Imagine if space travel becomes as easy as moving around the world. What will be its effect on the concept of distance? Our world, which is already termed as a global village will shrink even more.
This concept may seem rubbish to many of us, but the scientists working at Google X tend to differ. Google X is basically Google’s secretive R&D laboratory. The same team at Google X has also looked into teleportation and hoverboards. Rich DeVaul, chief of Google X’s Rapid Evaluation team has openly admitted that they have planned for building a space elevator.
However, the plan of Google’s space elevator was deferred because of deficiencies of material science. Cables required for the elevator must have the tensile strength more than that of even the strongest steel made in the world. In order to tackle this deficiency, Google came up with the idea of using carbon nanotubes. The problem with this idea is that longest nanotube built so far is only a meter long. The prospects of this project aren’t looking bright because of these deficiencies. So, we all have to wait till this carbon nanotube technology is fully developed.
Fast Company, which was allowed special access to the Google X facility in California, has published a story revealing these details. The story explains how Google detects a problem that can be taken care of with the help of technology, and then the whole scheme of coming up with the solution. Google is working on many of such projects currently. It is relatively easy to come up with a technological solution to a problem but hard to make it practically possible as we lack the materials required. This is exactly what came in the way of making space travel a possibility.
These sci-fi dreams are still far from being a reality, but we should applaud Google for even trying to turn this dream into a reality. With the amount of resources Google possesses, we are pretty sure that they will eventually rectify the shortcomings and be able to produce the required materials as well.