Train ride to the stars?

Tickets please..............

http://www.gizmag.com/startram-maglev-to-leo/21700/

I'll buy a ticket only after the first 10 successful train trips. The magnetically levitated Startram launching tube design does not look all too stable, and would take up a lot of land space to support.

Not sure if this has been completely thought through, it does require a pretty hefty, constant, power supply just to keep it up there. I wouldn't want to be too close during a power outage.

One other thing that springs to mind, what happens to current flight paths, do you fly over, under or around ?.

All minor points I feel.

What about the sheer weight of the structure and it handling the 600+ MPH jet stream winds.

Much as I would love to see this built, my brain is saying 'never gonna happen'.

It all sounds very "Jules Verne" to me, TBH. Not sure if I want to be shot into space by a cannon.

There was a time when we thought a tunnel across the English channel was nothing more than a pipedream (oooh good pun!!!)

Sometimes a bit of imagination is a good starting point for the scientists to get the grey matter working, unfortunately it also requires the technology to catch up with the minds ability to dream it up!!!

How about ths one instead:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast07sep_1/

The thing that always got me with the Space Elevator notion was always in the logistics of construction. How would one begin the project? I get visions of trying to vertically stack cooked spaghetti end to end, or trying to pay out a mile or more of that same spaghetti without it rending in twain at some point. But I'm sure that there are some folks working on this who are far smarter than I.

Space elevator ideas have been played with for many years. Material science and manufacturing isn't there yet on building the cable. Assuming they were there are still major problems.

Geostationary orbit is 22,236 miles, almost one circumference of the earth. If it snapped for whatever reason (terrorism?) it would rap itself around the equator causing huge amounts of damage.

The best practical idea of building one would be to drop the cable from a captured asteroid counter weight in geostationary orbit and attach it to a floating platform. This would need the cable to be built in space.

If we can start space manufacturing it will open up many projects.

I would say tether the cable to the ISS or other not built yet space station 

Can you imagine a cable hanging off of the ISS?

It orbits every 1.5 hours ish. What a weapon that would be.

a new meaning to cracking the whip