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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.
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.
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.
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?
There you go! (0.28 seconds) I'm sure that the Martian Embassy will have a link somewhere down in the (about) 139,000 hits.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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 !
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.
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
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?)
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.
I'm sorry if this is unusually harsh, but I'm sick to death of this reply. Whenever anybody brings up the plans to build a space elevator, some bozo says that it's a bad idea because of something that happened in that series. I like to think that most people can tell fiction from reality, but this is seriouslly making me reconsider.
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.
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!
Basically, you fly a satellite which is a conducting tether with some great big batteries in the hubs. Run the tether through a strong magnetic field like that around Jupiter and you get instant power.
Of course, you also get drag since the energy is coming from the motion of the satellite through the magnetic field, so you lower your orbit. Later, run a current through the wire at the correct time using the stored power and you can boost your orbit.
Effectively, you get orbital manuvering capability for free- no fuel needed.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
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!
"Earth spins one way. Satellites can spin another way. Long wires will be able to put them really close to one another... Don't we have the makings for a really big generator?"
Earth spins, while a lump of rock infinitely bigger than any space-elevator orbits around it, conveniently dragging the entire mass of 7 earth-bound oceans behind it causing them to move in a regular, predictable manner, right next to large empty bits of land, and in the same country (not to mention the same planet) as the places where power will be used.
Yet if nobody has bothered to install any serious tidal-power generators yet "we'd rather burn coal", how much less likely is it that anybody will conjure up something complicated involving artificial satellites.
It's like all the "why don't we put nuclear power stations in space and beam the energy back" comments... we already have a nuclear reactor in space, it already is beaming energy back, and nobody except for the israelis and a few australians are bothering to collect it.
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.