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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

six oval shaped cars with those measurements each is about 780 square meters in total. The average Tokyo condo is about 65 square meters (for a family of three). Somewhat unpleasant for 30 people but not really that small. Like 3 people in one Tokyo apartment density wise.

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”Obayashi envisages a space elevator using six oval-shaped cars, each measuring 18m x 7.2m holding 30 people, connected by a cable”

I can’t see how one would read that other than as each car holding 30 people.

You would need an extra comma to make it six cars holding 30 people in total:

”Obayashi envisages a space elevator using six oval-shaped cars, each measuring 18m x 7.2m, holding 30 people, connected by a cable”

But the original sentence is ungrammatical either way. Under your interpretation there’s still a missing “and”: “each measuring 18m x 7.2m and holding 30 people”.

The missing "and" is a tiny grammatical error, whereas the missing "," Someone mentioned is a large grammatical error. Tiny grammatical errors are OK -- language grammars change over time because many people start making the same tiny grammatical error until it becomes part of the accepted grammar of the language.

I read it as the entire elevator carrying 30 people, and this article seems to confirm it (https://www.zmescience.com/research/japanese-space-elevator-...)

Having 30 people in one car including gear, provisions and sharing sanitation seems absurdly small if not logistically impossible

to be safe I would suspect any one of the three cars must be able to support all persons on the trip. they are pretty much of out reach of help shortly after leaving.

it might be interesting to see what type of personality tests them use before allowing anyone to actually board one of these should they ever come into existence.

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