I said "your place" not "outer space"...
Posted on 02/22/2014 8:13:46 PM PST by ckilmer
Fine and good until it stops and people are stuck on the darn thing!
62,000 miles at “at train-like speeds?”
If the train-like speed is based on Amtrak they better pack a lunch.
Seriously, even at the speed of a bullet train or ICE the trip up will take up to 13 days.
Ok, so the line gets cut what happens? Does it fly into space hitting satellites, like in the picture Gravity? There is so much crap up there, what havoc would it reek?
You forgot to mention Union Labor.
Seems like something that massive would be affected by lunar cycles.
Imagine the logistics of the “Environmental Impact Study.”
How do we keep space junk from hitting the cable?
Let passengers lean out the windows and fire bazookas at it. Charge them $5 per shot. The kids will love it.
Future of Space Elevator Looks Shaky
Slashdot | 12/9/8 | kdawson
Posted on 12/10/2008 10:41:35 AM by Clint Williams
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2146158/posts
The space elevator: going down?
Nature | 05/22/06 | Jason Palmer
Posted on 5/22/2006 10:20:08 PM by KevinDavis
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1636686/posts
Transportation - New Ways to New Places
Jim Cline’s web pages | May 2000 | James Edward David Cline
Posted on 10/30/2006 12:14:07 AM by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1728306/posts
I said "your place" not "outer space"...
I’m not so sure that they’ll go the entire distance on the elevator. The line may have be anchored out at 62000 miles but they may only go up part of the distance. Low earth orbit after all is only a couple hundred miles up.
That would be a stairway to heaven.
Yup. In the Bible, angels flew and people didn’t. Glad we didn’t invent that devil machine the airplane...
Um, nevermind.
It’s 62,000 miles long to keep it taunt and the force equal at both ends. 26 days if you go all the way to the end.
However, payloads could detach at around 150 miles up and would be weightless. We could first haul up parts to make a fleet of reentry-less shuttles that can grab payloads at 100-150 miles up and bring them further (and a lot faster) to orbital space stations, etc. Fuel for the shuttles can go up the tether, too. And since the shuttles wouldn’t need to waste 98% of their fuel getting off the Earth, they could go a long ways hauling stuff around near-Earth to high-Earth orbit.
Bigger shuttles could be built up there in space for longer hauls, say to comets and asteroids for additional raw materials. Comets are big snow balls, full of ice that can be melted and using continuous orbital solar power broken down into hydrogen (fuel) and oxygen (life support).
I say it IS the future.
That's why a space elevator isn't going to save any money over a rocket. You still have to add the same amount of energy to an object to get it to stay in orbit. A space elevator doesn't provide any cost advantage.
I was just speaking of the tangibility of Jacob’s ladder to humans, is all.
As for our elevator here, it reminds me of da Vinci’s helicopter.
having dealth with cable stretch and tensile strengths when logging oil wells to a mile and more it always amazes me that no one discusses cable stretch during these space elevator conversations.
Environmentalists will find an endangered three spotted winged toad and will shut the project down.
So that means that the real problem will be geopolitical.
The only countries that could host it are:
-PJ
The size, the forces to manage and thus the materials of a space elevator depend on the size of the base body. Smaller bodies mean lower geostationary orbits thus shorter cables, and less tensile strength required so less exotic materials. Building one on earth with what most would consider 'conventional' materials isn't possible and, at least, pushes the theoretical limits of what might be done with unconventional ones. It would be significantly easier on our moon and straightforward on Deimos (a mere 13 miles long if my math is correct.) Well, other than the problems with getting to the construction site. Which seem relatively small compared to conceiving an earthly space elevator.
Other than as a proof of concept demonstration, I can't think of short term economic benefits of a Deimos elevator. But I suspect Obama has already spent more than it would cost... with less benefits. It might even be possible to install it remotely via robots. Its novelty would certainly command public interest and might prove to be worth its cost in PR.
A lunar elevator would be more difficult, but would have obvious utility to anyone trying to expand into space. It would allow complex earth products easier access to an expanding lunar base and would allow cheap (in gravity boost costs) lunar raw materials be used in place of expensive earth source ones for both earth and lunar orbital construction. Other than weather and extreme materials, it would require dealing with most of the real issues an earthly elevator would require. Over time its mere presence would remove most of the unreal issues as public concern.
Alas, before we can consider any of these we'll probably have to defeat the philosophical adversaries holding us back. Socialism, environmentalism, etc. won't leave us the needed capital to invest is such big projects.
Nicola M. Pugno
Department of Structural Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129, Italy; nicola.pugno@polito.it
Abstract In this paper different deterministic and statistical models, based on new quantized theories proposed by the author, are presented to estimate the strength of a real, thus defective, space elevator cable. The cable, of ~100 megameters in length, is composed by carbon nanotubes, ~100 nanometers long: thus, its design involves from the nano- to the mega-mechanics. The predicted strengths are extensively compared with the experiments and the atomistic simulations on carbon nanotubes available in the literature. All these approaches unequivocally suggest that the megacable strength will be reduced by a factor at least of ~70% with respect to the theoretical nanotube strength, today (erroneously) assumed in the cable design. The reason is the unavoidable presence of defects in a so huge cable. Preliminary in silicon tensile experiments confirm the same finding. The deduced strength reduction is sufficient to pose in doubt the effective realization of the space elevator, that if built as today designed will surely break (according to the author’s opinion). The mechanics of the cable is also revised and possibly damage sources discussed.
Kind of like the Columbia canal. We found a reasonably good way around that. At least until Jimmy Carter came along. Like present day Somalia, the then current value of the land, under the status quo, was worthless. It was a pestilent hellhole. Only its location had value.
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