[alooPotato]

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.

[Zikes]

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.

[dekhn]

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.