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Space Elevators Could Be Lethal
Maggie McKee writes, "A new study reports that passengers on space elevators of current design could be killed by radiation. Even traveling at 200 kilometers per hour, passengers would spend several days in the Van Allen radiation belts, long enough to kill them." Looks like the elevator scientists will get this one solved before liftoff.
will tinfoil hats help?
One of the most popular (and massive) items that will need to be shipped to orbit will be water; and water makes a good shield against radiation. Just make your passenger cars with a living unit inside a larger freight unit, and fill the gap in between with water. If you used filtered fresh water you could even have windows on both walls and be able to look through.
because we're going to build a 150,000 mile long cable, tethered securely to the Earth's surface...
From TA: "it's going to make things a little more complicated and a little more expensive"
Everybody panic! Apparently, "a little more expensive" == "potentially lethal"!
I guess people should buy from Wal Mart instead of Target, since the latter is "a little more expensive". Obviously making a purchase at Target will kill you. I love sensationalist headlines.
Mutant Freaks of Nature: "Frighteningly Addictive"
Seems like this would be simple to solve. Shield the passenger cabin. The extra weight of the shielding doesn't make a damn bit of difference if it costs a penny for a quintilliton of cargo to orbit. Plus, you get to re-use the shielding. Those passenger cars to orbit are going to be like victorian rail cars. They never wear out.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Haven't RTFA yet, but if mass is not the huge problem it is with rockets, maybe surround the passengers with a meter of water, or whatever it takes. If coming down is faster, for instance in capsules instead of crawling down the space elevator, or if down capsules are faster than up capsules, maybe the water could be cargo for the orbital endpoint of the space elevator.
Now I will go RTFA.
Infuriate left and right
I thought the main idea was to send equipment, not people? If we can get one in place (which doesn't seem particularly likely any time soon), it'd be far cheaper to send tons of heavy stuff into orbit via a tether than via a rocket.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
This is why the First Amendment is so important- to expose Corporate Greed! Greed which led space elevator manufacturers to produce elevators without the neccesary safety precautions. How many people have to DIE in the name of profit? How long will it be before space elevator travel is actually made safe? It should have been done BEFORE the elevators were even built, damnit!!
Thank you Maggie McKee, for planting a seed for the grassroots "Space Elevator Safety" movement!!
This is something I would have thought that the builders would have figured out. Also would it really be that bad? In the first place, I would think that the transport vehicle would be pretty darn fast at that point. Gravity would be less and the thing would gradually speed up as it neared the top. P.S. Why wasn't this a main article?
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
How much thrust would a rocket need to zip you through those sections if you waited to fire it until reaching, say, 500 - 800km? Surely by then you'd be far enough away from Earth that a little bit of push would go a long ways, compared to firing a rocket from the ground?
Unpleasantries.
I'm a little suprised I haven't heard about this before. Has this been widely known among the space elevator set before now? My experience with space elevators has mostly been through the gloss-over-the-problems world of scifi. I thought the only real problem was in the construction and maintenance, not in the actual use once it's constructed.
I've always wanted to be the human torch so sign me up! ...
Lack of caffine has rendered me unable to come up with other Van Allen refs from SF etc
Anyone?
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
The article says that you may not want to add shielding because of the added mass. Wikipedia says that "an object satellite shielded by 3 mm of aluminum will receive about 2500 rem (25 Sv) per year." I don't know how this would translate for people going through the area, but 3 mm of aluminum doesn't weigh much.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
Looks like the elevator scientists will get this one solved before liftoff.
You betcha they will. Compared to the problem of running a cable tens of thousands of miles straight up, and strong enough not to tear under its own weight, this sounds downright trivial. We're still a dozen orders of magnitude off.
Would it be possible to really fast through the belts?
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So can regular ones. Your point?
In the same vein -- Always wondered how you'd pass an environmental "impact" review for one of these things. What happens when your 20,000 nmi long cable to geosynch breaks -- or is intentionally damaged by the "bad guys" -- halfway up and 10,000 nmi of cable falls down to earth-- a cable 10,000 nmi would stretch from the coast of Ecuador to somewhere on the island of Borneo.... even bigger mess if it falls over land...
The solution, of course, is more speed! With a mass driver, and 1000+ Gs acceleration, you too can zip right through that hazardous Van Allen belt in record time!
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
Before automatic safety breaks, crashing elevators killed more than one person. Even today, there are occasional fatalities, although AFAIK none from radiation exposure.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why does the space elevator need to be anchored directly to the surface of the planet? Wouldn't anchoring it to a zepplin like platform high in the atmosphere make the whole thing a lot easier to build? I mean that way you can cut out a sizable chunk of the "heaviest" part of the tether, and thus reduce the overall tension greatly. This would allow a much shorter tether since the spaceward end wouldn't need to extend nearly as far to hold up the drastically reduced weight.
You could use some high altitude balloon style craft to get cargo to and from the platform relatively cheaply.
Just seems like a better way to go than waiting for some mythical material that has the strength/weight ratio needed to support a fully to the surface tether.
Must be tired...must find caffeine...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I thought that the advantage of the elevator was to transport alot of stuff for less money. Are most supplies really that sensitive to radiation?
Adventures in Shaanxi
Why do people even waste their time on this idea. WHY DO WE NEED SPACE ELEVATORS?
For all the engineers here: why would you want to build a cable tens of thousands of miles long out of currently UNAVAILABLE materials (unobtanium) to slowly ratchet up one payload at a time? It's a horrid idea, and it STILL takes just as much actual energy to put anything in orbit...just it does so pathetically slowly.
The plan is to use PHOTOVOLTAIC PANELS to receive the energy being beamed from the ground. That is a patheticaly slow method of energy conversion considering the payload still has to receive the equivalent energy of being accelerated to several miles/second!
There's a simple and really OBVIOUS idea that has been on the drawing board for at least a decade. It would involve a heck of a lot less work, be likely much simpler and cheaper, and be flat out cool.
Instead of building just a few lasers to beam the energy, lets make a whole bunch of them and use the latest electrically powered pulse laser technology being developed for the joint strike fighter. Our spacecraft is just a payload module with stabiliers BOLTED to a block of inert material. A very short and simple linear accelerator kicks the spacecraft about half a mile into the air, high enough for all the lasers spread across the industrial plant infrastructure to 'see' it.
Pulses of light vaporize the fuel in a sequence such that the shock wave of superheated vaporized gas is planar : basically a rocket engine without needing :
A nozzle pumps, combustion chambers, volatile fuel, electrical systems, elaborate control systems and sensors, just enormouse amounts of hardware gets taken out of the spacecraft and left sitting on the ground. Sure, there's a LOT more delicate hardware left sitting on the ground...WHERE IT BELONGS. The laser launch system would be designed for almost continuous duty, launching one capsule after another all day long. Spacecraft would be MUCH simpler, and with a lower cost of launch could be made MUCH more cheaply as well. After all, why bother with all the checks and cleanrooms if you can send 10-20 Mars probes for the price of what 1 costs today? No need to shave every gram if launches only cost about 20 bucks a kilogram instead of about 1-10 thousand.
And finally, after testing this laser launch system by actually launching thousands and thousands of missions to find out what the REAL failure rate is, and gradually scaling it up to launch bigger, but just as simple, spacecraft we use it for manned missions as well.
Seems like a no-brainer approach. I think the current planning for space travel is like trying to transport goods by horse and buggy across the continent on a massive scale when the same money could be used to install a railroad.
A tower that long could also fall on us.
No, they'll only make things worse in this case!
The secret US DOD squadron of flying pigs with lasers beams on their heads can take care of the "space elevator issue" once and for all; unless they're from this important distracted by the shiny tinfoil hats!
Do your patriotic duty; shed your tinfoil hats NOW!
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Additionally, the space elevator is expected to be very tall, taking riders several miles above the surface of the earth where, experts say, they could fall to a harrowing death. And if that's not bad enough -- it turns out that if the earth were to suddenly stop spinning, the entire space elevator could come crashing back down to the ground!!! I, for one, will from now on refer to them only as "Space Elevators of Death!" in order to raise awareness about this potentially leathal issue!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I didn't need /. to tell me that riding in an elevator that is climbing a 200,000km long ribon cable anchored to the sea floor and connected to a counter weight in geosynchronous orbit, while being shot at by a frickin'laser beam from the earth the whole time ostensibly to "power" the apparatus could be lethal. It goes without saying, mate!
Given that gravity won't be nearly as much of an issue at that altitude, a combination of shielding including water or metal (likely both) and increased speed seems to me to be the simplest route. All things being equal, that's probably the better solution.
We've made it through the Van Allens before, we'll figure out how to do it again.
And, anything can kill you, really, so long as it's an action. Space elevators aren't lethal in and of themselves. Organ failure due to blunt trauma, rapid depressurization, radiation poisoning; these can kill you. An elevator cannot. It's an inanimate object. Well, unless you're on acid. Then you're on your own, kid.
If all my base are belong to you and I attempt to retrieve my base, does that mean I'm freebasing?
FTW (from the wiki)
this article is poorly researched and inaccurate, the Van Allen belts have been taken into consideration before this, using payloads or various light elements as shielding, bremsstrahlung (this type of radiation) can be avoided.
Non-Issue
n/t
Personally, I'd be more concerned about falling back to Earth. Having an hour to think about what it feels like before smacking the ground at terminal velocity sounds like blast to me.
I don't have time to make a sig
Kim Stanley Robinson did a great job describing the (literal!) impact a falling elevator cable would have, albeit on Mars, in his Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars). The turning of the planet causes the cable to wind around the equator; the forces involved have the cable falling so far beyond supersonic speed that all but the most temperature-resistant ingredients are incinerated by atmospheric resistance. Great trilogy, worth the read!
Yes, radiation is OCCASIONALLY an issue, when the sun starts to get excited, so you have a shielded area that you restrict movement to when that happens. The sun telegraphs it's bad moves, generally giving us more than enough time to get to shelter. It is what they do on every Space Station ever created, and there is no reason they could not do the same on the elevator.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
While there might be some small benefit, it would not be as large as you think. Gravitational acceleration is still very significant at 500km up.
Acceleration toward an object due to gravity is given by g = GM/r^2, where G = 6.67e-11 is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the object, and r is the distance from the center of mass of the object. The mass of the earth is about 5.97e24 kilograms, and its mean radius is about 6.37e6 meters. Thus, the acceleration due to gravity at the planet's surface is approximately (6.67e-11 * 5.97e24) / (6.37e6^2) = 9.81 m/s^2.
Go up another measly 500 kilometers, and your new acceleration is approximately (6.67e-11 * 5.97e24) / (6.87e6^2) = 8.44 m/s^2. That's only a 14% difference; a very noticeable reduction, but not enough to have significant savings. Your rocket fuel wouldn't go much farther at all, at least when the goal of the space elevator is to reduce cargo costs by orders of magnitude.
Look - it aint rocket surgery is it?
Question: will passing through van allen belts without shielding cause harm to humans?
Answer: Yes.
Next time you need a stupid answer to a stupid question, I'll provide it free!
I simply can't understand why this would be news of ANY type! I mean, come ON - if it wasn't DEAD OBVIOUS, what would be?
So, the solution is to ensure that humans travel inside a tank, which is surrounded by 50cm of water, or 30 cm of polyethylene.
BIG HAIRY DEAL!
1) Take clean water UP.
2) Bring dirty water DOWN.
3) RINSE.
4) REPEAT.
5) Profit.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Get those shields up before we hit the Van Allen belts or we're all doomed!
Which is a fine single malt scotch, AFAIK ...
The van Allen belts are where the ionic flow of the sun intersects the magnetic field of the earth. The charged particles spin around as they would in a cyclotron. This hints at a possible solution.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we use the stray field of the drive mechanism going up the elevator to produce a magnetic bubble to influence those charged particles to go elsewhere in the local vicinity. Now we have the shielding that we might need. Also, they are probably light elements, like hydrogen.
Just blue-skying it here for a minute, those charges look like a potential magento-hydro-dynamic generator -AND- if we collect the hydrogen, we *might* be able to make water along the way.
Clearly, I have made no calculations so this is highly suspect; interesting, but suspect. Still ...
This is progress?
Everyone knows exposure to this radiation is nearly always benign...in fact, 75% of the people exposed to this radiation found it to be beneficial. The remaining 25% were less pleased, apparently having super-strength and near invulnerability does not make up for the fact that one's body is covered with rocks and people call you a "Thing."
My other sig is extremely clever...
it's that I'll get the short straw when it comes to mutation and be the one whose tissues mutate into an orange, rocky material.
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
If you eat the pizza you destroy your shield!
And just where do you think you're going to get pizza for the return journey. No, my friend, these are critical protective pizzas, not for eating. In space, there are no wood-burning ovens. Or mozarella.
Order the pizzas frozen from Domino's so you won't be tempted to actually eat them.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
at 200Km/hour would it not take less than 2 hours to reach outerspace?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Its already probably a trillion dollars give or take an order of magnitude -- what is another 2%? (But don't worry, kids, after we have it we'll find a way to get a trillion dollars out of it! I mean, we could sell tickets to the space hotel for like a billion dollars each! Then we'd only need to find a thousand sucker billionaires and a space hotel!)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
And the downward trip is easy - drop capsules with parachutes are a lot simpler and more reliable than fancier rockets like the space shuttle, and you'd want to keep a bunch of them around for emergencies anyway.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Seriously, why humans? Get your fix riding your local space tower / space needle ride.
The problem it solves is CHEAP transport into space for cargo. NOT people. robots will be better than humans for nearly all space work. It will be a long time before we NEED human space transport.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
In 5 more years, due to climatic change there will be no Alen Belt or whatever ...
then it will be safe to ... leave earth
C'mon, even my Mom could figure this one out.
From TFA: "speeds of 200 km/hr"d ex.html)
From TFA: "Days of radiation exposure"
From NASA, current orbital altitude of the ISS: 334 Km
(http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/in
From TFA "Altitude" of the Van Allen belts 1000-20000 Km
According to my limited math skills, using the elevator from Earth to LEO (i.e. to dock with the ISS) would result in no exposure to the Van Allen belts. If one desired to go from the ISS to the moon, a relatively small, cheap rocket could be used.
I find your ideas interesting and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Gee, really? You think there might be some fear, uncertainty, and doubt associated with freaking space elevators? An idea that's currently still firmly in the realm of science fiction?
FUD refers to the tactic of corporate propaganda with no technical merit. When it's substantiated (as it is with any formula along the lines of "common convenience" + "freaking space"), it's not FUD.
sic transit gloria mundi
...if your space-elevator rise lasts 4 or more hours.
releasing such magnitude of powerful lasers into the sky - and more powerful ones would come forth once the industry takes off. we will be releasing much powerful energy in form of light, and henceforth heat in its immediate area. many things from bird migration routes to local climate patterns, even very high altidude atmoshperic streams might get affected. the latest of these is the most serious matter.
Read radical news here
As the elevator ascends, it will be gaining angular momentum. For this to work you would need a lateral thrust. Where is that going to come from?
"375,984,751,127th floor: Menswear, sportswear, and lethal doses of radiation."
The current design? I'm sorry folks, but it's a wee bit early to criticize designs that aren't even designed yet. Right now space elevators are something of a "Hey, imagine if we could..." type of thing. It's not exactly a touchstone piece of journalism that could save lives or anything when we don't even possess the technology to construct such a thing.
This isn't even a new idea. I remember reading concerns about this a LONG time ago, and people were already coming up with ideas for it. Change the title of the article to "Ignorance about space elevators can be lethal" and quit wasting our time. I figured this would've been something interesting about how it'd effect the environment or a theory on what would happen if it broke or something (besides the obvious)
Negative. Assuming 100% effiency in converting electricity to kinetic energy, it takes ~4KWhrs to accelerate a kg to orbital velocity. If you have to take your fuel with you, you have to accellerate the fuel as well leading to an exponentially increasing ammount of fuel required to move the final mass. Using the space elevator and electromechanical "lifters" you don't take any fuel and electric motors are ~85% efficient.
I don't believe that energy needed rises exponentially(with height). I'd rather bet on the 3rd power of the height.Hey don't blame me, IANAB
"Space elevators had been planned to be anchored on an ocean platform near the equator, with the other end tied to a counterweight in space" A quote from the article, Isn't every thing in space weightless? What am I missing..
Actually, unlike other get-rich-in-space-schemes like tourism, a Space Elevator would be a major revenue generator, and not just a novelty. With the ability to safely lift tons of material into space on a daily basis, a lot of industries would become viable: mining, solar power satellites, regular interplanetary travel, zero-gravity factories, non-trivial space stations, etc. Oh yeah, tourism too.
Space right now is like the Wild West before the invention of the train. You can send a few people out there, sure, but it'll never really be settled in any non-trivial way until there is a bulk-shipping infrastructure in place.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Ionizing radiation is just awful on chemical bonds and crystal structures. After all, it works by knocking electrons or whole atoms loose from the nice, bound states they were in. That's how the radiation damages you, too -- it's just that biological systems are a whole lot more sensitive to being scrambled, than are bulk objects like bricks or (to pick a not-so-random example) bundles of carbon nanotubes.
High doses of radiation do strange things to materials -- increase cross-links, damage coherent structure, add skillions of crystal defects. If you lower a nice flexible, white piece of polyethelene plastic into a nuclear reactor for a while, you are liable to pull out a yellow, harder, brittle, fragile piece that has the same overall shape.
If I understand the nature of the space elevator right, each particle "hit" would tear apart a carbon nanotube, gradually shortening the average tube length and weakening the whole bulk structure. I'm sure someone has thought of this effect, but we haven't seen much of it in the space elevator press packets.
Dude, I always have the urge to take a leak when I get into an elevator (must be the gravity or something.) I can't imagine being in there for *days*! Also, are these things going to have any kind of ventilation? There's always that guy who has to turn it into a dutch oven from time to time. That's gonna seem like one long-ass ride...
Let me get this straight...
You want to take the tallest, most dangerous structure ever built, and fire terawatt laser beams at it from all over the continent?
Hmmm... what could possibly go wrong here?
Why would I travel at only 200KPH? How about 2000Km:h, on an engineered track, through the near-vacuum past 100-200Km out? Space is an acceleration game, so really I'm concerned only with how long I have to spend under the crush. At 1G, I could get to 2Mm:h (Megameters per hour) in under 1 minute. 15 minutes through the atmosphere, another minute up to 2Mm:h, then a couple of hours to the top (another 1.5G deceleration for a minute) once friction is immaterial. At 1.5G all the way up halfway, then slowing 1.5G the rest of the way, that's 2 minutes to the top. I don't know if I'd want to fry on a daily commute, but why live with Earth limits when we're leaving the Earth?
The other solution they're not considering in that article is to engineer the elevator car to travel inside the cable, rather than outside. Use the mass necessary for tensile strength for radiation shielding, too.
These are 30 second solutions. I'm sure the next decades before we actually deploy the spacehooks will find lots of better solutions.
--
make install -not war
Why not try what works for the earth? Any one know if we can generate an electromagnetic field powerful enough to deflect cosmic rays to the extent that it would make the danger no more worse than normal everyday exposer we get here on the ground due to the Earth's natural field? I was just wondering becasue it will take loads of power to drive the elevator. Why not use that large EM field to help protect the occupants? That field coupled with physical shielding should work out great. Just a thought. :)
... Or given SUPERPOWERS!
You guys can't fool me, I saw that documentary about those people on the space station. I wanna be the one who can be all stretchy!
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I would just like to point out, that when and/or if we have the technology to build and maintain a 35,000+ km space elevator, I'm sure we'll be able to handle some radiation. Heck, we already have far more experience shielding radiation than we do building cables past geosynchronous orbit. I'm really not seeing the monumental challenge here.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
I'm kind of surprised that the forward-thinking, technically-oriented, mensa-qualified slashdot crowd would be so negative about this (not universally, I realize.) I would have thought you would have taken a "we can solve this, go for it" approach instead of screaming it can't be done. For a positive approach, see: http://www.liftport.com/ Buy the book. Read the stories. Check out what's been done so far. It's just a matter of time. Naysayers will be left on earth.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
They might have time to adjust. Apologies to South Park.
Wouldn't building an elevator at the poles eliminate radiation?
That is an interesting point. Plenty of current satellites spend large amounts of time in the radiation belts, and designing space hardware to withstand that is essentially a solved problem. However, it does add yet another constraint to the design of the actual elevator material. Possiblily the elevators will have to be temporary, with each one used to raise its replacements before it degrades.
there must be some way to absorb the radiation and convert it into power to lift the capsules. That would solve 2 problems at once - shielding the passengers, and providing lifting power.
The Van Allen Belt issue has long been known about. This is why most proposals are to send cargo only up on the space elevator initially. As others have pointed out, there are fairly simple solutions to this issue that have been proposed. But, the Van Allen Belt issue is such a minor issue compared to the fact that we need to build a cable that's 100 km long and has a strength 10 times greater than kevlar, that it makes it pretty silly to even think about this. This is like the Wright brothers being concerned about the sound barrier and it's effects on air craft before they even got off the ground.
No Sigs!
New Scientist: the Weekly World News of science reporting.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
We've actually known about the radiation problem for quite some time. We plan to use it on /. commenters who have at any time posted anything about elevator music, pushing all million buttons, or people farting in the elevator.
Both conventional rockets and laser launch schemes work by heating something up to push it out the back of the spacecraft. Laser launch's main advantage is that you can push stuff out faster with the laser than with a chemical rocket, so you need less propellant.
By contrast, with a space elevator you're pushing against the elevator. No reaction mass required at all. Much, much, much more efficient.
In any case, how much do you think a set of lasers capable of aiming multiple megawatts of power into a miniscule area many kilometres away costs?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The solution is to evolve. All we need to do is keep sending people up there, and eventually somebody will survive, and they can continue the species.
"Space elevators had been planned to be anchored on an ocean platform near the equator, with the other end tied to a counterweight in space" A quote from the article, Isn't every thing in space weightless? What am I missing..
v itation
Apparently high school physics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_universal_gra
Hmmm, Earth is in space. Why isn't it weightless?
they aren't the same since sammy gone away
My gawd! How will we ever get to teh moon!?
Oh wait...
--
BMO
The Van Allen Belts themselves are created by our magnetic poles, which may be unreliable
The elevator ribbon itself may be a great source of electrical power, which could be dissipated quite effectively
by powering magnetic sheildin. It may be a real case of synergy?
ceci n'est pas un 'sig'
maybe i'm missing something (or am just incredibly ahead of my time, destined, however, to die in obscurity) but why can't we exploit the vacuum of space, u know, to suck stuff from the surface up there... to the stars... ?
'n can't we harness that radiation as a power source of some sort (luminescing pickels would be an adequate proof of concept).
eh???
But they said, "Of current design" - conveniently ignoring people solving the problem.
Of course they're also missing the simple fact the radiation belt is of absolutely no threat to passengers travelling the mighty couple of inches "of current design" space elevators have achieved.
These are likely the same people that freaked over the dangers of di-hydrous oxygen.
Everyone here's talking about the space elevator as if the big problem is going to be technological, sure it is just now, but there's another fundamental problem with space elevators, the economics simply don't make sense. They would need a huge launch rate to cover the capital costs, interest etc, but they have a 24,000 mile journey to launch.
Now, blasting objects into space with a laser sounds like a great idea, all the energy stays on the ground, very high launch rate possible...
Deleted
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/radiation_be lts_020916.html
Phase 1: Build Space Elevator Phase 2: ....
Phase 3: Profit!!
A combination of magnets and charged rods can deflect nearly all of this radiation, which is really just solar wind particles bouncing between the earths north and south poles. Nasa has worked out the basics for satellite protection. The amount that then gets through is only a little more than twice the level you get living on very high mountains. People have bene doing that for millenia.
Plan on any passenger car being equiped with protective measures. The bigger problem is boredom on a week long trip up the tether. I suspect that with improvements, we will see cargo launched by tether, and people by rocket. Like now, we see cargo moved by rail, and people by airliner.
Now,let's go find something worth worrying about.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Am I missing something here? The idea has been proposed for space travel, simply generate a strong electro-magnetic field around the elevator as it passes through the radiation belt. Presumably, power isn't an issue for a space elevator.
Ok, now I know nothing about this but I'm going to ask anyway 'cause I'm curious. How much energy is out there in these belts? Is there anyway to harness this energy and is there enough for usefull work, like protecting the occupants or perhaps increasing the speed of the climber? S.
You'd gain only a little, since the hard part of reaching orbit is getting up to orbital speed. There'd be some efficiency gain from not having to punch through atmosphere and a little more from optimizing nozzle design without worrying about sea level backpressure, but nothing huge.
In exchange, you'd have all the safety issues of carrying explosives on the most expensive structure ever built.
When I read this article, I had to laugh. The article is written as if this is a major consideration of the PROJECT , when it really isn't. First of all, we don't send too many people into space, but we send lots of stuff into space, so something like this would never stop it. Secondly, and more importantly, space elevators are fifty years or more away.
It's really just a way of exciting teenagers into thinking the space elevator is a certainty that's going to happen in a few years or so. Interesting, but irrelevent.
Ed Barbar, President and General Manager, Furnit USA
Can a craft using an electrically charged aluminum outer shell (for propulsion) be sufficient to repel radiation? Lifter Project http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/lifters.htm Now, if we can only get some super capacitors to power the craft.
When someone says taxpayer or consumer, they really actually mean taxpayer or consumer.
Not all taxpayers and consumers are citizens, so to say citizen when they meant taxpayer or consumer would be inaccurate.
If space starts at 100K, it means that at 200K/h, it would be half an hour.
The short says: "passengers would spend several days"????
I guess that there is some typo.
No shit the Van Allen Belt will kill you. We haven't solved that issue and we certainly weren't able to solve it in 1969.
Believe it.
Serves em right for traveling in metric!
Doctors do Massage in Longview WA now, who knew?
Nah, it's no problem. They scouted out the whole underwater city before using it as the ground tether, and the surveyors reported that the giant sea monster is fast asleep.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
That's why we sent Laika, the first animal ever sent to space, to orbit around Earth in Sputnik II, on 3rd of November, 1957. Whatever happened to him, happens to human animals too. If he succesfully made it through Van Allen radiation belts, so could humans too. All it takes is a shielded elevator cabin mimicking at least the basics of what was shielding Laika. I propose if and when we get a space elevator, we sent Laika's great-great-great-....-great grandkid to commemorate the occasion, and call him Laika the MXXIV.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Space Elevators are a series of tubes.
Slow news day, eh guys?
The distance to geosynchronous orbit is about 36000km, so at that speed you'd need 180 hours, or more than a *week* for each direction of travel.
More likely is an order of magnitude higher speed, which also means an order of magnitude less radiation.
Well, what if we energized the tether? Run electicity through the tether to create an electromagnetic field, which would protect both the tether and the elevator from most of the radiation. Much simpler than shielding, and easier than beaming extra energy to the elevator and equiping the elevator with an electromagentic shield. Depending on how you form the carbon, you can make it quite conductive.
A recursive sig
Can impart wisdom and truth
Call proc signature()
We require more vespene gas!
To add insult to injury, passengers will have to listen to smooth jazz renditions of "Unchained", "Right Now", and "Why Can't This Be Love" while being bombarded with lethal radiation. Oh, that said Allen. Nevermind.
If only there was some way we could run a really long cable up to the the climber...
Karma: Bad. (As in Good?)
What in the hell do we need a space elevator for in the first place?! Oh so we can get little shrink wrapped bags of dried up crap to our brave astronauts doing studies on how clipboards react to spinning around in zero G. Or maybe so millionares and stupid idiots can go visit the horrifying endless black abyss that is the universe we inhabit.
The only non useless aspect of space is it's a good place to put satellites. Even then we get astronauts complaining that if they run into one they'll be killed. I say good! Astronauts are all jerks anyway. We'd be better off.
Has no one looked into how to withstand not minutes but DAYS of Muzak?
tone
tone
How did they find out? How many scientis died going up on the elevator?
Thank you, the handwaving makes sense to me.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Air resistance.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It all comes to naught in any case. I've worked with Laine before, and he's a total idiot. The main thing that irritates me about the whole space elevator deal is that our tax money is going to this scammer.
Let's review our physical forces, here.
Has anyone mentioned that there's a point where the curves of space-time (gravity) and cetrifugal forces would cross?
Considering that GSO is approximately six times the diameter of the Earth itself, there is a point where the gravitaional pull from Earth's mass is countered by the mass of the rotating object that is tethered to the spinning Earth! So, if the cable is supposed to handle 10- to 20-ton payloads into space, how heavy is the cable itself?
How do we maintain a geosynchronous rotation for such a massive contraption before ever reaching GSO? Our other poster made it sufficiently clear that anything moving that slow around LEO will just come crashing back down.
Got a ceiling fan?
(Any relatively light-weight item will do, as long as it's heavier than the string.)
Right away, you'll notice that the cork will begin to soar about the room; given that you've cleared a path for it. (Watch for mummie's good China! Move that snow-globe, it's a collectible!)
The point here is that the cork flies outward, doesn't it? (it would fly higher in a vacuum, given air-resistance on the string and cork) Same goes for any tethered mass. I estimate that somewhere 'round the upper part of LEO is where you'll find that centrifugal forces will take over. The fan moves a lot slower, too. What does that spell for the Earth's spinning core should we ever get such a massive project underway?
Granted, there hasn't really been anything to compare with this sort of physics experiment... short of small-scale models. (see above) Even so, there's little account for relative unknowns; such as primary physical forces (gravitational vs. centrifugal vs. atmospheric) and environmental hazards. (materials expansion/contraction, physical stresses, a full spectrum of radiation exposure and, of course, space debris)
"We'll use nanotubes!" // "The cable will be tapered!" // "It will be made of diamond filaments!"
Feh.
Frankly, the whole idea is crocked. Where's the hybrid-engine space vehicles already? Where's our gauss-cannon-style space catapult? How is this getting the spotlight when there's perfectly good research in areas of anti-gravity propulsion, bifield-browning effect and yet-unknown physical forces? Why is there no news of the vortex thruster?
(Don't cry to me about not having links here. You can Google them yerself! Learn a little!)
Space elevator lethal? HA! I'd guarantee it! You'd be lucky the Hand of God doesn't come right out of the cosmos with a pair of big, sharp scissors.
... and where's my Jet Pack?
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
I am wondering about the problem of the capsules having to catch up speed/lose speed while climbing/descending, this will cause them to pull along the earth's plane, perpendicular to the line. Effectively this pulls both the attachment on earth up and the counterweight down. I guess thats why they only move at a mere 200km/h, and is why the counterweight has to be such that the whole thing pulls on the earth a bit. Also wondering about how much fuel it takes to just thrust along the radiation belt. Or maybe make cargo going along the belt go slower, and make people-pods faster.
"Has anyone mentioned that there's a point where the curves of space-time (gravity) and cetrifugal forces would cross?"
// "The cable will be tapered!" // "It will be made of diamond filaments!""
Ok, you didn't mean it wasnt, but just to be clear: classical mechanics is more then good enough to discuss this.
"(it would fly higher in a vacuum, given air-resistance on the string and cork) "
yes, as the whole fan would spin faster in vacuum because there is less friction, the height of the cork depends only on gravity, distance from middle, rotation speed.
"The fan moves a lot slower, too. What does that spell for the Earth's spinning core should we ever get such a massive project underway?"
Yes, as we redistribute some of the earth mass outward, conservation of rotation impulse states that the earth will spin slower. EVER SO SLIGHTLY, seriously, we may not even be able to measure it. And for the record i mention we can measure some whether phenomena by measuring earths rotation. (and the atmosphere weighs just about nothing compared to planet)
"Granted, there hasn't really been anything to compare with this sort of physics experiment... short of small-scale models."
Computer simulations, plain back of the envelope estimations, more beefy calculations. Primary physical forces: perfectly covered. Environmental hazards not fully covered yet, but this is hardly the first time big undertakings have been done, with many unknowns. I doubt there will be atmospheric problems, the forces on the string are so much larger then earth winds can create. Also, it is only the first couple of 100km's.. More worrying is the space debri, but guess you could calculate whether the string can dodge those. (by, for instance sending waves along the string)
And we have a test spot, a space elevator on the moon is possible, using the (unstable, but stable if attached to moon with string) Lagrange point between earth and moon. (for which we actually already have sufficient strength materials)
"We'll use nanotubes!"
Its not like humanity has never changed the materials used in making stuff before. Latest development in materials show that required strengths may well be attainable.
"Space elevator lethal? HA! I'd guarantee it! You'd be lucky the Hand of God doesn't come right out of the cosmos with a pair of big, sharp scissors."
The tether is so light it will fall at a safe speed in air, and if it falls from space it will go so fast it will burn up. So it will only kill you if you're somewhere up the elevator. If it doesn't colapse you could die of poisonous materials its made of(but many products can do that already), or you could get a jolt of charge that has build up over the tether.
I am not saying the space elevator will ever be build, but quite frankly this is the same kind of criticism the Wright brothers, Columbus, and the Apollo project got. Imagined unability to predict or deal with, with things that in fact, are perfectly well predictable/solvable.
No air resistence.
There is nearly no air above 200km. Look it up. The scale on that picture is logirithmic! Please get your order of scales right before you claim you are right, the density of air goes down approximately exponentially with height.
That there was a joke, Son! A joke!
What are they teaching kids these days?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Wright Brothers heard, "It can't be done!" ...from concerned friends and envious/prideful colleagues.
The Wright Brothers prototyped their design and successfully tested it. The only risks were financial and the dangers were limited to the two brothers themselves. (and a handful of volunteers/friends) They succeeded.
Columbus heard, "It's impossible!" ...from the paranoid monarchy, court, the Church, and the ignorant masses.
Columbus found like-minded people, built his case, and successfully pleaded it to a semi-sympathetic ruler. (It doesn't hurt that there were some romantic ties.) In the end, the reigning powers saw fit to invest in his dream. They risked the financial burden, and only the adventurers under Columbus (ok... slaves, too) were at risk. They succeeded in ways they never could have imagined at the time... also failed in other ways, but that's another essay altogether.
NASA Scientists behind Mercury/Gemini missions (before Apollo) heard, "You'll fail!" ...from the ignorant masses and a global community that was afraid we'd get it done first. (U.S.S.R., for one)
NASA sallied forth, armed with new technology and a scientifically-sound principle. They approached it with a reasonable escalation of factors, had a few mistakes along the way, but in the end can be held as one of the "safest" Space Exploration Programs ever conceived. For those programs under NASA, it was an unquestionable success.
In aeronautics terms, I rate the "Space Elevator" as a "Spruce Goose"; it's a grand idea, and would be marvelous to behold, but the ump-teen factors of entropy and random disaster loom so closely that it appears doomed from the start. Furthermore, the potential of a mass-shift that could affect the Earth's own sidereal rotation (even if very slightly) presents a risk factor that can not be appropriately measured.
Think of it! Would our very forms of measuring time and the calendar year have to change because of this project? We can already confirm the length of a year to 1/1000 sec., yet a "very small change" would be a negligible difference?! Please!
If you're referring to the equilibrium of a Lagrangian point it's a safer idea, but still amounts to a tremendous challenge.
Calculating the Lagrangian point for Earth/Moon orbits means that it's relatively closer to the Moon than the Earth by a fuzzy factor of six. (still around 280,000km away from Earth) It may be possible, but how is it practical?
Now I'm no rocket scientist, but it may be a marginal (marginal) advantage to actually landing on the moon. In the ending cost-analysis, I believe it would take a while before such a delivery platform "pays for itself". Even then, you still need a reiable delivery system from Earth.
I find it interesting that you chose to (try and) pick-apart my contentions about this fanciful science-fiction, and yet completely ignored my mention of actual technologies in the midst of grassroots and only-slightly-sanctioned research.
A Vortex Thruster could make the propeller nearly obsolete as a form of propulsion.
Propulsion in the vacuum of space nearly always meant using some expelled substance to get moving; what if there was a previously undiscovered physical force that we could fully understand and har
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
I agree it is quite a massive undertaking compared to what the Wright brothers and Columbus did compared to the Apollo project i dont know.
..."
Note that I am not saying it is the best way of getting space exploration underway, just that it is probably a realistic one. Ofcourse, if something much better comes along it may be rendered obsolete. In that case, at least we would have spin off of the research needed to make the thing.
"... , but the ump-teen factors of entropy and random disaster loom so closely that it appears doomed from the start.
What? Huh? Don't use thermal physics without caution. It can make powerfull statements, which are then easily misinterpreted. Happily it stays in this sentence.
"Think of it! Would our very forms of measuring time and the calendar year have to change because of this project? We can already confirm the length of a year to 1/1000 sec., yet a "very small change" would be a negligible difference?! Please!"
The idea that the amount earth rotation slows down is enough to really affect us is totally bonkers.. At has been a long time since we actually measured time with the rotation of the earth. (atomic clocks, pulsars) The length of a day will change totally neglibly.(allthough we may be able to measure it) Probably less then wether effects dynamicly changing solid earths rotation.(Wind, going along with rotation=>solid earth rotates slower, and vice versa) And even if it was noticable, we can always squieze another day in a year somewhere. Get your orders of scale right.
Also, the way any spacecraft leaves earth will affect the earths impuls(moment), so if all the spacecraft left the earth along the rotation of the earth (which is easier), their thrust would push the earth to rotate more slowly, you think that will be a significant effect?
"Calculating the Lagrangian point for Earth/Moon orbits means that it's relatively closer to the Moon than the Earth by a fuzzy factor of six. (still around 280,000km away from Earth) It may be possible, but how is it practical?"
Didnt say it was practical, but a good test project for the real thing, its a lot cheaper. I think plain rockets or linear accelerators are better on the moon, practically.
"I find it interesting that you chose to (try and) pick-apart my contentions about this fanciful science-fiction, and yet completely ignored my mention of actual technologies in the midst of grassroots and only-slightly-sanctioned research."
You're right about this one, I probably should have mentioned. Honistly, I didnt notice, but if i did i wouldnt want to expand the discussion to ideas that are somewhere between might work, works but is ignored somehow, and totally useless. Maybe i should look in to them more.
Btw the vortex thruster (if it actually is better)may replace yet engines, but propelors wont be replaced, because of the same reason yet engines havent fully replaces them. That is, propelors can move more air at lower speeds, which is more efficient. (at higher speeds they simply dont work anymore, and give to much resistence)
I havent looked through all your grassroots propulsion technologies, but I probably electromagnetic propulsion using Burkhard Heim's theory of gravity/electromagnetism is be one of them. I am hoping to learn that theory once, I heard that it isnt properly disproven by experiment yet, so it may be true. (I am physics student, one of my classes right now is General Relativity) I am very sceptical about people claiming that they have actual flying things based on the principle, because it may be a totally other effect. And if it worked, scientist would be happy to devise proper experiments.(and get famous)
PS weird, can find his theory on the wiki article.
Where's the hybrid-engine space vehicles already?
Still in R&D, apparently.
Where's our gauss-cannon-style space catapult?
Still trying to figure out how to avoid burning up in earth's atmosphere while not causing every electronic device within 10 miles from exploding from the magnetic pulse.
How is this getting the spotlight when there's perfectly good research in areas of anti-gravity propulsion, bifield-browning effect and yet-unknown physical forces?
I guess they're still unknown, including the bifield-browning effect.
Why is there no news of the vortex thruster?
Latest news: it's been turned into a vacuum cleaner. When it's not being used to burn down garages, that is.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
I thought you thought air resistence was a problem. I am pretty sure that a rocket for those 100km's could still be quite a problem, they only have 20 tonnes, and that includes all the crew supporting systems.
I'm still wondering where your facts are...
Have you ever tried "putting the brakes" on a planet? Can you honestly say that it's not possible without inter-stellar technology or small-moon-size stations? If you're going to propose theories, try not to stomp-out those presented by others. I have a good theory for you; Jericho. Using nothing but the sound of horns, the Israelites were able to crumble the fortress. The validity of such a force is proven by seismology studies and research by... who else... Nikola Tesla. Can we prove it happened? No. Is there evidence to support it? Yes. That's why it's a theory.
So how far-fetched is this idea; that a centrifugal mass-displacement on the order of hundreds of metric tons, (remember to include the weight of the tether itself) spinning at a distance further than six times the Earth's own diameter and providing a centripetal force that could literally lift small towns out of the ground, is in any way insignificant?
I must now remark on technical foibles...
"solid earth", eh? Stop skipping your Geology! The "solid" part (crust) is less than 1% of the Earth's mass! Even if you speak of the solid planetary core (still theoretical), which has nothing to do with the atmosphere whatsoever, then you're still neglecting the egg-shell nature of the crust or what an asymmetrical force might do to the inner balance.
Cheeky! I would actually give you the same advice, along with your orders of magnitude. (carry the "1 x 10^23", please) Stop abusing the grey matter, it will bite you in the tuckus!
However violent any atmospheric disturbance may be, it does not change the fact that it also is part of the mass of the Earth itself. Since it is a gaseous/vapor form, it lacks essential density to have any effect whatsoever on Earth's momentum. We're all moving at the same speed here on Earth; the clouds, the rocks and the sky. I watched Bugs Bunny too, but even I know you can't get a boat moving by breathing on the sails. (no matter how hard you blow)
If you're speaking of sun-dials and ancient temples, I would have to agree. I would however stipulate that it is the very rotation of the Earth (the diurnal cycle) that defines "time" on it. A day is not 24 hours long because we felt that it had to be more than 23, it is 24 hours long because it breaks the diurnal cycle down into manageable units.
You see, the use of pulsar emissions or excited quartz molecules or the vibration of electrons only provides the most precise means of measuring our "diurnal units". I postulate that the Earth will always have 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute; no matter how long the actual days, hours or seconds may be.
What I'm predicating is that a change—ever so slight—in Earth's rotation will likely cause an entirely new chronological era. (perhaps to be referred to as "BSE" and "ASE"; or before/after Space Elevator) The calendar would, in fact, "shrink" to accommodate the slightly-longer days, if it changes at all. (maybe it would eliminate the leap-year, or extend it to every seven years?) The growing discrepancy of the actual diurnal phenomenon and the state of modern chronology will have to be re-sync'ed, and on a global scale. A boon for the timepiece and calendar-printing industries to be sure,
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
I must cop to a typo in my post... it's not "bifield-browning" effect, but biefeld-brown effect. Archaic terminology calls such vehicles, Ionocrafts. Granted, the idea has been around for a while, but it is stalled and isn't developing much further. (new materials, insulators, conductors, EM freq's, etc. --even NASA admits that there's something strange about it.)
They found a much-better use for tinfoil, anyway.
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
"If you're going to propose theories, try not to stomp-out those presented by others"
/(6.3*10^24))=1+12*43*10^-12=1+4*10^-12
Ahum, big thing in science is stomping out theories that arent correct.
"So how far-fetched is this idea; that a centrifugal mass-displacement on the order of hundreds of metric tons, (remember to include the weight of the tether itself) spinning at a distance further than six times the Earth's own diameter and providing a centripetal force that could literally lift small towns out of the ground, is in any way insignificant?"
I should've shown the math the first time.. Guess I owe it to you. Very well, let me show what i mean with getting your scales(orders of size) right. I*w=L=constant impulse moment, with w rotation speed in radians/time. The I before the elevation is I_pre=M*R^2/12 and after I_aft=(M-m)*R^2/12+m*r^2 with R radius of earth, r radial distance of end-station of elevator.(about geostationairy orbit) M is mass of earth, m is mass of station. (ignoring the thether, but that will increase the effect of slowing the earth) Let calculate the factor the earth will slow down, using L=I_pre*w_pre=I_aft*w_aft, so that is:
w_aft/w_pre=I_aft/I_pre=((M-m)*R^2/12+m*r^2)/(M*R^ 2/12)
Now the mass of the station is, uhm lets say m=10^12kg=100 MegaTonnes (grossly overestimated), and M=6.3*10^24. Now, R=6.3*10^6m and r=4.2*10^7m. Bleh now the annoying part of filling em in. M-m=6.3*10^24-10^12kg=6.3*10^24, doh. so
aft/w_pre=((M-m)*R^2/12+m*r^2)/(M*R^2/12)=12*((M-m )/12+m*(r/R)^2)/M=(6.3*10^24 +12*10^12*(4.2*10^7m/6.3*10^6m)^2 )/6.3*10^24=
(1 +12*10^12*(6.6)^2
You think we will have trouble with losing 4*10^-12 of the day? We would have to add a day every 1 bilion years or so. You could put ALL machinery made by man on the end of the elevator, and still not have any real effect. Oh ye, if you enter your value 100*10^3kg it becomes more like 1+10^-15.
I also re-say my comment that traditional rockets also have (equally neglible) effects on earths rotation.
The point is that you underestimate earth size, a person is to a fly what the earth is to the entire humanity+all their equipment+biomass. (nah, the earth is bigger than that)
"Cheeky! I would actually give you the same advice, along with your orders of magnitude. (carry the "1 x 10^23", please) Stop abusing the grey matter, it will bite you in the tuckus!"
Don't have that 10^23, have a 10^24kg, 10^12kg, 10^6 and 10^7 though.
""solid earth", eh? Stop skipping your Geology! The "solid" part (crust) is less than 1% of the Earth's mass! Even if you speak of the solid planetary core (still theoretical), which has nothing to do with the atmosphere whatsoever, then you're still neglecting the egg-shell nature of the crust or what an asymmetrical force might do to the inner balance."
Glass is also fluid, it is all in what approximation you should use in different cases. You wouldn't say earth is a fluid standing on it, but also the surface is fluid, in a sense. (although less viscous then the mantel) Indeed, this is again orders of (time/force)scale. Anyway, the end of the elevator doesn't have to attach to the earth itself, as long as it can lie (or float) on top of it.
"providing a centripetal force that could literally lift small towns out of the ground"
Well ye, it could lift small towns if the tether was strong enough, but the point is that you balance the thing well, or it will either snap the string and fly away, or crash into the earth. (the end station could end up in eliptical orbit) The balance slightly pulls on the ground station, this is nessesary for stability, and because the cargo pulls the space station down. (the way a vertical string pulls on both ends if you grab the middle and pull it horizontally, because of impulse moment of the cariages)
"On top of that, what effect will the stresses on the Earth's crust have on the molten core? Will the Earth's own magnetic fields grow or shrink? Will the pol
Well, I'm glad I came back and checked on this thread. I have heard of the Beifeld-Brown effect, but apparently the power to thrust ratio is exhorbitant. I've heard of other effects involving spinning superconductors, but the problem is the same. You could theoretically get a certain level of thrust from throwing heavy wrenches towards the ground, but I doubt you'd ever achieve lift-off, and that seems to be the way of research into Beifeld-Brown lifters.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Good for you... and your analogy is quite succinct.
For the analogy, I'll color in a bit more:
If nothing else, I guess that liftoff would come about by the sheer pile of wrenches on the ground. (I know: ha... ha... ha... :P)
... but doesn't that also describe current rocket-propulsion systems? Whether a chemical reaction, (stored-energy chain-reaction) or the ionization of molecules (steady, energy-conversion reaction) the effect is roughly the same.
It's not necessarily a strict Newtonian equation; the model also has to appreciate aerodynamics and fluid displacement forces.
After all that; consider that we're not going to build ships of balsa, tinfoil and corona-wire. The "lifters" are a general proof-of-concept experiment and make a great science fair exhibit. The REAL benefit of the technology is a hidden potential that—to my knowledge—isn't being thoroughly explored. (the main gist of my posts)
I never said it was a ready-to-implement technology, and I think the research still has a long way to go. Personally, it seems to be a revolution waiting to happen. Everyone is entitled to disagree with that. If I have any point to make here, it is that obvious avenues of research are being overlooked in favor of the incredibly terrestrial concept of "elevators".
The Biefeld-Brown concept, however, has taken flight in other ways.
I'm off to other threads... this is bound to come up again! Bon chance, mon amis!
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
Here's what your glorious Christian leader Ted Haggard had to say about Arrogance. Preacher, heal thyself.
I'd say it's pretty arrogant of you to proclaim that gays are sinners, and to condemn the "homosexual lifestyle". Especially since you pay to suck gay hooker cock an snort crystal meth yourself.
Arrogant Christians who think they know what's right for other people, and like to tell people how to run their lives and call them names and say they're going to hell, should Shut the Fuck Up.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
When all they think of me is as a Consumer, I am SUPPOSED to do nothing but consume.
When all they think of me is a Taxpayer, I am supposed to pretty much do nothing but supply them with money and re-elect them.
I am all the above, but I'm not specifically going to consume or just pay taxes. Consumer is a SUPERSET of the other two and
all too often you're viewed as being in one of the subsets mentioned. You apparently don't understand that distinction.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Can I not post right this week? Sigh... "Consumer" was SUPPOSED to be "Citizen" there!
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas