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Space Elevator Conference Wraps Up
slavitos writes "The
Space Elevator: 2nd International Conference,
organized by the
Los Alamos National Lab
and the
Institute for
Scientific Research
has just finished its work in New Mexico.
To be sure, most people still think
it's absolutely ridiculous to even consider building
such a thing.
However, that's exactly what organizers
wanted - an open discussion on the issue, plus
some free PR."
Well, it's a ribbon in a very remote location, without large numbers of civilians nearby.
If you believe it's a terrorist target, then Cape Canaveral must be a bigger target - easier to reach, easier to hit. Is that a good reason to stop sending rockets into space?
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
The benefits are the same as have always been in the space program, only with a much lower startup cost.
Many of the benefits of space do not come from advances in rocket engines or anything like that, they come from spinoffs of the space program.
Tools designed to examine telescope photos for any variety of things have been converted for use in medical uses: the MRI is a simple example of this.
Hand tools were first developed for the Apollo space missions.
Pretty much anything involving miniaturization has its roots, at some point, in the space program.
The space program has a wide range of benefits that many people will never realize, however, everywhere you go, there they are. Whether it be benefits in the medical field, or benefits in other fields, space has always benefited us.
The space elevator simply takes the cost of getting to space out of the space program. Rather than spending almost all of your energy getting out of the gravity well, you spend it out in space where it belongs. You can easily bring materials and supplies into space, and with the ISS going up now... that's something that will be needed.
Which would you prefer - costly, dangerous shuttle trips for the next umpteen years, or an easy, safe, fairly cheap (aside from startup cost) transport to the stars?
I know my choice.
-- Christopher Schmidt YouTube Quality of Experience
Well, once you have cheap access to space, a whole bunch of things suddenly become much more profitable.
Example: most near-Earth asteroids contain very high quantities of heavy metals. There are all sorts of things you can do with iridium, platinum or gold alloys. How would you like a car that ran off ordinary petrol but used a fuel cell instead of an IC engine? Quieter, lighter, cheaper, more reliable --- provided you can get the palladium catalysts required to make it work.
Example: it would be possible to start mass producing things in microgravity. Defect-free crystal growth would lead to much cheaper electronics among other things. If you can get the cost of access cheap enough, even mundane things like steel refining will change: vacuum foam steel girders would be cheaper, lighter and stronger than conventional rolled girders.
Example: Outside geostationary orbit is a great place to be if you want to do something hazardous. Want to build a really messy experimental nuclear power reactor? Now you can do it and it won't be in anyone's back yard.
Example: there's more you can do with a space elevator than get to orbit. They provide an ideal anchoring point for telecommunications systems, among other things: put a communications complex 500km up and you've got LEO-quality satellite communications while still able to use fixed position dishes. Plus it's repairable. Cheaper satellite TV, anyone?
Example: low gee hospitals .
Example: Tourism!
These are just a few examples I can think of off the top of my head --- I'm sure that given a few minutes thought I could come up with some more. The great thing about a space elevator is not that it's directly profitable, but that it's an enabler. It makes a whole bunch of other things become profitable, and opens up the possibility for a whole variety of other industries, currently unthought of, that would be even more profitable. It provides new wealth to the economy, which produces long-term gains in the same way that feeding starving children (although an admirable goal in itself) or building aircraft carriers just don't do. It's the old teach-a-starving-man-to-fish argument: invest, don't spend.
With modern farming methods, food is extraordinarily cheap to create. The space program can be pretty expensive and not make a difference to how many people we have starving in the world. Additionally, two of the absolute benefits of the space program has been improvements to communications infrastructure and the ability to monitor the world's weather systems and planetary features, both of which have actively helped in food production, the former by allowing better planned and coordinated food creation, the latter by providing warnings allowing potentially disasterous damage to be minimised.
Long term, hey, may be we can move people off this planet - that should improve things too!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"I think I am a fallen star. I should wish on myself."
"Won't this thing make an astonishingly large target for terrorists, or even for enimies in a wartime situation?"
Only if you make it big. Currently plans involve a high tensile line and an elevator rather than the multi-tonne segmented 'bomb on a string' ideas that have entertained through science fiction, and it should be okay as long as you stop the Port Authority from writing their own rules.
"imagine the propagana and demoralising effects a hit on such a target could produce"
As opposed to, say, a large city? Thank Jeebus we don't have a lot of those around.
"I think it's a pipe dream - a nice, exciting pipe dream, but still a pipe dream"
At one time so was manned flight, which is one of the reasons why it's good to have dreamers educated in engineering.
The main problem with rocketry is still the fundamental problem of it essentially being a huge bomb, not to mention the resource drain.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
Who's we?
How much of your money do you give to starving people as food instead of buying a nice car, nice house, nice clothes?
As you are free to use your own property as you see fit, so are people with more property, and that includes talking about building a space elevator.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Cities have their vulnerabilities and invulnerabilities. Theres lots of people gathered in one place, for example. They have certain vulnerable systems, such as power and especially water.
On the other hand, cities are extremely robust. Certainly high tech assualts such as bioterrorism could be a great concern, but proven terrorist methods are low tech -- typically delivering a large quantity of explosive in front of a highly populated building. The World Trade Center attack was undoubtedly the most spectacular terrorist "success", but as catastrophic as they were for the structures, if you look at them as an attack on the city, they were remarkably ineffective.As disruptive as they were, NYC basically continued to function even through 9/11, and today it runs more or less the same as it did on 9/10/2001.
The Space Elevator would be a tempting target for terrorists, since it could be attacked using low tech weapons, if they could be delivered. We shouldn't underestimate their creativity in doing this.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'll bet you didn't like the war in Iraq (going on a limb here, you might have). Would you approve of the US/UN going to war and knocking out several other "innocent" goverments? (for some definition of innocent?) Most starvation is caused by goverments not allowing the food, of which there is more than enough, to get to the people who need it. Generally they have a political gain of some sort to doing so. (you might not see it as a gain, but they do)
As for a space elevator. Well I think private eneterprize should do it, which means get NASA out of the way and loosten up the laws preventing private companies from going to space. (Okay, it isn't exactly illegal, but it is nearly impossible to get the permits) At least in the US this is a problem.
Often, the goal of a terrorist activity is to incite terror - hence the name. Hence the reason 9/11 was such a success for the terrorists. In that sense, NYC - and to a lesser extent the rest of the federated republic of America - does not function the same. The terrorists engendered fear. They attacked the heart of their perceived enemy, and that attack was successful.
An attack on a remote freight elevator that happens to extend out to geosynchronous orbit would not engender the same psychological effect.
meh.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"We got attacked by 19 guys with boxcutters and one idiot with a shoebomb, therefore we should quail in terror and keep our heads down. Don't build any tall buildings, don't fly unless absolutely necessary, and don't even think about building infrastructure that could open up the solar system to the entire human race. Somebody with scissors might try to cut it loose.
Yeah, but show me where you can trade space exploration for food, straight up. We've got plenty - we just need to distribute it more evenly.
Remember, we can't solve everything. That's why we need to explore despite the other things we have to take care of.
The Space Elevator would be a tempting target for terrorists, since it could be attacked using low tech weapons, if they could be delivered. We shouldn't underestimate their creativity in doing this.
Why? Why would they want to strike it? Would it cause a big commotion? No. Would virtually anyone even know it happened? No.
And here's the big reason why terrorists would NEVER bother going after the space elevator:
Would it even bring it down? No.
Terrorists would likely strike the elevator far below GEO - remember the elevator is almost 100,000 km long, and they'd be striking it within the bottom few km. This would do nothing. The operators would be like "Oh, jeez, those stupid terrorists tried to do something again, the elevator's drifting. OK, spool out another km of cable." The ONLY place that striking it would do ANYTHING is if you struck it near GEO, and if terrorists develop the technology to do an orbital strike at GEO, I've got a feeling they'll target other things besides the space elevator.
The second main reason that attacking the Elevator would be useless is that even if they broke the first cable, this wouldn't even be that impressive. The marginal cost for deploying a second cable is trivial (the Conference notes said $2B, but I think they'd win out far more than that due to economies of scale - plus they doubled several things like power distribution which wouldn't be necessary for a 'backup cable'. The ribbon itself was estimated at $400M).
You could imagine it on the news. "Elevator cable #21 was damaged beyond repair today by an explosive package concealed within a launch satellite. Consortium members have already stated that a replacement cable has been moved into position and unspooling has already begun. Full operation is expected to resume in a few weeks."
I mean, seriously. Saying the Space Elevator is a tempting target for terrorists is like saying the International Space Station is a tempting target for terrorists. Sure, it might be. But it's not like it would EVER happen.
All valid conclusions, but your premise is off.
No tower. A ribbon extends to, and past GEO, for one. Read the report - google for NIAC final report or highlift
Display some adaptability.
like which problem did the world whine for us to fix, exactly?
you know that thing about us giving more foriegn aid than anyone else... it's not true. But that anger... the anger... it comes from somewhere, I'm just not convinced it comes from a knowledge of world affairs.
-pyrrho
The space elevator makes so much sense it's amazing we even made a space shuttle at all.
The way I look at it is this. We have been shooting humans into space atop monolithic, ubelievably dangerous explosive devices. A rocket is an explosive device.
If space were a cliff and we wanted to get on top, the current way we are doing it is by laying a board over a fulcrum, sitting a guy on one end and dropping a volkswagen on the other. Boing! he flys through the air and rolls to a stop atop the cliff. How does he get down? he jumps and hopes to land on a soft spot. Lots, LOTS can go wrong, and death is almosts as likely as success.
The space elevator is the equivalent of (rather than launching someone up) throwing a rope and hook up the cliff face, securing it, and then weaving a rope ladder.
Higher success, cheaper (no volkswagen involved), and safer (though less exciting and dramatice albeit).
True, destroying the Space Elevator would be a big demoralizer, and thus a big draw for the terrorists. Destroying elevator #6 of 27 wouldn't be such a big deal, though. That's why one of the first projects given to Space Elevator #1 should be the lifting up into orbit of Space Elevator #2, and so on.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.