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."

Comments

Re:Benefits?

[lafiel]

It's the same way with the current space program. We're always putting world hunger second :P

Anyhow, the benefits are obvious. If taking stuff to space doesn't require the shuttle (an outdated extremely costly concept that is extremely error prone), not to mention cheaper, then eventually ordinary people will get into space as well.

But the same question applies. What's the current space program have to do for ordinary people? Can you answer that? Good, now imagine all those satellites were far cheaper. Yeah, global communication does kick ass doesn't it?

Cheaper space exploration will benefit us as science takes advantage. It's just a matter of time.

Re: Starving People

[A55M0NKEY]

• Q: Why are there starving people on Earth?
• A: Because they live in the F*CKING DESERT!!
• Q: Why do they live in the desert?
• A: Because they can't afford to live anywhere else.
• Q: Why can't they afford to live someplace better?
• A: Because richer people than them buy the better land, tougher well nourished people with better weapons are already living there.
• Q: Why did they ever settle there?
• A: They were born there. Generations ago men with spears drove them to the most dogforsaken areas of the Earth.
• Q: Why?
• A: Limited resources and space.
• Q: Why are resources and space limited.
• A: Because life including humans reproduces exponentially until all resources are consumed. When the rate of predation/starvation = the rate of reproduction, the numbers stablilize.
• Q: Why don't people, who are smarter than other life forms limit their birth rates?
• A: Go ahead limit your reproduction and leave the world to those eviler than thou, but I'll kill any number of people, and risk my own death to reproduce. Imagine that * 6 billion.
• Q: Inevitable starvation, wars, and degradation of humanity sound distasteful to me. Where can we get more resources before the world gets tougher, and the meaning of 'fittest' changes from who can breed the fastest to who can survive the most tribulations? I just wanna screw and party.
• A: Ingenious inventions can stretch existing resources, but more space can only be had by leaving Earth.
• Q: Maybe we can build a space elevator
• A: Maybe.
• Q: Then when someone's life is in the dumps on Earth they don't have to accept a nasty fate like starvation or slavery or daily noogies. They can go settle in outer space.
• A: They could.
• Q: But it might be tough to live in space.
• A: Of course it would.
• Q: There might be things like starvation asphyxiation, irradiation, dehydration etc to contend with. Only the hardiest would survive.
• A: Yes.
• Q: Earth would be a better place. People on Earth would still screw, party and make babies. Some of them would not be able to find resources enough on Earth.
• A: It depends on which chair they sit in.
• Q: Chair?
• A: 90% of life is sitting in the right chair. The right chair being the one which lets you accrue the most resources.
• Q: And the best of us sit in the best chairs right? It must take talent to get a good seat. Let the riff raff go live on the moon or something. I get it.
• A: Not really, the game of musical chairs is set up so that the incumbent sitter can almost always keep their seat from a standing person. Otherwise we'd spend all our time fighting to keep our seats. The more desperate the unseated get to sit down, the more unlikely people will be to move from the seats they are in. People will start to inherit seats from their parents. A bunch of rotting goulds sitters and those who wish they were them.
• Q: So you don't need to be particularly fit or smart or hardworking to survive if you've got a good seat?
• A: Right. And the dearer seats get, the harder it will get to move between seats. Everyone will stay put, or end up on the floor with no resources acrueing to them.
• Q: Sounds like a rigid class society, like feudalism or something.
• A: They can always live on the moon. Plenty of seats there..
• Q: I'd take a chair on the moon over the floor I guess. Still it must be the least careful, or the blunderers that end up on the floor.
• A: Or the unlucky. Sometimes careful is a virtue, sometimes it is a liability. Depends on your situation. You never really know if you were lucky anyway. Maybe losing the state lottery meant you didn't get shot by a robber the next day.
• Q: So the seatless go to Outer space and fight nature for a seat instead of each other. What happens when outer space stops being so hostile, once

Re:a hurricane will wipe it out...

[PhuCknuT]

The pacific ocean near the equator is fairly calm, and is most likely where it would be anchored. Oil rigs are built to survive some of the harshest ocean conditions imaginable, and the cable base station would be a similar structure. Plus, there are ways to avoid a disaster. Just off the top of my head I came up with one, i'm sure there are others.

You put enough weight on the cable to equal the tension that's holding the low end down, then detach the end. Then the weight climbs up above the storm, rolling the cable behind it, and when it's all over lower the cable and reattach. It would be tricky but there's no reason it couldn't be done. You could pull the end right out of the atmosphere and use ion engines at each end to keep the orbit stable indefinitly while detached.