Posted on 03/27/2002 9:32:03 AM PST by RightWhale
If the portion of the cable extending out into space broke near the space station or platform, wouldn't the entire thing, station included crash to earth?
My money is still on engineered spider silk.
Anyway, this project is blue sky for the private sector until the government gets enlightened about space development. How does anyone expect to turn a healthy profit if you can own only what you build on earth and launch? You can't even dig a trunkload of moon rocks and sell them for souvenirs on earth, it's illegal.
Many years ago Analog magazine published a pretty thorough article on the subject. At the time there weren't any commercial carbon nanotubes, so the best material they could find gave a necessary cross-section at the point of greatest tension of a few miles. The cable would taper in either direction from that point. I forget the material, some kind of carbon fiber or spider silk probably; the strongest steel or titanium would not do the job. Hauling that much material up there in the first place put the project out of reach altogether. But if the magic material is going to be available now, and if it won't take several mountains of carbon [which we don't have without pulling CO2 out of the air itself] to build the cable, then the project becomes feasible.
Still, no private entrepreneur will find use for the space cable unless the government will begin licensing space product. England or Tonga might do this licensing; America won't.
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