It is a bit annoying. Arthur C Clark suggested using nano tubes in a space elevator over 20 years ago - so what exactly did google x bring to the discussion?
This comment is a bit annoying. Had they set out to build an elevator, looked at the problem from a different angle, came up with a different solution that had a chance at working we would all be praising them for going after a problem so many people had failed at before.
The fact that they came to the same conclusion (infeasibility) we now question their intentions/motivations and whether it was a good idea or not.
We either applaud attempts or we don't - but we can't choose based on the outcome of those attempts.
There's no evidence they put any serious effort into actually trying to build a space elevator. The article doesn't discuss any alternate cable materials they explored/considered, nor does it even mention any of the many other aspects of designing a functioning space elevator.
If they were even remotely serious, they'd be continuing work and research on everything else relating to building a functioning space elevator and waiting for materials science to catch up, or better yet directly contributing to the advancement of the materials.
Edit: I'm not criticising Google for looking at space elevators. Hell I do applaud that, and I think it'd be a great direction for them to explore. What I'm upset about is Fast Company's journalistic standards about covering it. Google X mentions they looked at space elevators and Fast Company would have you believe they threw millions of dollars and man-hours at it and actually tried to design one.
Journalists apparently have no idea how to cover scientific topics. If someone reports they've found a chemical that's shown to target and destroy a specific strain of cancer cells in a petri dish under laboratory conditions then Fast Company would be reporting that they've cured cancer.
Realistically, what Dan Piponi was probably doing was demonstrating use of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-of-the-envelope_calculatio... to rapidly rule out implausible approaches. I doubt they had to spend more than a few minutes looking up materials properties and doing some basic math.
You miss the point, imagine you're in a company that makes billions buying electrons for nanocents and selling them for millicents. Now most of the people in the company are not part of the money making apparatus, so what do they do? They think up new things. But that is hard, it is actually much easier to prove impossible thing is impossible.
To its credit you get self driving cars out of this sort of strategy, and you also get less PR worthy work :-)
Nothing. As they've stated, Google X isn't even working on space elevators. It was just an off-handed comment that someone made, that the Reddit crowd now fixates on.
The fact that they came to the same conclusion (infeasibility) we now question their intentions/motivations and whether it was a good idea or not.
We either applaud attempts or we don't - but we can't choose based on the outcome of those attempts.