out that this crazy talk is not just limited to nerdy science heads but our nerdy folks in japan land. i was browsing through Japanese newspaper online (particularly, asahi.com) and came across this article. i sent the link to josko though it’s in japanese, and i don’t believe josko reads japanese (though it wouldn’t surprise me if he did), and he replied back saying how there’s going to be another round of space elevator conference, this time, in japan, and how he and his partners are looking for sponsors so they can also go to japan to document this event.
(if anyone is interested in helping them out, let me know)

then, next thing, engadget is talking about it.

so, at this point, i’m thinking, “it’s real, we’re gonna have a space elevator”, though my questions above are still unanswered (seriously, are we going to the moon?), and now having even more additional questions like how long will it take and will the elevator have important things like bathroom (i mean, who likes to be stuck in an elevator for 2 days w/out being able to go?) and will it have elevator girls and you say “to the moon” and she pushes “the moon” button, i am hoping that i get to live to see this space elevator (and maybe even get to ride in one one day).