Space Elevator vs Wildlife

An anonymous reader writes "The longest test yet of the technology that might one day lead to space elevators has revealed some unusual problems. From the article: "There were several unexpected encounters with wildlife. More than a dozen insect egg colonies had been laid on the tether and curious bats flew around the balloons, apparently attracted by the sound made by the tether's vibrations. Late in the test, swallows were also seen swooping down on the balloons, possibly to sip the morning dew on their surfaces." Maybe all the critters just want to go to space too."

Comments

Don't Lose Sight of Our Goal!

[Digital Vomit]

No, you fools! It's mother nature trying to keep us from leaving this planet! She wants to take us down with her!

"Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she's losing. Well I say, hard cheese." - C. M. Burns

Just goes to show...

[Z1NG]

The space shuttle sucks, a space elevator swallows.

swallows

[thhamm]

Late in the test, swallows were also seen swooping down on the balloons ...

african or european swallows?

Other issues and possible resolution

[LiquidCoooled]

Once it gets out into space, wouldn't the long carbon tether become charged?

Like the static we discharge walking around the office, any critters setting up home will be in for a nasty shock.

Re:Just goes to show...

[jimmichie]

No no, the space shuttle blows. ( -5 horribly insensitive)

It's Probably a Valid Concern

[eldavojohn]

From an industry report I found sometime ago on Slashdot:

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.

But this LiftPort PDF states:

One issue brought up is the possibility of discharging the ionosphere. Our calculations based on the size and conductivity of the ribbon and the electrical properties exhibited in our upper atmosphere illustrate that a small area (square meters) around the ribbon could become discharged in the worst conditions. The magnitude of this discharging makes us believe with high confidence that no adverse local or global phenomenon will occur. It also shows that it is unlikely, without considerable effort, that any kind of usable power may be generated by this same method.

I think your concern is valid though for conduction through the ionoshpere or even on the surface of the nano tube/wire -- what would this huge antenna/conducter do to our atmosphere (if anything)?

Bats, man.

[Rob T Firefly]

curious bats flew around the balloons, apparently attracted by the sound made by the tether's vibrations

No, it's just that bats' natural habitats are improbably long tethers that don't really lead anywhere.

Re:Time.....

[jimstapleton]

actually, they'd be able to travel faster because there would be more accelleration time. It would take just over ten seconds at 1G (2G force on the passangers) to get to a velocity of 100meters per second, at which point you have 360,000 seconds, or 100 hours. Now with a lower accelleration, but a longer acceleration, that could be cut down significantly. Once acceleration stops, you are back to 1G (minus the effects of your distance from earth).

Ants

[StarfishOne]

Crazy thought:

Assuming ants can climb up the elevator, I wonder which altitude they could reach, given the fact that they supposedly don't need a lot of oxygen with their small bodies. (I know that ants don't have lungs and breathe through tiny pores, but still)

Re:60,000 mile tether - not possible

[VoidEngineer]

This idea just doesn't seem possible. A 60,000 mile tether, strong enough to carry a satellite sitting on a robot elevator all the way up into space. And then successfully deploying the satellite off the elevator. And this would be cheaper than rockets that send satellites into orbit now?

A space elevator sounds great, it just seems far-fetched. A 100 meter test. Only 96,560,540 more meters to go.

Ah, I see that your glass is half empty. While you say "A 100 meter test. Only 96,560,540 more meters to go" implying it's impossible, we say "A 100 meter test! Only 96,560,540 more meters to go" with the idea that we're simply going to do that 100 meter test 965,600 more times. Yes, that oversimplifies things, but it's a half glass full kind of perspective.

Consider: As I understand it, the wiring in the Golden Gate Bridge, if layed end-to-end, would stretch around the globe three times over. Considering the circumfrence of the earth is something like 40,000km, that would mean that we've already built bridge structures that incorporate over 100,000km of cabling. Granted, the design of the space elevator is completely novel; but this stuff is based on modern engineering understanding.

People get the scale of this whole project wrong. The initial ribbon would need to be small and slender and thin for weight purpouses of the initial ribbon. After that's established, we would start adding mass to the space elevator, until it's a megastructure, not unlike the Golden Gate Bridge. Eventually, the dream is to create a verticle subway system of sorts. Access to space would be cheaper than rockets once the space elevator was built up to the scale of the Golden Gate Bridge or the New York City Subway System.

Re:Just goes to show...

[maxwell demon]

but repetition makes it funny (+1 funny)

Really? Well, let me try:

but repetition makes it funny (+1 funny)

Re:robot tests are dumb

[dfenstrate]

I think you mean two orders of magnitude off, not 100.

That being said, how far off were we when this idea was first concieved, or practical work began? A factor of 1000? 10,000 ?

Anyway, we do stuff like this because it's fun and achievable. Most people who follow this sort of thing know that material strength of tether is the current limiting factor, and there is ongoing research in this field.

But there are plenty of people who don't have the expertise to contribute to the material strength problem, but they can sure have fun screwing around with climbers, can't they? The work has to be done sometime anyway.

Re:60,000 mile tether - not possible

[heli0]

"A circumnavigational flight sounds great, it just seems far-fetched. An 852 foot test. Only 131,472,000 more feet to go."
-- Overheard circa 1903