Elevator going up. Next stop: geostationary orbit! The notion of a tether extending from the ground to space is not new: it was first dreamed up by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of rocketry, all the way back in 1895.
The space elevator is an appealing concept. It also seems impossible. No material we know of comes close to being strong enough to support its own weight over tens of thousands of kilometres. So the idea has never attracted serious funding: the writer Arthur C. Clarke once said it would be built “about 50 years after everyone stops laughing”.
They haven’t stopped yet. But perhaps they should. Other implausible schemes are turning into engineering realities. Silicon Valley firms and entrepreneurs have started betting big on “moonshots”: grand projects that will be tough, if not impossible, to pull off, but which would have a huge impact if they succeeded – like the Apollo space programme, the original moonshot.
Google’s recent restructuring highlights this trend. The search firm is now just one of a family of enterprises targeting far-fetched objectives from driverless cars to longevity: its holding company Alphabet spent $3.74 billion on moonshots last year.
Is this money well spent? Debate has raged in business circles about whether Google’s founders have the moral right to spend their investors’ cash this way. Doubts may be assuaged by the promise of huge profits if any of these bets pay off. But what do the rest of us stand to gain?
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