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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.'"
No link to pursue, but one feels that if it's at Google that would be more like a discussion forum than a lab. Unless, of course, they are proposing that Google starts funding a research center. If they follow, for instance, IBM's and ATT's footsteps, that would be a Great Thing(TM).
Aliens will enter earth via Google. I told you.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
And in other news, The RIAA has donated a large collection of hit music tracks to the prize pool.
According to the Space Elevator Book it will only take ~ 5 Billion to build the first one. After their IPO, they can afford it!
I'm almost 40 so I'm probably halfway through my life, but the space elevator is one thing I'd like to see, along with a manned landing on Mars, true artificial intelligence, proof of extraterrestrial civilization, and a Libertarian president.
If we can get that far without destroying the hope of future generations I think mankind might have a chance to be more successful than the dinosaurs were.
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The friendliest digital photography forums on the net!
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.
if anybody has read the mars series by kim stanley robinson in his book they created the end out of an astroid which was also cannibalized to make the cable the problem with it was that during a revolution the astroid was detached by explosives and went on a trip around the sun with people in it then the cable started to fall which ended up wrapping around mars like 1.5 times and did major damage to the planet and killed thousands... "and they want to do this on earth?"
"In other space elevator news..."
You know you're living in the 21st century when you read words like these.
I heard people complaining about how Google's a one-trick pony, but that kind of diversifying probably isn't what they're talking about.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Seriously, these guys must be developing some sort of messiah complex if they think space elevators and nanotech have anything to do with their core skills. I met Brin in 2000 and he was getting full of himself then. The last few years of success and money must have convinced these two they're invincible and that any field could benefit from their presence. It's the same "I'm rich because I'm the smartest" attitude that too-young Wall Street traders get after they get rich at the first thing they try.
The real test if Google is any different from any other flash-in-the-pan will be when they hit some real adversity. Until then, they're just the latest Lycos/Altavista/Inktomi fair-haired boy to make a splash with VC funding and a slightly better idea. The truth is, no search engine has substantially improved once it's been deployed on a large scale. If no one's passed Google on quality, it's mainly because they were the last to get funded before the crash.
Flame away
If a space elevator is built, what music will it play?
I suggest some calming Thievery Corporation or maybe Air might be more appropriate.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Google should use their expertise in searching to create their own version of SETI.
I've always like this idea, but I bet some whack-job will try and bomb the thing. :-( ...on the other hand, some other whack-job will probably try and *climb* the thing.... wonder how far he'd be before he'd realize that it wasn't as good of an idea as he thought?
Hans Moravec's Rotovator(tm) picks up hypersonic (near mach 12) payloads from an altitude of 100km and slings them to orbit.
Current proposals for implementation of the Moravec's design rely on a hypersonic air-breather of advanced aerodynamic design like the Boeing DF-9 (that exists only on paper).
Is there anything likely come along in the near future that could take paylods to 100km and mach 12?
Probably the same thing that is driving the bureaucrats to make all this noise about space elevators now:
A key to the Rotovator(tm) is getting hub mass in place to keep it out of the atmosphere while it picks up mass from 100km@mach12 -- but that mass can be any old space junk (what is the dry weight of the International Space Station?) -- at least at the hub where it counts the most for high strength materials like carbon nanotubes. However, you can do a Rotovator(tm) with off-the-shelf commercially available fibers and still have a factor of 2.
Nice thing about Rotovators(tm) is that they can be built with much lower capitaliztion over a much shorter period of time using existing commercial materials. All you need is a bunch of mass orbiting near earth, some quite-doable tethers, and sufficient manuverability and speed in the atmospheric leg to hook up with the tether as it reaches the nadir.
Modest prize awards toward early milestones of a space elevator could end up enabling the Rotovator(tm) as well.
Seastead this.
Imagine going upwards for alot of miles ; in the meantime having to listen to Julio Iglesias' songs, performed by some guy on a synthesizer. NOOOOOO !
Hmm, a guy named Page discussing the foundation of a nanotech lab... Nah, I'm sure it's fine...
Actually, I think it's higher than standard GEO. The centre of gravity of the tether and the satalite is at GEO, so the satalite has the be higher, to counter the weight of the tether below. Depending on the relative masses of the tether and satalite, it could be quite a lot higher than GEO.
to Cyberdyne Systems.
Do you have ESP?
They just want to make the Pigeons smaller so they can fit more into a 1U server case and make google faster.
Beep beep.
Tell you what; to get things moving, I will start a challenge: The first commercially viable space elevator constructed before August 28, 2005 at a height of more than 100 km will win $1000000 from me.
Here we go. Another Space Elevator post. Cue lots of post about
1) What musak should be playing in the elevator. This is the height of modern humour people, make as many jokes as possible.
2) Fear of terrorist attacks, despite the obvious difficulty of trying to snap a super-strong cable. And since when did Terrorists attack where they were expected?
3) Fear of accident, 'what if the thing fell to Earth?!!?!! it would slice through everything!!!". As if the brilliant scientists who are developing the elevator didn't think of this.
And don't forget, under no circumstances whatsoever should the story be discussed.
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.
Right, and don't forget the mass of the cargo. It's an interesting situation, because it's dynamic. The mass of the cargo being raised or sent down will change from day to day, and the altitude of the satellite must be adjusted accordingly. However, to change the altitude isn't that simple. You must make it go faster, so it will start overtaking the Earth, moving east, before it starts rising. There will be ripples in the tether as a consequence, and the cargo pods will follow.
Also, the cargo will come from someplace and be sent somewhere. What about the launch system at the satellite, to send cargo pods to other orbits and receive them? An electromagnetic rail launcher seems right, but it will add and subtract momentum from the satellite.
How about creating a simulator for that? http://spaceelevator.sourceforge.net, anyone?
Right, and what were these alleged theories? Are you even remotely capable of pointing out one that has even the slightest shred of credibility?
>Apart from the cost (several hundred billion)
That is easily on par with the cost of several recent US-led conflicts in the world. Just the latest increase (not the total, just the increase) in the US defence budget is higher than 100 billion USD. The money is there. Also there are other countries in the world than the US too you know.
>and the technical impossibility of putting it into place
Care to tell me what these imossibilities are? Or did you mean impossible as in going to the moon?
>there exists no material with even one hundredth the strength required to withstand adjustments that are needed due to the earth's tilt
Feel free to attept explaining this too.
>It's all good in theory
OK; so it is good in theory but still, somehow, impossible? Neat.
> if somehow we could put one up and keep it static, but we can't
Syntax error dude.
>The physics just don't work that way
And what physics would that be?
BTW IAAP (phycicist), so feel free to be as technical in your arguments as you wish.
I don't think a simulator is needed. It's simple newtonian mechanics. Lots of it, but each bit is fairly simple. Also, if the mass of the counterweight is big enough relative to the mass of a cargo, won't the problem be too small to worry about?
All that star wars laser jazz they are developing. Seems like a good way to get target practice with it once it's fully built, let the guys take out pieces of space junk. ZZZZAAAP!
;)
NORAD, huh? Got any "fast movers" stories you can neither confirm nor deny?
You don't have the first clue how it all works, do you?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Who's your Daddy now?
...all of the details are still up in the air?
Mods: please don't get too highly strung, go ballistic or hit the roof over this.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...in about 40 years... picture it. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Brin joined Page in proclaiming they should found a nanotech lab at Google.
...same logic...
Talk about a huge leap of focus here...
why doesn't Yahoo! start getting into genetic engineering now?
The only problem with space elevators is those people who like to push all the other buttons for the other floors.
The Chronic *WHAT* les of Narnia!
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?)
It did seem like they put a bunch of unnecessary constraints in. The assumption seems to be that there could be no better power source than artificial light/photoelectrics, so why bother with anything else. They even interviewed other space elevator folks whose existing designs wouldn't qualify for this. Seems like it would be better to just let people try any crazy way they can come up with to accomplish the goal of getting up rather than insisting everyone stick with the photoelectric idea.
The Ansari X-prize seeks to reproduce an effort that had already succeeded, and been substantially surpassed, by several governments.
A "space elevator", on the other hand, is totally unlike anything ever done before. As I read in a Slashdot post some years ago (referring to nanotubes, the favorite among space-elevator aficionados), "When somebody has built a 40,000 millimeter bridge across a creek on campus, then we can start to talk about a 40,000 kilometer bridge straight up".
The fact that we have not yet achieved one millionth of the task (and in fact fall several orders of magnitude for that) suggests to me that, much as I would love to see a space elevator in place, the job today belongs to materials scientists who are looking at shorter-term goals.
An eye to the future is great, but experimenting on climbers is like practicing the high jump: if you're jumping twice as high today as last year, I wouldn't start drawing any exponential curves. The ribbon is the really, really hard part, and we're currently so far away from it that research energy is better spent elsewhere for a while. 2010 is way, way too close.
Maybe with enough motivation we could get that 40,000 mm bridge by 2010, but somehow I doubt you're going to raise $10 million to build a bridge. The X-prize shot somebody into space for that kind of money.
I'm prepared to be wrong. I'm a software developer, and I've learned that as a consultant I can say, "Your project is doomed" with 95% accuracy before I've even heard your name. Being a nay-sayer is easy. But the real trick is being able to spot the 5% that will actually be profitable, and there are a lot of projects more immediately deserving of this kind of money.
Beanstalk.... You've Solved it!! We just need to find Jack and ask him who gave him the beans. I'm sure there are plenty of Dairy Farmers who would donate a cow to the cause.
Think of the potential rewards... A goose that can lay golden eggs. That's gotta be worth something. Of course the giants may be a problem, but I'm sure we could take it. We've needed a use for our tactical nukes anyway.
Security here's a joke. You can't carry a screwdriver onto an aircraft, but you have a clear path to drive a vehicle laden with explosives straight into the international or either of the two domestic air terminals. There are also many clear paths for driving a vehicle onto the strip, impeded only by a pipe-and-cyclone-mesh gate - and of course you then have a choice: do I drive under a stationary but full aircraft and blow it up, or chase one out onto the tarmac, or wait until one's ready to land and then nip out in front of it, or charge up the ground-level departure gates and self-destruct under a full passenger lounge? Either way, nobody's even going to realise what you're up to, let alone empty or divert a 'plane, before it's all over. If you rolled half a dozen light trucks through each terminal (two into the buildings, three under 'planes and one onto the strip), you'd kill thousands and effectively shut the airport to jet traffic for days, possibly weeks.
A space elevator would be damn hard to hit with an aircraft, and dead easy to defend even with current technology. With a nuke power station near the base, StarWars-type energy weapons would be able to nail anything within about 50km of it in atmosphere, and the meteor/junk defences would do that for you more or less automatically above that. To get it with a missile, you'd basically have to nuke it, although a big chemical head targeted on a vehicle on the elevator might do it. If it breaks near the ground, it does insignificant harm and would be relatively easy to repair. If it breaks well up into space, it's much harder to fix but still does negligible damage to anything on the ground.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Thou Shalt Not Disparage The Good Name of Google!
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
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 we have the makings for a really big generator?
Before the invention of eruptions, lava had to be carried down the mountain by hand and thrown on sleeping villagers.
Technology schmecknology. When that wire whips down and slashes a swath from Moline to Atlanta, who picks up THAT tab? Dream on.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
An artificial satellite in geostationary orbit,
No, no forget all that "geostationary" stuff. What holds the Space Elevator up is good old centrifugal force. Whirl a rock on the end of a string around your head: the string is held taut and the rock out at right angles to gravity by centrifugal force. In similar fashion, the Space Elevator will be whirling around so fast that it'll be held taut. Sure, it's only going around once every 24 hours, but it's really, really long.
(Yes, centrifugal force isn't real, it's virtual. It's the apparent force created on a mass under centripetal acceleration.)
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!
I watched Rod Paige and his underlings (Principal and Assistant Principles) dismantle our wonderful honor's program and demean the teachers they did not like; teachers who had been there for twenty and thirty years. This idea behind this was that the honor's program catered to the elite and left too many out. I did agree with that assertion to some extent, but certainly destroying it was not the answer.
My other computer is a Jacquard loom.
Sergey Brin speaks publicly about space elevators. David Brin (science fiction author) speaks publicly about space elevators too. Does anyone know if these two fellows are related? It just seems too coincidental to me.
Remember, you are special, just like everyone else.
Perhaps they could set up a power station that derives further energy from your ability to trivialize non-trivial engineering issues.
Technical in your FAQ: Centripetal acceleration is acting on the upper two-thirds pulling it outward, and the lost angular momentum is replaced very quickly (essentially as fast as it is lost). Centripetal force is the force is pull inward. Centrifugal force is the ficticious force pulling outward. In actual fact there is only centripital force pulling in against momentum.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
We've strung many cables much longer than the space elevator across the atlantic. We just have to make one shorter, and a little stronger, and then hang it straight down from a satellite.
I haven't been following this very closely, but putting the difficulty of carbon nano-tubes aside, how much thought has been given to the radiation hazard?
I don't think I'd want to take that trip without substantial shielding. It sounds reasonable for freight - not people or livestock.
In times of trouble, the smell of frying onions usually gives confidence and comfort.
DEar ACoward
Are you by the way related to Noel?
THe other end is held in place by gravity. This demands an extremely stong material in order to keep from being broken, but the cable will hang there if extended far enough out from the surface of the planet.
yours truly,
With unlimited access to people that dos not care aboute returning from a mision, it will always be posible to do a massive amount of damage :(
Is almost more important to stop people from "not careing aboute returning from a mision" as it is to stop the "brains" that are behind the shit.
www.aleo.no
I think the idea of building a space elevator the instant we can is fundamentally flawed.
A space elevator would be an insanely profitable project, one that has tremendous implications for things like power generation, communications, space exploration, tourism, and precision manufacturing.
No doubt about any of those things.
But, before we go building a space elevator, wouldn't it be a good idea to give it a few thorough evaluations here dirtside?
There are countless questions that people are going to want to ask - is it strong enough? What if it breaks? Are C-tubes durable enough? Will it conduct electricity and "short out" the ionosphere? What about storms? What about terrorists? Do C-tubes wear out?
The first, best use of C-tubes would be a good bridge. If you had a suspension bridge built with pencil-thick C-tubes, people would get used to the idea that something to small would be so strong.
I figure the best place would be to build a suspension bridge over the straight of Gibraltar. Can you imagine how beautiful and spider-web like such a bridge would/could be?
That would provide major economic boon to North Africa, provide cheap tourism for Europeans, and provide an excellent proof of the viability of C-tubes as a building tool all in one.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Or else we're finished would have to be some kind of a geostationary site that collects energy from the sun directly.
The reason why I surmise this is based on a few reflections I made about modern society and what we're doing. Here are a few starting points (certainly not the defining factors of what makes our present society tick):
These fossil fuels are not replaceable and the current "replacements" for these fuels cannot sustain us with a growing economy that is ever more dependant on power (mostly electricity). By "replacements" I mean the "renewable" sources like alcohol from corn and methane from large human and livestock slurries
Solar and lunar energy (these would be those not included above) like wind, photovoltaic, tide, hydro and (perhaps) geothermal energy may add to what we have but would never allow us to grow at our present rate.
For those of you who think that our dependency on fossil fuels is not as great as it is, try to follow the source of energy in the average corporate office from the power strip all the way back to its source. Very small quantities aren't made from either oil, gas or coal. All have a finite lifetime on this planet.
I'm no expert in microwave energy but I do recall that one could send a satellite up and "beam" power down to this planet using microwaves (which would not use a cable like Clarke suggested in his book "Fountains of Paradise." But it occurred to me as I was heating a pretty cold cup of coffee some time ago in my microwave that this kind of power transfer from space is likely to cause heating of the air around it, adding to global warming.
Thus, were we to attempt to use microwave-transfer, we might make a bad problem worse -- and by the time that kind of energy transfer would be profitable, we'll most probably have a pretty serious global warming issue. The only particular advantage with this kind of power transfer over typical global warming sources is that it probably doesn't add carbon to the atmosphere.
Thus it is my proposition that the only way we'll be able to continue to grow as a civilzation into the next millenium is to innovate so that we may be able to bring cheap energy down these kinds of long pipelines to outer space. I agree that the technology just isn't there yet. But I strongly suggest that we had better be about the business of making it possible.
And, to think. You first heard about this theory of the continuance of our civilization on /.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Once one elevator is built, wouldn't it reduce the costs further for future ones? I mean, I know it would because the technology would have been developed. My question is, wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to get the mass up for the counterweight (or whatever it is) through the first elevator and then move it into position?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Buried in the msnbc version of this story is the quote:
"Details of the ribbon and power-beaming competitions have yet to be fleshed out, and the financial foundation of the entire challenge depends on sponsorships yet to be announced. The Silicon Valley mechanical design company where Shelef works, http://www.gizmonicsinc.com/, is listed as an initial sponsor."
For all you followers of MST3K, Gizmonics Institute was where Joel worked before he was banished to the Satellite O' Love...
It would be cool to climb the space elavator and smoke pot.
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
It strikes me as a way cooler idea, having a private incentive for space elevators. It's the difference between making current space travel more economically efficient compared to making the next generation more economically efficient. Only, the next generation is cooler because it isn't the current one. It's really not even comparable. The energy benefits of elevators come at the cost of materials science. And commercializing that material creation is a different matter then taking existing aerospace technology and make the use of it commercial IMHO.
Here's hoping your admiration of Robinson's works do not extend to mimicking his writing style. :p
I'll tell you what the 'effect' is! It's pissing me off!
On the other hand, Carmack's wealth (I'm guessing) is an order of magnitude lower than the Google founders and TWO orders of magnitude lower than Paul Allen's.
There really isn't any excuse for the Google founders to do anything but put up prize awards (perhaps with a demand for some piece of the action of the winner). That goes an order of magnitude more for Allen, Ellison, Balmer and Gates.
It should be the guys like Carmack that are out there trying to win the philanthropic prize awards put up by the really big money.
That it took an Iranian family to get the X-Prize fully funded (if only for a limited time) it says something very about the West's big money.
Seastead this.
Assuming we find a substance strong enough to build such a cable from
Actually, carbon nanofiber layered in a crosshatch pattern to form a wide ribbon, instead of the rope one tends to think of by default, is beginning to look like it might be way more than strong enough. (Do remember, strong enough isn't strong enough; it has to tolerate occasional extreme stress even by its own standards.)
and ultimately the consequences of altering Earth's rotation?
Well, y'know, if you were trying to tie to the Moon, maybe. But, it's much more realistic to make an artificial satellite as a far-end anchor, set it in an orbit at extreme distance geosynchronicity, and use that. Once you're in space, it's easy enough to do a little bit of jetting to get to the Moon, or wherever else.
Will the artificial satellite alter the Earth's rotation or movement path? Only in the way that you have to be a mathematician to appreciate. Think of it a little bit like Roseanne Barr barrelling down a hallway after a twinkie on a remote control car, with the head of a pin tied to her by a strand of spider silk. She's not even going to notice, and the satellite isn't nearly that big or heavy by scale.
Though maybe I should use an example which is less heavy than the Earth?
Anyway, right now the real stumbling block is defending the ribbon against weather (both on Earth where it's easy and in space where it isn't; yes, meteorites are weather) and worse, like terrorist attack. Even if the ribbon were as light as what you use to tie packages (and current schemes aren't) then the whole ribbon would weigh more than most skyscrapers, and since most of it wouldn't have time to burn up, it'd also have the kind of velocity that something falling thousands of miles tends to accrue. That, falling across a landscape, is the potential for disaster, even if you house the ribbon in the middle of nowhere (the Sahara, Antarctica, the ocean, whatever; the Earth doesn't have any empty spots big enough to take the whole ribbon without potentially leading to populated areas.) When you consider that current plans are a ribbon eight feet wide and half an inch thick of something with a weight comparable to the stuff in lightweight bikes - lighter than metal to be sure, but nothing like packaging ribbon - the consequences of failure or attack could be absolutely monsterous, the price tag aside.
I like sci-fi as much as the next person, but maybe this project calls for some long-term planning.
Why do slashdotters think that just because they haven't seen the plans means that those plans don't exist? NASA, many research institutions and universities and various industrial corporations have been tryihng to crack this nut since the 60s. Do you realize how expensive it is to put a satellite into space, and how much money they're worth? The first company to a space elevator might as well have a license to print money. Believe you me, no small amount of effort and planning has gone into this.
StoneCypher is Full of BS