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Space Elevator Prizes Proposed
colonist writes "Space elevator proponents are planning competitions for space elevator technologies, similar to the Ansari X Prize. Elevator:2010 will organize annual competitions for climbers, ribbons and power-beaming systems. In other space elevator news, researcher Bradley C. Edwards recently left the Institute for Scientific Research to work at two companies on materials and technology. Also, the space elevator has caught the interest of Google's founders: 'At a space camp in Alabama last year, Brin talked about creating a space elevator to transport cargo up a special tether attached to earth. Also last year, Brin joined Page in proclaiming they should found a nanotech lab at Google.'"
An artificial satellite in geostationary orbit, that is at an altitude (close to 36000km) where the orbital velocitiy is the same as Earth's rotation.
don't we then have to worry about the strength of the tethers
Yes, that's the main problem.
ultimately the consequences of altering Earth's rotation?
No, since the satellite would be rotating at exactly the same speed as the Earth.
They do have the material, carbon nano tubes. They just can't be made to the length needed, yet. They have ideas on how to avoid the space junk.
You're obviously referring to the Tethered Satellite experiment. That 20km tether was intended to generate power by running this conductive wire through the earth's magnetic field. Something like a large scale alternator. The damage was caused by a hole in this wire's outer insulation layer, coupled with the fact that the part of the tether giving its strength was able to hold enough air(oxygen) to permit this spark to burn long enough to break the tether. Of course, the satellite and the 19.8km of tether was lost. However, the test for generating power (at the expense of orbit altitude) was a success. This now proven technology can be used for satellite power generation, or even a fuelless orbit raising by applying a current to the tether.
Yes, it does have to be higher... since by definition it will be orbiting at the speed of rotation of the earth, anything lower than geostationary orbit is going too slowly and will tend to fall back; anything higher is going too quickly and will tend to move away from the earth.
The idea is to have enough mass higher than geostationary orbit that this pull supports the rest of the structure.
You don't have the first clue how it all works, do you?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Sooner or later, they will probably, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did, start to seperate their private enthusiasms from Google. Gates and Jobs both own private stakes in a number of companies and organisations, Jobs most famously with Pixar and Gates with an images company which I can't recall the name of just now.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
for example, say i wanted to lift a 100kg man up to 380 km (ISS height). This would put a force of 1000N(the man) + 380km *area * density (of cable).area of say 30 cm^2 gives a force of 1000 +1140* density. failure is usually measured in stress (force per area) soooo lets see.....
with
material/stress/density steel 250Mpa 7850 kg/m^3 nanotubes 63GPa 3520kg/m^3 calculated stress steel = 2.9Gpa calculated nanotubes = 1.3 GPa
SO nanotubes may handle the stress, but noone can make 380 km of nanotube rope yet. Even that much kevlar would be tough. and this is without incorporating the added stress of accelerating the man (starting his trip up the rope).
In short, new materials are needed!
Don't you know anything about space elevators? The best material is a carbon nanotube ribbon... if it was broken, it would just sorta drift down, probably not much faster than your average piece of paper.
I've always thought that the main problem with this sort of thing would be the immense electrical charge difference in the various levels of the atmosphere
Hrm... yes... very large potential difference across a conductor, sounds like a possible method of power(assist)ing this thing? IANAP though, I'm sure one can point out why this wouldn't work.
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!