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Scientist Sees Space Elevator in 15 Years
bofh31337 writes "Scientist Bradley C. Edwards, head of the space elevator project at the Institute for Scientific Research, thinks an elevator that climbs 62,000 miles into space could be operating in 15 years. He pegs the cost at $10 billion, a pittance compared with other space endeavors. 'It's not new physics--nothing new has to be discovered, nothing new has to be invented from scratch,' he says. 'If there are delays in budget or delays in whatever, it could stretch, but 15 years is a realistic estimate for when we could have one up.' NASA already has given more than $500,000 to study the idea, and Congress has earmarked $2.5 million more."
Who would stand Muzak for a 45 min ride.....
that'll be the wait after pressing the UP button.
Imagine the jerk that presses the "close door" button as you're running.
"it could stretch"
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
We don't experience this problem *now* merely because we don't have any structure that tall, but if something of this magnitude was built, wouldn't the earths rotation have some sort of effect on this?
-shameless gmail request for a military man... kwishot xatx yahoo-
This is a high performance, high stress ribbon
This application has little room for error. Obviously.
Wear on carbon nanotube ribbons may be significant.
Carbon nanotube ribbons may be susceptible to significant deterioration from cosmic rays.
Micrometeor impacts may also be a problem.
If the ribbon fails, what do we do with 62,000 miles of ribbon?
Oh wait, we build a Beowulf cluster of Christmas wrapping stores.
And then there is the cost estimate.
Low.
Yeah, i wonder if it will have one of those burgundy phones for when it gets stuck...
And you thought that the CN Tower was a long elevator ride. I wonder how long it would take to go that far into space in an elevator? Would there be in-elevator movies and food service?
There would need to be. At any reasonable speed, you're looking at a 24 to 48 hour trip.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
At the minimum, keep this guy funded so he can research the necessary materials. The article gives a timeframe of 2 yrs for the nanotube technology. If something like this could actually be built in the coming generation, getting things into space will probably become a whole lot cheaper.
Plus, a space elevator.. it even SOUNDS cool. Almost as cool as moonbase.
Maybe you should take him on at longbets.org.
The current issue of Discover magizine has a much longer and more informative writeup.
Apparently the major remaining problem is mass production of an approprately strong nanotube. You have to remember that this isn't fully nanotech, it's just a chemical arangement of carbon atoms, so it doesn't require all of the nano-crap that the nanotechnology people have been going along about for so long.
I mean, the thing is, chemical rockets will only take you so far. So it's money well spent, for what the potential benefits would be.
Gentoo Sucks
...Nobody but you can hear the elevator music
And consequently, nobody can hear you scream.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
And I think he means 62,000 miles. 62 Miles is only the boundary of space. What would the point of finishing there be? The reason he says 62,000 is because it covers everything useful in space travel, from Low earth orbit up past geosynchronous orbit.
TheHustler
http://www.elmarko.org/ - Useless bilge
http://www.asylum-games.co.uk/ - Co-Founder
No, it *is* 62000 miles. The tether has to be that long to allow a suitable anchor to be attached at the other end and keep the right amount of tension on it. Or something. /not rocket scientist, but mightily impressed at this bloody good idea.
Brian Smith "Jokers and aces, bruisy and blackfern" - Steve Kilbey, Day of the Dead.
One little problem for a human to ride the space elevator--the slow speed of assent means that people would pass though the Van Allen belt for a rather long time--exposing them to possibly deadly radiation.
While technically true, carbon nanotubes need to be much stronger and more developed before they can be employed in a space elevator with a good margin for safety.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Another Arthur C. Clark moment, he has come up with so many amazing inventions in his chronicles. The satellite, now this... Actually I'm not sure if he did come up with the idea, but it was in 3001. So if you want to read about the theories of space elevators. This is the book to pick up.
He pegs the cost at $10 billion...NASA already has given more than $500,000 to study the idea, and Congress has earmarked $2.5 million more.
Wow, at this rate, we'll have the money in, oh, 1000 years...
Do you have ESP?
So I was on the Space Elevator last month, and 10 minutes into the ride a guy sitting next to me ripped one! "Sorry," he says, "I had spicy enchiladas for dinner last night." Longest trip of my life.
> At any reasonable speed, you're looking at a 24 to 48 hour trip
That's a _shitload_ of crappy muzak, there! Better bring a fully-loaded iPod.
And hope there's no crazy guy singing 'Roxanne' while you're in there.
Uhhm, even in his book, Edwards admits that the carbon nanotubes needed to make this work just aren't there yet; while we can manufacture nanotubes now, we can't make them as strong (by a factor of around 100) or nearly as long (by a factor of 10,000 or more) as needed. While it may well be that, as soon as someone really puts some effort/research bucks into making stronger/longer nanotubes, they will happen, but it seems like 15 years might still be optimistic.
OTOH, this would be way cool, and maybe in my lifetime to boot...
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
Build a roller coaster from space, to the earth... Slow ride up.. then massive whoosh on the way down with plenty of loops and turns and upside-down goodness! Imagine the tourism dollars that could go fund the lowly freight elevator next to it! And we could call it.. The.. Great Space Coaster! And hire a GNU named Gary! Or Richard...
But I digress...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Arthur C. Clarke talked about a space elevator in 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997), and mentions that 1996 Nobel Prize in Quemistry, Dr. Smalley claimed that those buckytubes could be used to build such elevator.
NASA says geosynchronous orbit is 36000 km = 22000 miles. I think the 62000 miles part must be so the centrifugal force keeps the cable taut. You could build a solid tower up to 62 miles, but a cable-elevator just wouldn't work at that distance.
I've read quite a few posts about "riding the space elevator." I'm under the impression (and yes, I RTFA) that the space elevator would be solely used to send cargo up to space. Astronauts would still get up to the ISS by conventional means, and then the space elevator would just be a cheap[er] way to get supplies up to them without worrying about sending up rockets. Unless I missed something, humans wouldn't be travelling on this space elevator at all.
You could have "love in an elevator" *AND* join the "mile high club" at the same time!
Who says it'll all come down? Just the part earth-side of the break will drop, the rest will go outwards.
.. just pile up in a big heap. And since the anchor site is offshore, it'll be underwater at that, easily salvaged (if you wanted to).
And the part coming down is going to drop _straight_ down, not wrap around anything at all
You haven't worked the physics of this thing out yet, have you?
Some folks think it's a typo, that it's supposed to be 65 miles, not 65K miles. No, 65K miles is more like it. You really want your elevator's center of mass to be in geosynchronous orbit... Space elevators to LEO tend to, uh, get wound around the earth right fast.
And if the ribbon breaks, things generally aren't so bad. The portion of the elevator (including the counter weight) that's further from the earth will tend to move away from the earth. (If you spin in a circle with a rock in your hand, then let go of the rock, the rock goes away from you, not crashing in towards your head.) The nearer part will tend to fall, but it will tend to fall slowly and is relatively unlikely to cause damage. (At least, according to High lift systems, who came and gave a talk last year.) The elevator, since it's so huge, tends to not be terribly heavy. The system proposed by high lift systems
I believe Brad Edwards was involved in High Lift Systems, so I imagine the basic idea is the same.
If geo is ~20K miles, why does the elevator need to be so long? Does this mean that they're now thinking about a lighter counter weight? They used to talk about capturing an asteroid.
Processes to make fibres of nanotubes have allready been developed:
2 0 4.asp
http://www.nature.com/nsu/040308/040308-10.html
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/rnb_041
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
#2: In emergency, USE STAIRS
Nothing in the article mentions the feasability of getting a decently sized counterweight at the top of the elevator. All plans I've heard of require at least some sort of asteroid...and if you're talking politics, people are going to be afraid of dragging a rock into Earth orbit that could smash into the planet a.la if something went awry.
I'll just wait for the Space Escalator, thank you very much.
Just you parents make sure your kids aren't wearing loose jeans on the escalator!
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Material science is still partly empirical and it takes time to learn all about a new material.
After thousands of years of using iron and steel we still had bridges falling down in the 19th century.
Composites have been around for a generation and Boeing is only now willing to put them in the majority of a jetliner's structure. As recently as a few years ago aircraft composites were coming up with unexpected problems like delamination.
It could take fifteen years just to write the handbooks about using nanotube fibers in ionized oxygen and in the van Allen belts.
Ah, you must be in the Manzanita dorms @ ASU. All 4 of those elevators are in the top 50 most serviced elevators for the company.
Nah. A significant portion (probably anything above the tear) would go out into space. Much of the rest would burn up. Anything that would remain would have a thickness and weight and thus terminal velocity comperable to a long sheet of newsprint. So it wouldn't land with much force. And probably would all land in the waters near the base.
Better RTFA, and maybe do a little research. We are actually within a factor of two of having materials strong enough; anything after that becomes essentially an engineering problem.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
How is coriolis force going to be handled.
Since velocity=(radius)(angular speed) then there has to be a tangential acceleration as the elevator starts going up.
Obviously tension on the cable can be used if you do not go up too fast or send up too much mass at one time.
Of course the talk as always about using this to go up, but would it be possible to use this as a really big sling shot to launch space craft around the solar system.
This is a vital technology but...3 ft Pipelines (say 36" X65), mere steel steel shells say 1/3 to 1 inch thick, usually cost (usually way over) over $1 million / mile on terra firma. Not to mention how much super carbon fiber rod(nearly solid 3ft??), flying it up, joining in place. Try some multiple of $100 billion at least. $10b sounds like someone's "too cheap to meter" on nuclear power 50+ yrs ago. We got "nuked" financially.
No, it's not the only problem remaining. There are a ton of nanotube problems left, and there's some doubt that they even attain the sort of >100GPa tensile strength that Edwards' design requires (one test measuring actual SWNTs put the strongest ones in the test at around 60GPa (MWNTs have tested higher, but they're not applicable due to mass)).
Then there's the "fiber" problem. Nanotube fibers are at best held together by Van der Waals force. Edwards proposes some sort of unexplained "nanotube epoxy" that is somehow supposed to be able to withstand these incredible tensile strengths which the tubes themselves, even in theory, can barely withstand. I don't buy it one bit. The best fibers made so far, held together by the same forces, achieve the sort of tensile strength you get from Kevlar. Longer tubes will help, but you'd need a *huge* improvement.
The epoxy concept is bunk. There is a concept which might work, however: pressure induced interlinking of carbon nanotubes. Basically, you swap out some of the stronger sp2 bonds for the weaker sp3 bonds, but it interlinks the tubes.
I have other problems with Edwards' design, too, but he has done an awful lot of well-reasoned calculations. I contributed a lot to the article on Wikipedia, so if you want to read more about space elevators, that's the place.
I'm an owl exterminator!
The nanotube thread we can make now is not strong enough to work. What we need is a way to "weld" nanotubes together without introducing massive defects (that's key). There's a significant amount of physics to be done there.
On the other hand, we've been able to increase the size of the nanotubes we've been able to grow an order of magnitude every few years. We're up to centimeters now for one, single tube, and the process is likely scalable (as in, bigger furnace, longer tubes).
To get an idea of how hard this would be:
62000 miles is about 1*10^14 micrometers,
There are about 3.2*10^7 seconds in a year,
nanotubes grow at around 300 micrometers a second,
so it would take 10,000 years to grow that elevator out of continuous tubes (unless we're way, way off on the speed).
I'm not sure about 15 years, but I think we'll get it done sometime in the next 100 with some sort of welding technique, and in the long run, it's going to cost a lot more than anyone now thinks.
Refer back to the last time the space elevator was covered for refutation by others who state it much better than I can.
Slashdot.org
That's right. All your base.
If the end of the elevator is only at geosychronous, then it has thousands of tons of weight pulling it downward. But since anything *past* geosync actually flings the object away from the planet, you put just as much weight on the other side of geosync, performing a nifty balance. As for why its not 45k miles, I can't say. Seem to remember it tapering at the end quite a bit, for some engineering reason.
Best of all, go out to the end of it, let go.... you get a free trip out of orbit. Be sure to bring plenty of food and water.
Have you read about what this system is like first?
I'm an owl exterminator!
I think there may very well be a space elevator. And better yet, I'd love to take a ride on it and meet God.
Clearly, you didn't RTFA, nor have you heard of all the related advances that are being made. Why is it that people who think they do know better often understand the least?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
With all the force of fluttering newspaper. It would take hours to come down, and would be more of a pollution problem than a catastrophe. Of course, this assumes failure at the thickest portion of the cable, just around geosync somewhere. The thinnest part, most likely to fail I'd think, if it were to fail, would leave it hovering just above the ground waiting to be duct taped back in place.
If there is a catastrophe to be had here, I'd think, it would be it burning (do nanotubes burn very well?). What sort of electrical storms are there that far up? The electrical potential between sky and ground can be huge, and we're stretching a non-insulator across the two.
Nah, it's just another NASA rocket scientist [sic] trying to figure out that unit-conversion software thingie.
The space elevator coupled with a nuclear rocket is really the way to get things going (in my blissfull imagination).
The moon base is looking better and better, closer to 'reality' everyday...or every year, I should perhaps say.
The nuclear rocket would be great for getting the inital big heavy stuff up into space; primary building materials, the initial spools and anchors, people..etc..
I would think the space elevator would be good (at first) to reserve for hefting non-living things like food, water, and my personal favorite - oxygen, up to the anchor station and transfering them to the moon-base's anchor.
From the earth's anchor-station you basically just give the big 'ol bag of air a nice gentle push (maybe use a 'simple' solar sail, and who cares if it takes a month to make the journey over to the moon anchor (I think it would probably take less); becuase you'll have already sent 1000 ('cheap') other bags of supplies already in transit; a nice, floating convoy of happy consumables/breathables migrating on over to the moon (and back for recycling). Nice perpetual supply chain.
Heck, you could just have a 'snorkle' tube, dipped into the atmosphere, drinking up oxygen and water to fill the supply balloons. Dedicated supply elevators. When they get to the moon, empty them out and send 'em back.
To get the people to the moon base we would use the more-funner nuclear rocket ship (at first).
Now what if the ribbon breaks? you just have to ask, don't you? of course you have to ask; if you didn't you'd be ignorant (which is supposed to be bliss, but were that true there would be more happy people).
Well, if the ribbon breaks, that sucks. Basically you just make sure you have contingency, two elevators/ribbons and a good insurance agent. That way you can keep the lifeline going while we change-out the nanotube-paper-towel-roll on the other elevator.
As for the 62,000 miles of ribbon falling to the earth - the worst place for a break would be right at the anchor. This would mean the entire ribbon would begin falling to earth. This problem could be handled via several means. one way we could do it would be to have some sort of explosive bolt system that would blow the cable into small segments that could burn up in the atmosphere...hopefully (maybe they would be light enough, with enough drag to simply flutter down (let's just not worry about the unfavorable aspects of nanotube particles in the atmosphere for now - we, uh, have a glue that keeps them from turning into horrible carbon dust..yeah).
the other, more conservative method would be to have a quick retract device at the ocean-based-mobile-ground-station (ocean, ground, mobile, station...some oxymorons there) This would spool down the elevator ribbon at a speed that would keep it from 'tipping'. resulting in a straight to the ocean floor descent (imagine a kite's-tail - only vertical).
Perhaps the ribbon could even have parachute points at intervals along it's ascent. Long and short of it - if I can start dreaming up ways to handle this I think a couple physicists could figure something up that would work.
TERRORISTS!!! WHAT ABOUT THEM!? Sure, they crashed a civilian plane into the pentagon. But they didn't crash it into an airforce base, now did they? Why? S.A.Ms.
It sounds wild, but to me the space elevator just seems so elegant; almost natural. I mean, carbon; come on. We all Love carbon right? -(my friend mike for some reason hates carbon, but he's a chemist and that's another story)
I always think of the analogy of space as a tall cliff. You need to get to the top. Do you..
A) catapult yourself up there, try to land on your feet without breaking things and then base-jump back down?
or
B) throw a grappling hook, climb up, and climb down?
can you think of a better non-explosive way to get to space?
Yep 62000, it's all explained in their FAQ
Insightful, my arse.
One would think watching Earth grow smaller beneath you would be entertainment enough. Those who have seen it before can bring books. Or maybe read the instruction booklets on how to avoid explosive decompression...
Rule number one: "Don't open the window" means "Don't open the window!".
Rule number two: "Warning! Danger!" means "Warning! Danger!".
Rule number three: If you really can't be bothered to obey the "Spacesuits mandatory" signs, then go ahead and win a Darwin award.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It's probably the nanotube/nanotech pessimists who are ignorant of the law of accelerating returns.
--
Power to the Peaceful
But he's a salesman-scientist trying to convince people to invest in his big idea. Are you going to tell them "We COULD build it in 15 years" or "well, it probably won't happen for 40 because {the military-industrial complex, NASA, them welfare queens takin' all our tax money, the Canadians} won't let it." If you want something to happen, it's a better idea to talk it up rather than down!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Professor Frinkley, head of the non-gravitational society, has stated that no-gravity suits are only 15 years and $10 billion away. Upon leaving, Dr Frinkley made us pay for his coffee and donut and asked us for $10 billion more.
You see, we've done this before... You know, the "monument of engineering in somebody else's country" thing? So where do we build this thingy along the equator??
...Let alone defending the site from the world village idiots.
Let's take a look:
Guatamala
Honduras
Congo
Gabon
Dem. Rep. Congo
Uganda
Kenya
Somalia
Indonesia
Are you fucking kidding me??????
Yes, I can see this one happening in the very near future. Just the places to plant a multi billion dollar space elevator, right? The only country I'd even consider building this thing would be in Singapore, depending on how much equatorial leeway we have to play with. I mean the science is one thing; Great yeah, we have the money and the technology, lets build this mama! But actually breaking ground on this thing is a political nightmare of epic proportions. Stability of the local governement is just as big, if not a bigger issue than "can we build it/how much?"
The fact that the builder is going to want to make money off it once it's built is another huge issue, severely limiting the number of sites. Unless you want to ship all your ultra high-tech parts halfway around the world to, say, Somolia?
Price to build isn't the only thing the government is looking at here and Bradley is a fool if he thinks that's all that's stopping this from moving forward.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
NASA already has given more than $500,000 to study the idea...
That's not all that much money at NASA, it's the equivalent of 2 Full Time Equivalents (FTEs), plus a little bit of equipment to work with.
some smartassed little kid's gonna push all the buttons.
It's a very dark ride.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Experts are finding drug abuse, particularly crack, is rising in the scientific and technology fields.
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When you said "factor of two", you clearly meant factor to mean "exponent" for a large base.
We're nowhere even remotely close to > 100GPa; we're so far off, it's painful.
The best we can currently do on any sort of measurable scale is synthesize diamond via CVD at a rate of millimeters per hour. CNTs, should they somehow prove to have better strength than the experiments thusfar have shown (at best 60GPa), would have to scale up without losing that strength (quite difficult, if not impossible)
I'm an owl exterminator!
that's only $1400 per year for a decade. $116 a month, about $4 a day! if we all just stop eating taco bell one meal a day we can do this! So, who do I make a paypal donation to? who's the leader in carbon nanotube research? I have a big, fat $20 bill with 'C' written all over it! seriously, I do. I wrote it with a marker.
Terminal velocity is the same for a cannonball as it is for a piece of newspaper
Um, no it isn't. In a vacuum (where terminal velocity doesn't really make sense anyway) they would go the same speed, but in an atmosphere (which our planet has if you hadn't noticed) terminal velocity very much differs. Or are you suggesting that if you drop a cannonball and newspaper from an airplane they will reach the same speeds. Terminal velocity is the speed at which the atmospheric drag balances the weight of the object.
The arab-looking guy said he only wanted to learn how to pilot the boat, not dock it...
Carbon nanotubes, if the hype is real, are a much better VC investment than most of what we're still doing in Silicon Valley. So is he real or not?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Actually, you would leave most of it at the top - it's much easier to get down the quick way, because a landing craft is much simpler than a rocket that has to get up into orbit. So you'd haul a bunch of landing craft up the elevator, and people who want to head back down take the express lander. Not sure if the right design is mostly a parachute or more likely mostly a glider, but it means you don't have to take a long slow trip through the Van Allen Belts - just a quick drop.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
KS Robinson has some rather spectacular accounts of an elevator collapse in one of the Mars books (Red or Green), pretty destructive. Is it known whether his portrayal is accurate?
http://www.spacetether.com/ Another suggestion is to make a long cable that hangs in free air, from a station in a GEO altitude to a drop towards suborbital space. So it will be dangling around 100km or so above the ground. Since it's not anchored to the earth, you can probably skimp a bit on the material's strength of the tether. A first-stage rocket will deliver the payload, which will be taken by the tether when it 'docks' with the spacecraft. The only issue I see is that the 'hangtime' of being in suborbit should be long enough to complete the procedure, and it would take some work into getting the craft going at the same speed as the tether in orbit.