Space Elevator Gets FAA Clearance

lonesome phreak writes "Techzonez has a short piece about the recent FAA waiver received by the LiftPort Group allowing them to conduct preliminary tests or their high altitude robotic lifters. The lifters are early prototypes of the technology that the company is developing for use in its commercial space elevator to ferry cargo back and forth into space."

Comments

Wow can you imagine

[bryan986]

Just imagine the massive migranes you are going to get when you have to listen to musak for some tens of thousands of miles

Re:Wow can you imagine

[LSD-OBS]

Those symptoms would probably be due to over-exposure to methane :)

Re:Wow can you imagine

[wkitchen]

Yeah, it certainly could have been worse. From the subject line I was expecting: "... a beowulf cluster of these."

Re:Wow can you imagine

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea why

Re:Wow can you imagine

[32771]

Those young whipersnappers nowadays, back in the old days we had to listen to Strauss when going to the moon.

Re:Wow can you imagine

[subterfuge]

~22,250 miles...

= : ^ \ >

Re:Wow can you imagine

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not gonna be tens of thousands of miles.

The space elevator is a geosynchronous satellite. That means it is in geostationary orbit.

The satellite orbits in the direction of the Earth's rotation, at an altitude of approximately 35,786 km (22,240 statute miles) above ground. This altitude is significant because it produces an orbital period equal to the Earth's period of rotation. /stolen from the wiki

Re:Wow can you imagine

[Seumas]

Of course, there's a massive waste of time, effort and money in the meantime. And who is to say that by the time this "space elevator" comes around and is usable to launch space vehicles, we won't have developed a more efficient, cheap, powerful fuel to launch shuttles?

It's like high power computing. Sometimes waiting is the best solution. You could start computing in 1980 with whatever power is available and it could take - what - 30 years for the computing to finish on that power? Or we could wait until 2005, toss a couple of cheap boxes together and achieve the same computing in a few months - coming out ahead of if we had just started in 1980. Saving time, power and money.

I don't think we'd ever use the elevator. At best, it'd just be a technology that comes and goes without being useful to anyone - except that in the process of creating and building it, we'd probably have acquired some useful degree of scientific discovery and experience that would help with future endeavors in other areas... The question is, will what we gain from it be worth the money invested in it?

Re:Wow can you imagine

[Newrad]

Well since the space elevator would cost pennies to operate compared to the super expensive rockets we have now. And if you keep waiting, nothing ever happens. The price of sending rockets into space will be cut in half, but then you decide to wait until it becomes half of that. Then fifty years passes and you haven't sent a single rocket up. Meanwhile, all the smart people have entire space cities set up with their space elevator.

Re:Wow can you imagine

[JabberWokky]

Rocket fuel is already (relatively) cheap. Even if you come up with a more efficient fuel, you're still screwed with having to lift your fuel tank as you climb and go to mach 25. You're questioning why you might not want to have the vast majority of your launch mass being fuel.

Increasing computing power is easy, the laws of thermodynamics are a bitch. That's why we have yesterday's supercomputers in most houses, but flying cars don't exist.

--
Evan

Re:Wow can you imagine

[Armadni General]

You do realize that the evolution of computers is just that; an evolutionary process?

Without 1980's computers, we wouldn't have 2005's computers.

Unless you really believe that we all of a sudden would have invented these sort of machines, without any prior development...

Re:Wow can you imagine

[kfg]

Get thee hence and read Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise.

KFG

Re:Wow can you imagine

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with your response in principal, your example of the flying cars is a poor choice.

The difficulties with flying cars aren't rooted so much in technology (fuel source) but rather in the inherent problems created revolving around traffic monitoring/control, the necessity for a pilot's license, the stupidity of the average driver, reduced control leading to an increased number of collisions, issues of collateral damage from an accident/auto-failure, the drastically increased mortality rate for such incidents, etc.

The problem of finding a cost-effective fuel source is almost a moot point as nobody would vote to allow people to fly over their houses/cars with them with all of the potential complications. The concept of the everyday man zooming around in a flying car is a grand concept of the future planted in our minds by fantastical books and movies, but it isn't really a realistic notion in today's civilized society.

Re:Wow can you imagine

[Rei]

As an addendum: Having them demonstrate their climbers (the relatively easy part) when the cables are still so far away really seems kind of silly. It'd be like someone planning a mission to Mars making public demonstrations of the velcro that they plan to have hold things in place insided the spacecraft.

Re:Wow can you imagine

[stevelinton]

A fuel capable of launching payload in rockets as cheaply as an elevator could launch it is almost inconceivable in the next 50 years. There are simple physics arguments that rule out any chemical propellant, there just aren't chemicals with that much energy per kilogram locked up in them. Even nuclear-thermal rockets that use any kind of material nozzle or containment system for the nuclear reaction simply can't be efficient enough -- the maximum temperature of the exhaust (limited by the nozzle) will only force hydrogen out so fast. A magnetically confined nuclear rocket could work, but the closest thing we have to a magnetically confined nuclear reactor (JET) weighs hundreds of tons (at least) and still produced less power than it takes to run the magnets.

In this case, the elevator seems like the right solution. All forms of rocket suffer from having to accelerate the engine (and some of the fuel) to orbital velocities. In an elevator setup the engine is a power station (or grid connection) on the ground and never goes anywhere.

Re:Wow can you imagine

[BlueHands]

i'll buy that the paperwork is holding the whole process up. One of the reasons why Europe will get "advanced" cruise control while we in the state will have to wait forever.....i mean, it could be 5 years before we get something like that on the roads.

As for the autopilot, we already have it. Commercial airlines land and take off via autopilot all the time currently. Even if we didn't have it in commercial planes, the military has any number of planes that will do this. This one takes about auto landing at sea.

Heck, there was an article just a while ago about how the military has what amounts to a RTS interface for controling groups of drone aircraft. And that is the stuff they tell us about.

Re:Wow can you imagine

[Hurricane78]

you mean like after too many beans?

mmmmh... beans...

Re:Wow can you imagine

[TheWickedKingJeremy]

Yes, and Henry Ford shouldn't have bothered with the Model T because BMW was simply going to upstage him at a later date. A lot of time and energy could have been saved if we had just waited for BMW.

Oh wait, that's right... it's the people who push the technology of their day who make later developments possible.

Re:Wow can you imagine

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Of course, there's a massive waste of time, effort and money in the meantime. And who is to say that by the time this "space elevator" comes around and is usable to launch space vehicles, we won't have developed a more efficient, cheap, powerful fuel to launch shuttles?

There are practical limits to how much energy you can extract from chemical propulsion, and we've pretty much reached them. Breaking/forming chemical bonds -- which is what happens when you burn things like kerosene and oxygen, or oxygen and hydrogen -- is an extremely inefficient way to convert mass into energy, with much less than 1% of the mass being so converted. Nuclear fission itself can't even convert 10% of its mass into energy (the usual figure given is around 7%). Even fusion, the reaction that powers thermonuclear warheads and our own sun, has an efficiency of less than 15%.

Now, since efficiency of the mass/energy conversion directly impacts how much fuel you have to carry to get off the ground (higher efficiency=less fuel needed due to higher initial energy density), it's pretty easy to see that chemical propulsion is never going to get us where we need to be. Nuclear propulsion would, but there are a lot of nasty side effects to operating nuclear engines in a biosphere (note: there are some designs that mitigate this, but there's still the issue of accidents).

A space elevator would be entirely electric. The elevator itself would not have to carry its own fuel, nor would it have to generate its own power. Further, if the elevator is built out to a geostationary point, the centrifugal force of the Earth's rotation can give spacecraft an immense velocity -- without needing an ounce of fuel! I've seen figures that say the trip to Mars could be shortened from nine months to perhaps as little as two months. If true, this would make the logistics of a Mars mission far easier to plan for, not to mention exploration of the rest of the outer and inner solar system.

The space elevator also solves the nagging problems of nuclear propulsion, namely that of operating in a biosphere. Nuclear engines operating in space would pollute essentially nothing while at the same time being free of aerodynamic drag or gravity wells. But how do you get that nuclear engine off the ground in the first place? A space elevator!

The idea is just too good not to pursue. Aside from the huge engineering challenges of building such a thing, there are no downsides to it at all.

An elevator...

[xpeeblix]

..all the way to space.

What could possibly go wrong?

and she's buying a...

[Digitus1337]

Take THAT Led Zeppelin!

Why bother with the FAA?

[JediLow]

Wouldn't it be best to launch from somewhere outside the United States - say from the equator? It just makes more sense to me if they used something like Sea Launch.

Re:Why bother with the FAA?

[qbwiz]

If you're a US citizen/company, you still need FAA approval, no matter where in the world you're launching from. No, I don't know why.

Re:Why bother with the FAA?

[kentmartin]

Oh, c'mon - the grandparent here must be bollocks... an unqualified ridiculous statement.

By that logic, a US citizen, couldn't come to say, the UK, get a CAA issued license and fly with it coz they don't have permission from the FAA?

I know the Seppo's have been going a bit nuts lately, but, how do you imagine they'd enforce these sort of rules, arrest folks on re-entry into the US? /me hums a song about Cuba.

Re:Why bother with the FAA?

[cwebster]

You can register an aircraft anywhere, but you have do abide by the regs of the country in which it is registered. ie, flying an N registered aircraft still requires a properly qualified FAA certified pilot, regardless of where it is, and a C certified aircraft with a properly certified canadian pilot can fly into the us without an FAA cert, but he cant fly an N aircraft in the US or canada (though it is easy to get private privledges in another country, just a paperwork issue)

And nations do not inform other nations of aircraft movements, that is handled by Oceanic ATC or by the domestic ATC of whatever country you are overflying (assuming the airspace you are in is even controlled). As far as airspace to avoid, we have charts and notams to tell us that.

And to take your scenario with an aircraft collision, attatched to an aircraft registration number and serial number is a registration and airworthyness certificate. On this certificate is the name and address of the registered owner, and various governments keep databases of this information. Generally though the pilots are held responsible, and since they are often dead its pretty much a non-issue.

Re:Why bother with the FAA?

[qbwiz]

For example, according to Chapter 14 of Federal Regulations Part 47, all trustees of a plane registered in the US must be legal residents or citizens. Since this flight is rather unconventional, something like plane (or balloon + long tether) registration would be required. This isn't just a pilot's license.
Considering that corporations can't become legal residents (AFAIK, IANAL), whatever country they're incorporated in is where they register their planes. This, of course, assumes a certain universality of laws, but I'm sure the FAA and most other countries have laws in place to ensure that unregistered people don't go flying planes around, even in the middle of the ocean.

Re:Why bother with the FAA?

[spitefulcrow]

Uh, no? Geosynchronous/geostationary orbit means that the whole thing will rotate at the same speed as the point it's attached to. Besides, think about what you just said. Man-made structures are infinitesimal against the scale of an entire planet. I don't have numbers on it, but rest assured that even a big space station with a tether going all the way down to the surface of the planet would not have anything close to the mass needed to exert any real force against Earth's rotation.

Re:Why bother with the FAA?

[stoborrobots]

By that logic, a US citizen, couldn't come to say, the UK, get a CAA issued license and fly with it coz they don't have permission from the FAA?

I believe it only applies to US-registered planes, not US citizens... Since the plane is registered in the US, anything that happens aboard is under US law, including actually flying the thing.

At least, that's how I understand it works here in Australia. You can't fly Australian-registered planes with a US licence, but you can fly US planes within Australian airspace with a US licence.

Re:Why bother with the FAA?

[deimtee]

You build a large floating platform in the middle of the Pacific.
1. With sufficient warning you can move it to avoid things, e.g storms.
2. It the worst happens and the cable breaks and comes down you don't hit any land. (I know how long the cable is, but most of it will burn up on re-entry, only the bottom couple of thousand miles have any chance of making it to ground.
3. One of the things your climbers do is add more ribbon to make the cable stronger. Eventually you may be transporting enough that ocean shipping is desirable.
4. It's fairly easy to declare a few hundred square miles of ocean off limits and have the US Navy blow any intruders out of the water. (This will be regarded as a national asset, regardless of ownership.)
5. You could start cheap and do it by welding a couple of obsolete supertankers together. This also give you the engines to move it.

I for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome our heavly lifting space overlords by pressing all the buttons in the elevator before leaving.

Re:I for one...

[mOdQuArK!]

Why would there need to be more than one button? :-P

Obligatory Comments

[TubeSteak]

I'm just going to set the stage for any and all comments involving tensile strength of various materials.

Last time I checked we do have materials that can handle the stresses of hanging around from orbit.

At least thats what I remember from /.'s last article about super strength diamnond nano-tubes.
(or something like that)

Re:Obligatory Comments

[Dest581]

But would we be able to hold miles of it together, without anything going wrong? That's the challenge.

That, and the money needed to build and maintain it.

Re:Obligatory Comments

[dbIII]

Last time I checked we do have materials that can handle the stresses of hanging around from orbit. At least thats what I remember from /.'s last article about super strength diamnond nano-tubes.

You'll need a slightly more authorative source even if it was modded insightful.

Remember that you are really talking about a constuction similar to a railgun wrapped twice around the equator then stood on it's end - the extra length is due to having to have a counterweight to keep it up there, and the railgun is the linear motor idea to move things up. Climbers like the machines proposed in the article would cut the mass per unit length and the strength required, but we are still talking about getting in incredible amount of mass up to geostationary orbit by conventional means to build the thing before we can start using it.

It's a chicken and egg thing, one we get the materials we need to have a need to more vast amounts of mass into orbit and beyond before it is useful - and we won't really be seriously considering moving vast amounts of mass into orbit without something like this. It becomes more feasable if we can use some mass doesn't take so much fuel to get it there in the first place - hence the idea of having a great big rock as a counterweight.

Re:Obligatory Comments

[Mr. Underbridge]

1) those aren't diamond, and 2) they're sheets, not individuals as you point out. The connections between tubes are incredibly weak compared to the tubes themselves, so this solution isn't even close to being usable in anything like a space elevator.

They need to get a lot longer for use in a space elevator, on the order of between 1000 and 1000000, before this is remotely viable. There hasn't been much success in that direction to my knowledge.

Re:Obligatory Comments

[AaronLawrence]

Most serious suggestions don't involved anything about a linear motor. It's more like a normal mechanical device with power beamed from the ground.
This makes the cable a plain physical object without any electrical or magentic requirements.

Re:Obligatory Comments

[Mostly a lurker]

I could have been more explicit in why there is a distinction between the kind of carbon nanotubes fabricated by the University of Texas process (a much improved production process of nanotubes essentially the same as those produced for over 10 years) and the structurally different nanotubes recently developed by Argonne National Laboratory from Ultrananocrystalline(TM) diamond (a new form of carbon developed at Argonne). See, for instance, http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/News/2005/news0508 30.html. The new form of nanotube is far more resistant to wear and lower in friction than the traditional carbon nanotube (thus seemingly appropriate for the needs of a space elevator) but very new and large scale production has not yet occurred.

Re:Obligatory Comments

[Stinking Pig]

Kim Stanley Robinson (_Red Mars_) had an elegant solution to this problem... use a robot factory to push a carbon-rich asteroid into position, then spin cable down from it. The non-carbon mass of the asteroid remains to provide counterweight (and structural support for a space station, which is a handy thing to have at the end of a space elevator.

Still a chicken placed before the egg if considered with today's technology, but it's more feasible and practical than "build all the cable on earth and lift it into space, so we can lift heavy things into space".

A Bit Premature

[Azarael]

It's not like anyone is going to be building one any time soon. It would probably take years just to gather the raw materials.

A Space Elevator is like perpetual motion

[Anonymous Coward]

great idea, all we need to do is invent the technology , im not holding my breath

perhaps the bookies should be taking bets

Fusion Power
Space Elevator
Perpetual Motion
Duke Nukem Forever
Microsoft Linux

Re:A Space Elevator is like perpetual motion

[Shishberg]

You forgot hovercars.

Re:A Space Elevator is like perpetual motion

[themusicgod1]

Not sure about Perpetual Motion & Duke Nukem Forever, but
Fusion Power
Space Elevator
Microsoft Linux ...oh come on. That'll never happen. It's far more likely that SCO will beat IBM than that ever happening.

But.....

[Hydraulix]

I hate to be the person that gets stuck on the 900,304,564,282,012,373 floor. :(

Re:But.....

[aussie_a]

Will the "in case of fire please do not use the elevator, take the stairs" rule still apply? I think I'd just shoot myself rather then try to walk back down to Earth on a set of stairs (I don't have a very good head for heights).

So

[cxreg]

When is Six Flags building one? And will the speedpass be valid for it?

A Business Run by Beauraucrats..

[lorelorn]

We don't have a business plan,

We don't have any investors,

We don't have a product,

But we do have in-principle government approval!

Woooo!

Re:A Business Run by Beauraucrats..

[TinyManCan]

Why start investing in a project when you don't even know if you will legally be able to do it? Get approval first.

Thoughts on Space Elevators

[treebeard77]

Thoughts on Space Elevators by Blaise Gassend has a lot of good info & links on space elevators

Here's my bets

[backslashdot]

I'd be betting the following anounts that it'll come to fruition within 100 years..

Fusion Power: $1000
Space Elevator: $10
Microsoft Linux: $3
Perpetual Motion: $2
Duke Nukem Forever: 1 cent

Just my luck...

[xpeeblix]

... I'd get in on the bottom floor and some kid would hit EVERY button.

Another sci-fi idea coming true?

[aktzin]

Maybe Sir Arthur will live to see parts of "The fountains of paradise" coming true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountains_of_Paradise

Not the first test of the technology, actually

[GroeFaZ]

FTA:

marking the first-ever test of this technology in the development of the space elevator concept.

It may be the first test of the technology that actually requires a federal permit because of the altitude, but here are pictures and a video of an earlier test in November 2004.

Tower of Babel

[88NoSoup4U88]

When I read about those space elevators, I somehow always have to think about the Tower of Babel (and I'm not even religious) :

From Gen 11:1-9

1. Now the entire earth was of one language and uniform words.
2. And it came to pass when they traveled from the east, that they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly"; so the bricks were to them for stones, and the clay was to them for mortar.
4. And they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make ourselves a name, lest we be scattered upon the face of the entire earth."
5. And the Lord descended to see the city and the tower that the sons of man had built.
6. And the Lord said, "Lo! [they are] one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they have commenced to do. Now, will it not be withheld from them, all that they have planned to do?
7. Come, let us descend and confuse their language, so that one will not understand the language of his companion."
8. And the Lord scattered them from there upon the face of the entire earth, and they ceased building the city.
9. Therefore, He named it Babel, for there the Lord confused the language of the entire earth, and from there the Lord scattered them upon the face of the entire earth.

So let's hope Liftport Group has their translators ready ;)

Re:Tower of Babel

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.. the Lord can be like that kid that comes along and knocks your block tower down. Jerk.

Re:Tower of Babel

[TheGavster]

This just in: Dayton, TN has ruled that no dictionary showing the developmental history of words may be used in its schools, as this violates biblical doctrine that God caused all languages to spring into being at once.

Re:Tower of Babel

[aussie_a]

Son of a bitch! What sort of asshole would do something that like? "Oh look, there's some people acting peacefully in a joint operation. Well I better fix their little red wagon! Haha! They'll surely worship me after this."

If there is a Christian god, he is a DICK! The only person whose more of a dick then him, is superman.

Re:Tower of Babel

[WankersRevenge]

Nice to see the Kansas scientific community give their thoughts on the subject :)

Re:Tower of Babel

[etheriel]

you've never played simcity, have you?

Re:Tower of Babel

[flyingsquid]

6. And the Lord said, "Lo! [they are] one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they have commenced to do. Now, will it not be withheld from them, all that they have planned to do?

7. Come, let us descend and confuse their language, so that one will not understand the language of his companion."

Man, thank goodness nothing like that will happen when we try to build the space elevator! That would sure screw things up.

I mean, if you consider the possible implications of hrejit nü hrønfar ngornbø hleptic i vrüdenik slahh! Hlah! Nrkramnü, egnem znepi znepi frafnuu fraarg. Ple, ple plehehahrmon!Nkramnu? Nkramnu. Vrreedonfarnu o slan wethnip nkri nar franfor. (n'ktuthnish omo san wanaroomh!)

Re:Tower of Babel

[jafac]

From my viewpoint, God may not have had punishment in mind. But from the ancient Babylonians, it seemed like a punishment. The outcome of this plan, however, was the end of a memetic monoculture. God wanted to create a more rich environment to breed better, more robust memes.

Considering the range of human ideas and experience that has resulted now, some 6-7000 years later, I'd say the plan worked. Now, our challenge, is to bring all those varied memes together, to build a best-of-breed, without once again creating a monoculture. Of course, with the level of xenophobia among all the human cultures of the world today, I highly doubt that a global monoculture is even a remote possibility.

Re:Tower of Babel

[jafac]

If there is a Christian god, he is a DICK!

Um, the same theme occurred in ancient babylonian mythology, judaic mythology, christian mythology, and islamic mythology. So I wouldn't blame the Christian God specifically.

Actually, the same thing seems to have happend in computers too. Once the whole world seemed to have standardized on Posix. Then Bill Gates came along. . . .

Re:Tower of Babel

[VValdo]

Babel is simply the intelligent design theory of language.

W

Re:Tower of Babel

[ggvaidya]

Our apologies; the people responsible for the last post have been fired. Entirely new posts discussing the future ramifications of space elevators will replace them shortly. Meanwhile, here are some delicious pictures of a traditiønal møøse picnic from the wild snøw covered peaks of Nørway.

Simple tests, not actual elevator

[j1m 5n0w]

According to the article, they just want to try out some climbers by letting them climb up and down a cable tethered to a mile-high balloon. They're not getting aproval to launch an actual space elevator. (You are correct though that a space elevator would optimally be tethered near the equator.)

Re:Simple tests, not actual elevator

[QuantumG]

Optimally from a technical point of view. Definitely not from a political point of view.

Re:Awesome

[standards]

The biggest problems are keeping it together, and keeping it protected from harm, like accidently hitting it in a plane, or lightning strikes. It could become a terrorist target.

Whoa, it'll take years to build it. By then, we will have won the war on terror.

Here we go again..

[Mr2cents]

It could become a terrorist target.

Sigh, could you please shut up about terrorist threats? What makes a space elevator more a threat than a space shuttle, or a Golden Gate bridge? BTW: space shuttles are full of highly explosive fuels!

This is a good moment to ask yourself if you're not affected by propaganda too much..

Re:Here we go again..

[Voice_coder]

Well, in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars", colonists build a space elevator on Mars, only to have it sabotaged and fall down on the planet; wrapping around the equator three times and releasing the equivalent of gazillion nukes. Since this could be a dinosaur extinction type event, it is a valid concern. However, I do believe it is in no way a deal killer; just something that merits some discussion of likelihoods/easiness of such an event happening and how it can be guarded against if necessary. At least when we are closer to having a space elevator (which is not now).

Re:Here we go again..

[Twanfox]

Fiction is where we explore ideas that may or may not happen in the world we know it. It is a way to stir imagination and share ideas. Does it mean that it will? No. However, it could.

Use of movies (fictional or otherwise) as proof is bad and shouldn't be done (unless it directly relates to said movie). Use of movies as ideas for what might happen is certainly a valid use of them.

About linking to sources...

[irrision]

Does anyone else think that perhaps this article should be linked to the actual source instead of a link to a link that links to another site with a quote from the original source and no link to it? I mean at what point does this become a rumor when it's so far from the original source? Oh here's the link to the companies website: http://www.liftport.com/ And here's one to their staff blog which is much more interesting reading then this quote: http://www.liftport.com/progress/wp/ And heres a link to their september newsletter posted on their forums that talks about the FAA approval among other things: http://www.liftport.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25 3

I for one can't wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to base jump off of this.

IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Anonymous Coward]

elevators space you!

Microsoft Elevator

[Nerdposeur]

Unless, of course, Microsoft designs it. Then what you need is is color, touch-sensitive screen with an animated puppy on it. When you get in, he bounds up towards you and barks, and a little balloon appears saying, "Where do you want to go today? Based on past trips, I'd guess you want to go up. Is this correct?"

Halfway up the ribbon to space, the elevator would get confused and start going down. You'd have to stop it, turn it off, and manually open and shut the door to reset the system. Then the elevator would remind you that you should always reset the elevator using the Start menu.

Freaking simpletons should not have million$

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a MUCH simpler and superior alterantive to a space elevator, and oddly enough the core concept comes from Jules Verne. The final piece of the puzzle was provided by Space-X, I beleive. Let me break it down into some simple steps, all of which use technology available TODAY:

1 > Find an east-west mountain range close to or on the equator.

2 > Build an Ionic Flow ring in a straight line going up the mountain range from ground level, pointing towards the west. Each of the gigantic rings strips electrons from the wind that pass through the ring, storing it in an internal capacitor (the power generation is caused by wind passing over the coils around the ring.

3 > Run magnetic iron tracks from each ring to each next ring. Their purpose is three-fold: to provide stability to the series of rings, to provide a repulsible glide-path, and to provide the "leekage" needed to meld the magnetic felds from each ring.

4 > Build your "ship" as a sharp-ended ovoid made with a ferrous iron frame, which encapsulates your ACTUAL vehicle (squib-releases or explosive bolts work perfectly as a means of shedding the outer fusilage). The fusilage must contain a closed wire loop that can be charged externally.

5 > Once the radio transmitters in each section of the 10-mile ring array read as being charged to full power, move the ship to the first ring at the base of the mountains, and set it on the magnetic tracks.

6 > Dump a huge amount of electrical power (possibly slowly drained from each ring by means of the rails, and stored) into the magnetic coild isnide the ship's outer fusilage.

7 > From a bunker nearby, hang back and watch the vehicle accelerate to, and then past, escape velocity as it is yanked from one ring to the next by thier now-active magnetic fields. The rings will be perfectly safe, since the ship will not be generating heat energy at a fast enough rate to harm them as it passes.

8 > Once the vessel is in orbit, it can sepperate from the external fusilage (which is ALSO in orbit). The external fusilage can then be used as building materials for a space station, or explosive charges can decelerate it back into the earth's atmospehre. If it is designed using the recently proven re-entry technology of Knight-1, it can land safely in the ocean for recovery.

9 > Once its mission is over, the internal spacecraft can use the same tech the fusilage uses to land as well, but being under control it can land on a smaller area such as a tarmac.

The benefits of this system are many-fold. Unlike a space elevator, the power to carry cargo into orbit does not require large and potentially dangerous specialty-generation facilities. It is still a terrorist target, but sabotage will not result in dropping miles-long super strong cable chaotically over large tracks of land (a sabotaged ring only results in the vessel not having the power to get into orbit, and safely landing after it is lauched or even having the launch aborted IN MID SEQUENCE!). When not in active use, or self-charging, the rings can be plugged into the power grid to provide free and cheap power (one big reason this will NEVER be built: it can cut into some corporation's bottom line). It allows HUGE payloads to be sent into space at relatively low costs and rapid time-frames in comparison to a space elevator (which everybody alwasy seems to forget would take DAYS of constant activity to put ANYTHING into orbit). The ring-launch system could be built slowly over the period of decades, since the component rings would not need to be lifted AND HELD in posistion like a space elevator's cable. The entire system uses technology and engineering methods that have been widely used world-wide for years, and sometimes GENERATIONS (reverse-flow system, electromagnets, mag-lev tracks, autolifting bodies, capacitors, static electricity generation). It would cost a FRACTION of the price of the space elevator, since the vast majority of the component elements needed are not only

Re:Freaking simpletons should not have million$

[uberdave]

Let's see, mach 20+ in the thickest part of the atmosphere... 300+ G acceleration... What's not to love?

Re:Freaking simpletons should not have million$

[ThosLives]

Even worse than you suggested. You don't even need to worry about time, if you use v^2 = 2*a*d formula. If you want an altitude of 200 km, you need a velocity of 1951 m/s to get up to that altitude (kinetic equivalent of gravitational potential at 200 km), and another 7786 m/s to reach orbital velocity. Add another 1000 m/s to account for drag effects (probably high, but it's a good estimate) and you see that a total delta-V of about 10700 m/s is required. Over 10km, this would require an average acceleration of a whopping 5724 m/s2, or about 585g. This kind of explains why the space shuttle averages its acceleration over about 8 minutes, which is only an average acceleration of 22.3 m/s2 (less than 3 g).

Suffice it to say I don't want to ride in your mass driver unless someone comes up with an artifical gravity field to compensate for the G-loads. (Even at 1000 km long, that's still 5.8 g, not 2.4).

Terrorism? maybe - Space junk? hell yes

[calidoscope]

The biggest problems are keeping it together, and keeping it protected from harm, like accidently hitting it in a plane, or lightning strikes. It could become a terrorist target.

What just about everybody forgets about the spece elevator is that every orbit lower than geosynchronous will eventually intersect the elevator (assuming the elevator is anchored on the equator). A particle too small to track from earth can still have quite an impact.

One possible solution would be a much better tracking system combined with some method for deflecting/destroying objects that come too close.

Bashers out of context

[electrosoccertux]

If you take that section in context instead of just reading it itself, you would find that the problem was not that they built a tower, but their motives for building it. They wanted to get closer to God. Theres nothing wrong with that except for when you do it outside of how he tells us to. He didn't tell us to build a tower to him to get to him, he told us to let him come to us. He was disgusted with the Babylonians because of their pride, not because of their tower building prowess.

Re:Bashers out of context

[Rude Turnip]

"and let us make ourselves a name"

It seems to me that by this line they were being arrogant by trying to "literally" be close to God with a high tower. This would imply knowing God, which you can't do since he represents the transcendent. Since God isn't literally "up there," but rather "in here," that is why they were punished. In the end, I think this passage is a reminder that you're not supposed to take these stories literally, but you're supposed to look through the metaphor.

Re:Bashers out of context

[tooth]

Theres nothing wrong with that except for when you do it outside of how he tells us to.

Here Adam... here's a big brain... but don't use it! Just trust evrything you are told by those in power.

I can see it now...

[Anonymous Coward]

...all the slashdotters scrambling for the chance to scrawl "first passenger!" on the elevator wall....

AstroNautical

[Doc Ruby]

I want to see the US build a "skyhook" space elevator on the Equator right off Jarvis Island. Jarvis could house the cargo/control center. Nearby Kiribati could become an (inter)global shipping hub. And Hawaii would be even spacier than it is now.

Hold it up or tie it down?

[Nerdposeur]

In "Rainbow Mars," Larry Niven (who also wrote Ringworld, seemingly the basis of Halo's ring-shaped planet) imagined "world trees" that grow downward from space and attach to a pre-grown stalk on a planet.

The world-trees were huge, but rather than supporting their weight traditionally, the roots were designed to hold them in the ground, as opposed to being flung out into space.

I guess if you had a space elevator and stuck enough mass out into space, it could take some of the supportive strain off the base of it with centrifugal pull. I'm not sure how the strain would work out on it.

At first I imagined an elevator box where you open it and push your cargo (a rocket, whatever) out, but I guess it makes more sense to let it accelerate and sling it off the end with centrifugal force, like... like a sling. No fuel required to get moving.

what about mile high cities? regulations prevent..

[plasmacutter]

Current regulations (faa i think) prevent mile high cities.

Already there are conglomerates in tokyo with plans and long term roadmaps laid out toward the construction of self contained mile high towers.. (one shaped like nested bowls actually has 7 or so large open air parks contained within.

The US will never have one as long as these regulations continue to pose even a slight threat to what is already a daunting task in both engineering and financing.

Truth be told.. i want to live in one of these towers before i'm middle aged, so get moving with the restriction removal!

They are asking for donations!

[distantbody]

Goto: http://www.liftport.com/donate.php

...and they are asking for donations, saying:

"Developing the space elevator will require large amounts of financial capital over the next 10-15 years. At the present, LiftPort Inc. is in the early start-up stages, and like any start-up, has strong financial needs in order to achieve our goal of building the space elevator. If you would like to help support our efforts by making a donation, please click the link below. We thank you for your support."

It makes me feel so good to know i've helped a newborn business down the path of global domination!

Hooray for groveling private enterprise!

+5 Cynical

Possible interpretation.

[Jerk City Troll]

God has a tantrum because human beings are attempting to do something other than slaughter mindlessly in his name. Here, we see people attempting to accomplish a feat of engineering. In reprisal, God thwarts the effort by rewiring their brains to inhibit communication. This leads to the formation of diverse cultures and perspectives, which in turn leads to ignorance and intolerance in many cases. As a direct result, human kind engages in mindless slaughter in God's name.

Eventually, however, our species ends up creating much taller towers a thousand years later anyway... Which people then destroy, causing mindless slaugher in the name of God.

God is stupid.

Space Elevator : 2010

[Xanlexian]

http://www.elevator2010.org/site/ Has TONS of information on this. It is a contest site that has been mentioned here before a few times (I'm too lazy to look up previous articles). All of the materials are currently available to construct one. The movie on the site explains a space elevator in simple terms. I recommend watching it.

Re:Space Elevator : 2010

[serutan]

All of the materials are currently available to construct one.

Not quite. The various space elevator startups, including Liftport, are still waiting for the technology to make carbon nanotubes of unlimited length. Several years ago scientists were making the tubes 4 microns long. Now they are up to several centimeters. After a couple more orders of magnitude they will probably have machinery that can crank out continuous nanotube ribbons of any length, and then the space elevator stands a chance of actually being built.

Re:Space Elevator : 2010

[TheRaven64]

Do we need ones of unlimited length? Conventional rope is made by ravelling lots of very short, comparatively weak, fibres together. Now, the nanotubes currently produced are very low friction, but if you were to attach something like C60 to each end, would you not be able to build a rope out of these fibres that would be incredibly strong and light?

Note: This post contains idle speculation, and is not backed by any kind of calculation. Or nuclear weapons.

I can't wait

[nemik]

to join the 19741974827320328 mile high club! ;)

Re:I can't wait

[Bob of Dole]

That's about a 1/8th of the way to the galactic center.
Methinks you are overestimating the size of this elevator, matey.

Coriolis Effect

[Headstack]

I'm certain I'm missing something here, but if a large mass is going to be moving upwards towards a big counterweight, wouldn't there be a massive coriolis effect from accelerating the payload perpendicular to the rotation of the earth? It would seem we there would need to be a load of rocket fuel delivered to the counterweight every-so-often to counter the rotational deceleration from such an effect. Is that what they're planning to do or am I just crazy?

How stuff works: Space Elevators

[Anonymous Coward]

http://science.howstuffworks.com/space-elevator.ht m

Oh please...

[Gorimek]

I was really hoping we could keep the Mac/Windows flame wars out of this discussion for once...

Re:How 'bout it, science?

[MichaelSmith]

My advice to you is to blast off into space NOW, before the glamour of it is all but a memory.

You should read Friday, by Robert Heinlin. His title character remarks that she "really hates that indian rope trick".

Re:what about mile high cities? regulations preven

[Rudolf]

Current regulations (faa i think) prevent mile high cities.


Eh? What about this place?
http://www.denver.org/

For details, read...

[jd]

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. It is full of the perils of space elevators, particularly when encountering knids.

Re:The Equator would be a BAD BAD BAD Idea

[jacksonic]

I'd like to see you keep something in geostationary orbit over anything other than the equator.

An orbit has to be around the Earth's centre of gravity. The only part of the Earth that rotates around its centre is the equator.

A polar orbit (even one that matches the Earth's 24 hour rotation period) will pass over both poles.

discharge ionisphere into earth

[davidgrouchy]

Great, lay a source of conduction across the natural insulation of our atmosphere and discharge the entire ionisphere into the earth. Wheeeee

Re:Just Curious

[KylePflug]

N- is USA general aviation tail numbers. I'm assuming C- is the same for Canada.

Re:The Equator would be a BAD BAD BAD Idea

[tom17]

Umm.. if you had it stationary above a pole, well, it would just plummet to the earth unless you had a propulsion system holding it up. If you did this the strain on the cables would be far greater too as the *whole* cable would be hanging from the satellite.

The Space Elevator NEEDS to be done at the Equator, thats how its designed, thats how it works. The atmopheric annoyances are just all problems that have to be somehow overcome. Of course the first thing that has to be overcome is the ribbon production itself. Once this is done, I am sure the other hurdles will be addressed.

Re:Hooray!

[The Unabageler]

at least it'd be above sea level!

Why FAA Clearance?

[DynaSoar]

Because they're flying a tethered balloon in US airspace above the maximum altitude allowed without having to alert air traffic in the area.

http://www.risingup.com/fars/info/101-index.shtml

They have to get a waiver to operate outside the limits set by FAR 101. It's a fairly automatic process. Most rocketry clubs do it regularly. By doing this they get clearance and (somewhat) priority for the airspace, and a NOTAM (Notice To Airmen) is posted at air traffic control centers so anyone heading that way will be informed.

According to the LiftPort blog, they've seen you coming:

September 18th, 2005
Welcome Slashdot readers.

You're welcome to rummage around and see what we're up to.

While you are here, sign up for our monthly announcement list. Toss barbed questions at space elevator enthusiasts at the Liftport Forums. Read our out-dated FAQ. Read Dr. Edwards NIAC study and free yourself from /. generated assumptions in the Phase II Study.

Re:Counterweight

[Vo0k]

It's hunting that space junk that is the problem. It wouldn't pay because space junk is usually light (how much $ to lift 1 ton, junk or not, to orbit?) and flying around, trying to catch small pieces of it, say, 1 week and 5 tons of fuel to grab 200kg of the junk?

IMO the rope should be unrolled in two directions at once, from the orbit. This way, it wouldn't only allow for cheap transport to the orbit, but launching small ships from the end would give them a nice boost. Actually, quite possible that you could lob cargo with minimal thrusters at other planets. (think big bricks of ice from water pumped up the pipelines through the lift, launched at Mars. Water for terraforming Mars, ocean level rising problem solved :)

Re:what about mile high cities? regulations preven

[jcr]

Current regulations (faa i think) prevent mile high cities.

The FAA outlawed Denver?

-jcr

Re:The fuel isn't the big cost

[Mr. Foogle]

Why one-off?

The first thing we'll do (yes, assuming we are funded and it's actually doable - work with me) with the thing is to use to build a second. The first ribbon then goes into service as a revenue line. The second ribbon goes into backup status and (when the demand is there) can make a third for (we hope) a fraction of the cost of the first. Then a fourth. And so on.

How about space elevator for energy transfer?

[master_p]

If a space elevator could be made that can lift heavy cargo up to space, then a similar construct can be used for transferring energy from a solar energy platform to earth.

Re:How about space elevator for energy transfer?

[Wiseazz]

Ignore my other comment (not that that's generally difficult to do!) From the FAQ at liftport.com: Energy is one area that could benefit from a space elevator. Large solar arrays, for example, could be easily lifted into space, creating an inexpensive source of clean, limitless and eco-friendly energy, beamed back down to earth.

Actually, yes, you do

[Moraelin]

Coriolis effect would happen precisely _because_ it's at the equator and perpendicular to the ground, and precisely _because_ it shares the Earth's rotation. The only places where you wouldn't get that, would be the poles. (But then good luck keeping anything in a geostationary orbit above one of the poles.)

The problem is that you're moving from a smaller radius R1 to a larger radius R2. If you tried keeping the same angular velocity (and precisely because it's perpendicular to the ground, it is getting constant angular velocity), the linear velocity is the radius multiplied by the angular velocity. It's that linear a progression: twice the radius means twice the speed. So in the first place you have a smaller speed v1, and in the second you have a larger speed v2.

To get that, which is the pre-requisite to having it move in a straight line upwards there, you have to apply some extra force (e.g., horizontal thrusters) to increase the speed. If you don't, it will fall behind. That's Coriolis effect in a nutshell: the object's tendency to lag behind as you move away from the centre, or to gain angular velocity as you move towards the centre.

Why it happens on Earth? Because Earth is a sphere. As you go from either pole towards the equator, the radius increases. To move in a straight line from N to S in the northern hemisphere, you move from a small radius to a large radius, at constant angular velocity. (If you stay along the same meridian, you do a full circle in exactly 24 hours at any point along it.)

That means you need to gain speed to stay on that same meridian. While both a city in Canada and one in Mexico have the same angular velocity (both do a full circle in 24 hours), the one in Mexico moves faster horizontally. It moves more feet per second towards the east than the one in Canada.

If you tried launching an ICBM from Canada against Mexico, you couldn't just point it straight to the south. If you did, it would fall behind and fall into the Pacific. You'd have to aim it a bit to the East, so it gains that speed difference by the time it reaches Mexico.

That's Coriolis effect in a nutshell.

Re:The economic viability of a space elevator

[mysticgoat]

Has anyone else at all thought about how a space elevator might be economically viable?

Yes. I can think of three ways.

First, when we get to the point where we are moving more mass down the elevator than we are moving up it. Regenerative braking on the downtrips would offset the cost of uptrips-- the elevator could even become a net power producer. But this depends on developing the technology for bulk lunar mining or something like that to the point where the economics are competitive with earth mining operations. Imagine capturing a comet in a stable earth orbit and downloading tonnes/hour of irrigation water from it to an equatorial desert for half a century. Imagine 22,000 miles of generating turbines. A space elevator would be a great way to exploit Earth's gravity well. (Hmm, there are some rich desert nations that might become venture capitalists for something like this...)

Second, if we find that there is enough electrical potential between space and the earth's surface, then a copper wire grounded at the bottom and attached to an antenna at the top could generate enough electricity to power the crawlers. Possibly there would be energy to sell, too. Maybe a geophysicist will speak up about the voltage difference between ground and sky. I've no idea how realistic this possibility is.

Third, but IMO more likely to happen first, imagine a hybrid approach where rockets are used for unmanned cargo lifts, products are returned from orbital operations by space elevator with regenerative braking, and people go up and down the elevator. All the energy that we now lose in burning up heat shields would be recovered and we wouldn't have the overheads of launching those heat shields, or the hassles of designing reentry vehicles.

Creeping featurism.

[Eric S. Smith]

Before flying cars become a reality, we need a way to keep a fanatic from loading the passenger seat with plastic explosives and flying it into a school building.

I agree with the rest of your comment, but this bit I think is creeping featurism. We don't have magic ground cars that prevent maniacs from blowing them up in vulnerable places, after all.

Re:How 'bout it, science?

[meringuoid]

Great. Turn the allure of orbital travel into a 200km ride in a claustrophobic box with 17 people, sandwiched against some dude with balls-to-the-walls BO with a tinny rendition of "Girl from Ipanema" playing in the background. Where do I sign up?

See, this is why I bought a 40-gig mp3 player...