Moments after writing the last post about San Francisco's political rejection of a historic U.S.S. Iowa, my attention was drawn to Glenn's link about the feasibility of constructing a space elevator. Technologically, it's a solid, practical idea, but my concern is that it might be more politically impractical than it initially seems. Bradley Karl Edwards recognizes that building such a thing -- a giant cable, literally piercing the heavens -- will carry political costs:

Costs associated with legal, regulatory, and political aspects could easily add another $4 billion, but these expenses are much harder to estimate.

Pennsylvania's Blue Route is a good example. It took nearly forty years of legal wrangling to build it, and that took place mostly before the rise of environmentalism.

I can only imagine the outcry over a giant cable. Assorted Luddites, socialists, religious nuts, greenie weenies, anti-globalists, a public fearful of terrorist threats, and a whole bunch of people who like to cite "all the problems we have on earth" as a reason not to do things space related -- all of these will coalesce. A dramatic thing like a cable to heaven would be seen as a symbol of All That Is Wrong With Man. Symbols drive emotion and ignorance, which in turn drive politics.

I have serious doubts as to whether this could ever happen, and if it proved politically impossible, I'd blame lawyers more than any single group.

My admitted hatred of lawyers is probably a form of self hatred -- something probably confirmable after a few years of analysis.... The odd thing is I don't hate lawyers as individuals; I only hate what they do as a group. (I could say the same thing about the tyranny of rule by emotion, I guess. Too many lawyers seem to use human emotion as economic fuel.)