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Space Elevator Group to Open Nanotube Factory
FleaPlus writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Universe Today report that the LiftPort Group, a consortium dedicated to commercially developing and constructing a space elevator, will be opening a carbon nanotube manufacturing plant in June of this year. The new facility has been dubbed LiftPort Nanotech. Many expect the LiftPort Group to be a front-runner in NASA's recently-announced Centennial Challenges competitions for space elevator technologies, which begin in September of this year."
Naturally, this elevator's music will be composed entirely of Star Trek themes.
If you think you're a hardcore roleplayer, come prove it to us at ArmageddonMUD.
all major cities will have a space elevator just like airports and subways... or not.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Nice going, pointing to a 2.7MB PDF file. For those of you who want more information about the space elevator concept, visit the Wikipedia page on space elevators.
Did I miss a meating or something? Since when do we have the capabilities to make nanotubes the length of houndreds of miles?
it doesnt actually lift space does it?
Yes it does, the roof of the elevator will lift anything on it's way. Including space.
How many other applications will these nanotubes have in large-scale construction? Could they replace materials such as steel?
Won't it be kinda boring? I mean, I always enjoyed going to a large skyscraper, pressing every button in the elevator from bottom to top, and then getting off at the very next floor, leaving any other poor bastards to wait as the elevators stops on every one of 84 floors. Not too many floors in space though. At least, not yet. I'm betting there'll be a McDonald's half way up by the time you or I get a ride.
"The elevator will be anchored to an offshore sea platform near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, and to a small counterweight in space."
The recently opened NanoFactory has been reported lost. Scientists are combing the floor near their desk to find the misplaced factory.
WTF?
Dude.
The elevators will be equitorial, for reasons
that would be obvious to even a 18th
century physicist.
They will MAKE the tubes in Bremerton. And
then they will use this advanced technology
called a "boat" to move the tubes to another
location for deployment, if it comes to that
(which it may not for decades...)
You might be familiar with this phenomenon
already, called "transportation".
It turns out people can manufacture
in one city, and move the goods to another.
(And here, all this time, you thought everything
you touch--planes, cars, clothes, food--were
made in your own city!)
Got it?
Now finish your milk and cookies. Nap time is
almost here.
From the faq http://www.liftport.com/faq.php
We don't need and are not counting on individual carbon nanotube molecules running the entire length of the space elevator or any significant fraction thereof. The individual fibers in a string or rope are only a few millimeters long, yet the rope has a large fraction of the theoretical strength of the fibers. This is even more the case with MOLECULES, several orders of magnitude smaller than a fiber. A diamond is said to be the "hardest substance in the world" because of the strength of the carbon bonds that make it up, but a diamond is not a single molecule. Likewise an SE could be made with CNTs just a few centimeters or millimeters long. (In fact, a CNT several centimeters long is a wonder; they're single molecules!)
Brought to you by the RTFA consortium.
After submitting the article a few days ago, it's come to my attention that this isn't going to be the first nanotube factory; I didn't explicitly say anything of the sort in the submission, but wanted to clear any possible assumptions. From an industry report:
Among the small wonders produced by nanotechnology are carbon nanotubes, an advanced material as strong as diamond. These amazing carbon cylinders possess 100 times the tensile strength of steel and are 10,000 times finer than human hair. They are believed to conduct heat better than any other material, and they can also conduct electricity or function as semiconductors.
"Nanotubes are astonishingly promising, and I'm a realist, not an optimist," says Rod Ruoff, a mechanical engineering professor at Northwestern University. "It's a question of making the technology cheap enough." In 2001, only 3 kilograms of the highest quality carbon nanotubes--the single-walled variety--were produced worldwide, each gram worth $300, or 30 times as expensive as gold.
Now, full-scale production of carbon nanotubes is underway at the world's first ever large-scale nanotube factory, built outside Tokyo by the Carbon Nanotech Research Institute, a subsidiary of Japan's Mitsui & Co. The new facility is expected to churn out 10 tons of carbon nanotubes--albeit the lesser quality multi-walled type--a month, and CNRI anticipates the price will be a much more reasonable $80 a kilogram.
These multi-walled carbon nanotubes may not possess all the impressive properties of their single-walled brethren, but mixed with plastics, they make ultrastrong composites or microscale precision parts. Such carbon nanotube-filled plastics are already being used by automakers in fuel lines because they are conductive and can thus be grounded to release static electricity, which can ignite flammable gasoline.
I can't wait, if they actually build one of these, Space is going to be completely different from SciFi!
3,000-square-foot? I have a front yard bigger than that..
A typo? Or is this whole thing just a sad joke?
Hey, we're speaking of *NANO* tubes here.
- "They misunderestimated me."
RTFA: The plant will be in NJ because they have a cheap electricity source.
Assume nanotubes get used a lot, what will happen to their waste? Will stuff made of nanotubes corrode or how will nature decompose it?
Regards, Tommy
Oh cool...
Carbon Nanotube space elevators.
And they conduct electricity.
I hope they insulate the ground base really well, or whomever is the first to step on for their first ride, will likely perish in a BIG FLASH as they vaporise from the built up static potential.
It has to do with tall conducting structures.
Did you ever notice at the bottom of AM transmitting antennas there is usually a big insulator?
Even if the transmitter has been shut off, tower climbers still need to use a long ground pole to discharge static electricity from the tower, and then connect a hefty safety ground strap before touching it, otherwise, Blammo!, another bad day at work.
I hate to break it to you guys, but don't expect poeple to be travelling on the space elevator once it comes into service. It will travel extremey slowly compred to traditional orbital insertion techniques. Expect it to take days to reach geo-stationary orbit.
Travelling through the upper atmosphere at such a slow speed will vastly increase your exposure to raidiation (van allen belt) and electrical storms. This technology is designed for lifting material into space, not passengers. We are still discovering much about the upper atmosphere, including huge electrical storms - as seen in national geographic a few years ago) so don't think that everything is completely accounted for and solved.
Later on, I would expect a faster model capable of lifting less weight but at much higher speeds to allow for human transport.
Once we can actually get a lot more material into orbit then we can build larger solar power collectors in space and power this passenger space lift. If I only has to lift 2 tonnes, rather than 20, then it should be able to move 10 times quicker. With materials science improving as we go better raidation shielding should also be possible.
The elevator won't mean the end of ballistic rocket launches. But hopefully the nano-tech that is in development will also help reduce the weight of horizontal take-off and landing space planes at the same time. Lighter materials for the hull and super-structure of the plane, as well as better fuel tanks, lighter wiring, more efficient engines, etc.
...all major space elevator lines will show live broadcasts of Conan O'Brian.
Somehow the thought of an elevator that plays "It's been a long road gettin' from there to here" doesn't sound great for customer satisfaction ;)
a small counterweight in space.
How big a counterweight are we talking about here? Because if you're thinking of using a whale and a flowerpot, that's probably not going to work
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
If you actually read this guy's work, he admits a huge problem with this approach. An Equatorial elevator has zero theoretical force applied to the base, this one would have immense pressure trying to tear it from the mooring brackets and pull it to the equator.
As such the cable needs to be thicker, and the thicker the cable, the more the force, etc etc
We'd likely need another revolution in materials technology over and above nanotech for this to even be possible, and it's still vulnerable to breakdown/sabotage, as a snapping off at the moor would be disastrous (as opposed to an Eq Elevator in which case the moor is largely a moot point when loads aren't actively climbing)
And because he hasn't used real constants he has no numbers to give us. You can't base any serious theoretical ideas on this guys work, for all we know the force of the pull is ludicrously huge.
So don't pin your hopes on this.
in his words:
In my opinion, the main drawback with the off-center elevator is that there is a huge tension on the anchor point. This means that the cable will have to be heavier. Also, it means that a way has to be found to get the anchor setup. When building an equatorial elevator, there is no need for a force from the anchor point, so the elevator can simply be extended up and down until it reaches the ground. The off-equator elevator needs a force from the ground to stay off equator, so that strategy won't work. The only idea I can think of is to make an equatorial elevator, and then move the anchor point to the desired position. I am not sure how hard pulling the elevator into place would be, because I did not do the simulation with real numbers.
Sure would be nice to have a space elevator. I'm having my doubts that this group of 5 full time and 4 part time people are going to have much to contribute. There is a lot of talk on their website about plans and research and 'groups', but very little substance. It seems their first priority was to develop a line of clothing and an online store. The "Finance" portion of their group consists of investment club opportunities which they generously offer to the public. I couldn't find any mention of other members of their "Group" apart from the sub-companies consisting of the same 9 employees. So far it looks like they have received some money from NASA and $100K from local development agencies in New Jersey where they have announced the building of their first factory. The money from NASA is a little misleading, however. It seems that another company, High Lift Systems, got its start when LiftPort's President, Michael J. Laine, ran into Brad Edwards on a space forum. Edwards is a physicist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratories for 11 years and had raised $570K from NASA to study the feasibility of a space elevator. Laine originally wasn't interested - "I thought it was ridiculous,' says Laine" - but quickly changed his mind. Edwards is also the only scientist or researcher connected to LiftGroup on their website. Unfortunately for LiftGroup, but probably not for Edwards, after about a year he gave Laine the boot and went off to do research at Eureka Scientific under a NASA grant. Currently he has received $2.5M from the US government to fund his own lab. His take on Laine? He says that Laine "spins his wheels" and "if Michael Laine is standing there with something, Boeing and the Air Force won't even notice him."
LiftPort Group seems to be a lot of talk and a website. Search results for Laine are few and all related to LiftPort, yet supposedly he has been a leading proponent of the space elevator for years. Content about LiftGroup on other websites consists almost entirely of Liftgroup press releases, with no information other than that provided by LPG. LiftPort Group claims that LiftPort Carbon is a leading force in the industry and its product, Liftite(TM) carbon nanotubes, will "revolutionize the way the world thinks about materials". There is no third party reference to this not originating from LiftPort that I could find. As a matter of fact, I can not find ANY reference from ANY acknowledged authority in the field confirming any of LiftPorts claims. While other companies are mentioned in news stories about product releases, cooperative ventures, and funding awards, LiftGroup is mentioned in quotes from its own press releases. Maybe I'm missing a huge body of information somewhere, if not, the only question left seems to be...is Michael Laine a kook or a crook? I guess time will tell.
billy - who disavows all knowledge of THIS particular mission
I've seen numerous people here on slashdot being totally obsessed with the idea of a space elevator, since it offers a cheap and efficient way to get into orbit, but less obsessed with some real dangers in the real world, should an elevator ever be constructed.
Consider that a space elevator is built, with carbon nanotubes, or whatever suitable material. Now, what can damage or destroy the elevator? There is so much space junk hurtling around the planet, about which slashdot has already had articles, that something is bound to hit some portion of the cable on it's 35'000 kilometer length up to geostationary orbit. I assume that even an extremely strong material would be liable to break under such extreme velocity impacts and stress. For instance, a piece of old rocket booster has considerable kinetic energy and I wouldn't like to bet on the elevator being over engineered enough to withstand such an impact.
Or what about that asteroid that is scheduled to pass close to the earth in 2029 or so, or any of the car sized asteroids that hit the earth regularly? What impact and damage could they do to the elevator?
And what happens if the elevator is cut? If part of it comes down on the earth it is going to be one massive impact, far more dangerous than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
Actually, the page an non-equatorial elevators you are looking at is a bit out of date. There is much more recent material in the paper I presented at the 3rd annual space elevator conference. The slides are also available here. The paper should give you a quantitative idea of what the situation is.
To put into perspective what the previous post says. Moving a bit off the equator is possible and costs nearly nothing. On the other hand, if you want to place the Space Elevator in the continental USA, you are going to have to significantly increase the tension at the base of the space elevator, for a given payload.
The reason for this increase in tension is that as you move further away from the equatorial plane, the elevator ribbon starts being inclined at the anchor. The vertical component of the tension needs to be able to lift the desired payload, so the total tension in the ribbon is greater. This gets really bad as the inclination of the ribbon nears 90 degrees (at a latitude of about 48 degrees for the standard Edwards ribbon parameters).
So, I was laying around lazily on a vacation here in San Diego, and an idea idly struck me while shooting the breeze with my accompanying teacher friend.
There have been plenty of schemes to use Solar Power Satellites to provide cheap, ecological power to earth-based consumers, but one big problem has always been transmission.
Lasers and microwaves have been proposed, but lasers are notoriously inefficient, and both lasers and satellites have other problems. (cooking birds, airplanes and pedestrians in the case of an alignment problem, etc)
How do you get that power down to earth?
Well, few recent articles lead me to believe that a space elevator made of 5,5 quantum wires might be the best!
1) Transmission of power over superconductors wouldn't be very "lossy".
2) Problem of getting power to the elevators themselves largely solved.
3) 5,5 "quantum wires" are single-walled nanotubes, the best kind for tension strength, and are thus a natural fit.
4) No "cooked birds and airplanes" problems with alignment.
5) Getting sufficient material into space to build an economically feasible solar power station is cheap - just put the stuff on the elevator!
Is there any reason why this wouldn't work? Can anybody shoot holes in this idea?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
the real outcome of this nanotube factory effort, the new and improved golf clubs, will appear north of equator
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it