Kelly and Zach Weinersmith discuss space elevators in their book Soonish. The summary of the downsides is:
* If would need to be the most precisely engineered thing we've every produced just to stand a chance of being good enough.
* Because of that, it will be particularly sensitive to wear and tear. How the maintenance would work is an open question.
* It will probably attract terrorists like crazy.
* It needs to never get struck by lightning. It is a particularly attractive lightning rod.
* It generally should avoid bad weather. Whatever it is attached to on Earth needs to be able to move. When moving it you have to avoid not only the bad weather but everything in space, too.
* If the cable breaks, bad things could happen. Bad things can range from burning up in the atmosphere to it whipping around in space damaging satellites, or anything else.
I love the idea of space elevators, but I agree that it probably won't be practical on earth for a long time if ever.
> It needs to never get struck by lightning. It is a particularly attractive lightning rod.
Haven't buildings solved this problem with lightning rods?
On another note, I am personally fascinated by space elevators which is why I am somewhat interested in going back to the moon where we can build a space elevator with today's tech, avoid all of these problems, and have a large body of resources to build/fuel spaceships with.
Yeah, I've never seen a reasonable explanation for that either. If the car is a Faraday cage, and the cable is conductive and grounded, what's the problem?
The only thing I can think of is that all that energy unloaded into cable at once might ablate some of it, causing it to no longer be able to handle the tension.
* If would need to be the most precisely engineered thing we've every produced just to stand a chance of being good enough.
* Because of that, it will be particularly sensitive to wear and tear. How the maintenance would work is an open question.
* It will probably attract terrorists like crazy.
* It needs to never get struck by lightning. It is a particularly attractive lightning rod.
* It generally should avoid bad weather. Whatever it is attached to on Earth needs to be able to move. When moving it you have to avoid not only the bad weather but everything in space, too.
* If the cable breaks, bad things could happen. Bad things can range from burning up in the atmosphere to it whipping around in space damaging satellites, or anything else.