Posted on 06/25/2004 2:21:35 PM PDT by Junior
Unless, as it seems, you're suggesting that a guy who does orbital mechanics for a living must obviously take a back seat in these matters to a guy who apparently excels in writing grant requests?
I note that you feign to not understand the part that you didn't quote. Your straw man is as thin as your veracity. I think anyone can see clean through it. Or perhaps you did understand it and to quote it would so obviously render your strawman completely naked.
Over the past couple of years I've read a dozen articles about the potential for building a space elevator. Some very well educated research scientist wrote a few of them and none mentioned any one thing or problem or group of problems that would invalidate building a space elevator.
The asteroid counterbalance would take an interesting piece of work. It would have to be brought into geosynch orbit itself at first and after attachment move out to whatever they said, 60,000 miles. This would take longer than weeks. We better start right away.
Funniest comment I have seen all week.
TSS flew on two missions. In the first, it got stuck. In the second, it made it out to 20 km, and did in fact generate a significant electrical current (until the tether broke) --seems to me it was a couple of amps at a healthy voltage.
The orbit of the increased tens of miles (it was traveling above the CM, and thus faster than orbital velocity at its altitude), and the Shuttle moved downward several miles.
I can do it for 5890.
That's right. They would balance, but only on average, not at any particular time. The machine would have to store energy and probably at many locations along the cable.
Well, that's when the top cab (traveling down) is on the leading side of the ribbon and the bottom cab (traveling up) is on the trailing side.
When they reverse their trips, they'll meet in the middle in a most spectacular way -- presuming of course the ribbon can sustain the sideways force from each cab as it moves up to speed (the lower cab) and down to zero (relative) MPH (the upper cab).
"The major obstacle is probably just politics or funding and those two are the same thing," he said. "The technical, I don't think that's really an issue anymore."
Thats exactly how it is at my house !
Good grief, get a grip on yourself! Sheesh!
Is there some reason for that nutty display of emotion?
Over the past couple of years I've read a dozen articles
LMAO!
I don't know the guy, but I rather suspect that r9etb may very well have written more articles than you've "read" over that timespan. (And if not, I suspect he's more than qualified to do so, if he felt like taking the time from his paying work.)
Stairway to the Stars or Stairway to Heaven
Given that the thing has to be dropped down to Earth from GEO, and that all of the necessary stuff (actually, twice the mass of the cable) has to be launched up there on rockets, how many heavy lift launches do you suppose it would take to do that? Answer: several, at $300 million a pop. Let's say it takes 10 launches (very unrealistic), so that's $3 billion out of your budget already.
Well, apparently you don't understand how the ribbon/cable will be constructed. From what I read it will be built up in a series smaller ribbons. That's besides they [point for you are discussing money hurdles rather than technology hurdles.
LOL! Put up or shut up about expertise, Zon.
I have several times more confidence in the research scientists that have written articles on the subject -- taking the time to do so because it is not really taking much time away from their career priorities as it is aligned with them -- I have more confidence in them than you wasting your time here. I know how to evaluate expertise and acknowledge that you have more in this field than I do but I'm putting several well educated research scientist that have very successful careers up against one lone r9etb. You can pull your foot out of your mouth any time now. Your use of non sequitur acknowledged
144 - "TSS flew on two missions. In the first, it got stuck. In the second, it made it out to 20 km, and did in fact generate a significant electrical current (until the tether broke) --seems to me it was a couple of amps at a healthy voltage. "
It seems to me there were several attempts on each mission, before they finally gave up. And the first one, I remember distinctly, as it was obvious, the scientists and engineers had never been fishing, as they tried to spin out the line without any weight on it, and keeping a reasonable tension, so it just wouldn't deploy, and turned into a real mess on the drum. On the other mission, I think they finally solved that problem, but one literally blew up, and they tried again and it finally broke or was cut from stress.
I was born the party-pooper. :)
Seriously, it's been bugging me for a while, and I finally decided to bite the bullet and voice my two cents in public. (My relatives are probably tired of hearing me bitch about it every time I see an article proclaiming its bright future.)
Wow, that "Zon" is quite the jovial character, isn't he. That's an amazing death-grip he's got on your ankle. His teeth must be killing him by now! :)
Lose the cable and counter-weight proposal.
I prefer the space elevator in Tim Allen's movie, 'Galaxy Quest' for interstellar travel.
Any comment from some engineering types about my gross calculations?
81 - "ROTFLMAO - a bit of quick calculations reveal that this cable would have to support about 9-10 million pounds, just to support itself, without any stress."
I know of nothing that will support that weight, even carbon nanotubes, plus all the stresses which will be necessary to compensate for.
That's the one I was thinking of. I remember something about them being stumped as to the cause, until they did the math and figured out how much juice it had tried to carry before failing from overload.
Of course none of the neat stuff in science fiction seems to be possible if one understands anything beyond basic physics. The universe just doesn't want us to get out of the gravity well cheaply or travel faster than the speed of light, it seems. And that's not even touching on the magical science fiction energy systems that ignore not only energy storage issues but the implications of even a small inefficiency in the system converting even a small fraction of that massive energy into heat that has to go somewhere.
Seriously, it's been bugging me for a while, and I finally decided to bite the bullet and voice my two cents in public. (My relatives are probably tired of hearing me bitch about it every time I see an article proclaiming its bright future.)
Oh, just go to the Smithsonian Air and Space museum and their "What's next?" exhibit and that will kill any optimism you might have. My wife had to listen to me rant not only about the display on the working NERVA engines that were cancelled and scrapped because, well, "nuclear stuff is bad" but also about the display asking whether we should disturb the pristine environment of Mars with a human presence. If physics doesn't kill mankind's expansion into space, leftist environmentalists worried about things like disturbing the "environment" on a dead planet sure will.
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