More on Space Elevators

finally writes "Space elevator news is being reported on Space.com and Yahoo. I, for one, am really excited about the project. I was wondering if any of the broad range of talents and skills that we have here have thought of doing a sort of open source assistance to this project by means of donating time and knowledge." We did a big story last week on this space elevator conference.

Comments

Jetsons Homes

[displague]

From what I read on the last report, these carbon nanotube string type things will run out between Earth and Space (gravity and centripital force keeping the line secure) with the ability to support a few tons of stuff on them...

Why can't we make small Jetson's style homes on the line... Everyone can live 5 miles up..

The only thing that I can see as negative about this is that driving to work you will see all of these shiny vertical lines above the landscape heading out into the sky...

From the mouth of the master...

[Will_Malverson]

Arthur C. Clarke said that we'd build a space elevator about 50 years after everyone stopped laughing. With stories like this, I think it's safe to say that we've stopped laughing.

Why do they have to hang straight down?

[Mick D.]

I have a pretty decent knowledge of the physics involved in the construction and use of a Spave elevator. I know that they need to orbit in Geosync orbit so the cable doesn't change length. I know that the cable is actually hanging down to the Earth from the center and being pulled away from the Earth out at the tip of the cable beyond Geosync orbit.

But, the one thing that has always bugged me has been why the cable itself has to hang straight down from orbit. This places the "Ground" based end in much less practical areas. Couldn't there be multiple cables hanging down and strung like Christmas lights to northern and sorthern areas that would be more likely to use them. They would need to balance the weight to keep the orbiting cable in the correct spot, but with 4 or more anchor points it would provide multiple ways to orbit and redundency(sp) in case of catostrophic failure.

Any insight in this would be helpful. As far as I can tell the only problems would be the added weight and thus tension, but I haven't done the math and don't know how much stronger the cable material would need to be.

Re:What happens when the cable breaks?

[MindStalker]

The current thought is to design the cable so that incase it does break it should crumble into many pieces and mostly burn up in the atmosphere with just the last 10 miles or so actually falling, which would be an ultra thin cable hitting the ocean (plans are to have it be in the middle of the ocean for obvious reasons) So yes, probably small tidal wave from this cable, but nothing catostrophic and huge meteor shower, but nothing catostrophic if done properly.

They don't, but it's easier that way

[Spamalamadingdong]

Since everything is going to the same destination anyway, and the dynamics of e.g. the lunar and solar tides would tend to stress paired skyhooks pretty badly unless you winched them in and out to compensate, it's probably simpler to just have one.

Once you're up to the level of traffic which justifies multiple skyhooks, you might be better served by a launch loop or orbital ring, aka Skyrail. You could have a whole bunch of those operating simultaneously.