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Space Rope Trick Experiment Goes Awry
Tjeerd writes "An experiment that envisaged sending a parcel from space to Earth on a 30-kilometre tether fell short of its goal yesterday when the long fibre rope did not fully unwind, Russian Mission Control said.
It was intended to deliver a spherical capsule, called Fotino, attached to the end of the tether back to Earth — a relatively simple and cheap technology that could be used in the future to retrieve bulkier cargoes from space.""
I climbed up the rope and hid in my secret magic room until I felt rested. Then, I climbed down and did 10d4 damage to Fotino.
The reason for the problem wasn't immediately clear. "It could be that the tether got stuck," Lyndin said.
An experiment that envisaged sending a parcel from space to Earth on a 30-kilometre tether fell short of its goal yesterday when the long fibre rope did not fully unwind
So that's how UPS plans on routing packages in the future. Perhaps they realize that the only way to achieve more damage per parcel is to actually drop them from outer space.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
But, Planet Express is usually so reliable!
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...really long enough? One would have thought that to drop something 150km one would need a 150km rope? ...and something to reduce friction as the probe gets towed along the ground at 17,000 kilometres per hour....
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
This project hangs on a thread. I don't know if they'll be able to pull it off or knot. They have to make sure they don't get tied up on this setback. It really could unravel any day.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
wouldn't there be an equal and opposite reaction pulling the space part down to the earth part?
...string theory.
Thank goodness it only had to do with ropes hauling things. For a second I thought that the Ruskies were practicing the Rope trick effect for battle in outer space.
In the years since the publication of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, alternative models for space elevators have been proposed that would not have the elevator falling down upon the Earth were it severed. See the Wikipedia article on the subject, as this is a frequently asked question.
The rope did not only not unwind fully, it started going back into the spacecraft. Representatives from the manufactuer of the rope-unwinding mechanism, Duncan YY Heavy Industries, were unavailable for comment.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
The other half of the space exploration on a string program previously failed, when Russian Scientists discovered they could only push the space probe approximately 3 cms with the fibre.
If they bothered to do some research they would've found out that the way to do this is to sit in a cloth, put on a turban, and play a flute in front of a basket with a rope coiled in it until it went up into the sky. Then you have a little kid climb up it.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Managing big spools of line is surprisingly difficult. Oceanographers run into this all the time, as they try to lower a few miles of line into the ocean. The textile industry runs into it when they try to use very large spools so they can run machinery longer without splicing. Designing something to unspool 30Km of line under near-zero tension in zero G is non-trivial.
Here's a discussion of spool winding, if you're really interested. There are even companies that specialize in spool winding.
Just to kick on the bit that didn't uncoil and ride it all the way down, waving his cowboy hat.
HASTOL stands for Hypersonic Airplane Space Tether Orbital Launch. This was studied by NASA. We currently have a hard time with a winged craft that can make it to orbit. Space elevators also require "Unobtanium" with unattainably high tensile strengths. But if we combine the two, we get something which is both technically feasible and capable of dirt-cheap earth to orbit. Basically, have an aircraft capable of very high altitude, and about half orbital velocity rendevous with a rotating tether (Rotovator) that can take a cargo the rest of the way to orbit.
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More Cosmic Rope Tricks
> Seriously, get off this planet.
We're trying. STFU.
In Russia, they spend millions of dollars developing space cable to lower object from space. In America, we just wait for gravity to bring it down!
stuff |
In Soviet Russia, space rope tricks you. (Didn't want to leave ya hangin.)
Nevermore.
To say nothing of falling packages trailing 30-km-long super-strong ropes behind them, or lots of satellites with 30-km-long super-strong ropes getting tangled in each other.
One of the common observations about orbital collisions is that space is big, but by the time you start restricting yourself to practical orbits and orbital distances, and then deploying objects whose longest dimension is very long compared to its volume, it may not be so big after all.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Yeah, fair enough. I deserved that...
Everyone's lives aren't yours to fuck with, you pompous pricks.
Yeah, let's go back to the days when science didn't create problems like this so that we can all die of the plague as nature intended. You science types, how dare you think that you can continue to dicker in my affairs.
I'm outta here. I need to go chop wood for 12 hours a day so I don't freeze to death this winter.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
But the difficult bit is working out how to put Atlanta into orbit.
Why is this danger greater than the danger of getting hit by debris from an exploding space shuttle attempting reentry? Anyway, the tether would have extremely low density. If it for some strange reason did not burn or break because of the increased stress, it would probably fall to ground like a feather, if it even came down at all. It might just stay up there with the help of jet streams, like a kite.
In other words, the sci-fi authors don't know what they're talking about.
I'm not sure I get this one bit... In my mind I'm taking this to mean that a big ball will be let down from a satellite hanging on a 18 mile long cord that eventually clips off and falls to earth. Does this cord break up or give people the lashing of a lifetime? Even better could we anchor it on the ground and hook an elevator up to it?
Duh, that's why we're building a space elevator!
Yeah, germ theory, that polio vaccine, seat belts, and global communications (like the internet) are evil. Those bastards.
You seem to think that the scientists building these things are either suicidal or incompetent (unable to assess the risks). I'd argue the people doing this advanced, risky thinks are smarter than either of us.
As for a "selfish minority" endangering the rest of the populace - no. The major threats to human life are heart disease and cancer (>50% of deaths in the US), automobiles (40k deaths/year), and other humans (homicide/suicide/police/military). New methods of space travel/delivery? Not so much.
You seem to really hate science for some reason. Arguing a project is risky is one thing; namecalling is just blind prejudice.
People, please think about that, the next time you put off trimming your trees. It's not just about the neighborhood kids' kites anymore.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
No wonder my dog barks so much at the UPS truck, that thing must be a TARDIS to get all that in there. That also explains why they aren't interested in our quaint little rockets and space shuttles.
Since 30000 feet = 9.14km...
Ah wait...
This isn't NASA.
Nothing to see here, move along.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
According to the article at ESA:
YES2 was part of the Foton-M3 experiment, which concluded succesfully today.
Why the submitter didn't link to ESA is beyond me.
Interestingly enough, FedEx does/did have satellites. Why you ask? In the 1980's what was then Federal Express worked with the fax companies to develop the Group III fax standard. Every FedEx station got one of these large fax machine complete with hard drives and a plain paper printer. The theory was, people would go to a FedEx location, have their documents faxed to somewhere else, where, for a fee, a courier would deliver it to the recipient. Alternately, high value customers, like law firms, would get a smaller thermal machines for mostly sending to the FedEx station which would forward it to the target station for delivery. The satellites were used to route the data between stations w/o using a phone line. Remember, this was before the Internet, and most companies who used fax would buy them in pairs to send between sites. Almost no one else would have a fax machine that could talk to your fax machine.
Federal Express spend *billions* on the system, and it failed utterly. What happened was the same companies that helped them develop the Group III standard made their thermal machines cheap and interoperatable. Soon, everyone had them, and the thermal paper wasn't too bad. You could always photocopy it once if you wanted a more permanent record. That, and falling long distance phone prices made it overall cheaper to fax a document than to have FedEx do it for you.
To sum up, FedEx has already been to space. They are looking at it, and it's always way too expensive for any kind of regular service. (except some data)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Because that is definitely a DC 20 attempt.
What is this nonsense? Another bit of propaganda? The success of the experiment itself does not include the rope unwinding fully (or not unwinding fully). That's completely secondary. The success of the experiment depends only on the payload returning to Earth successfully. Period. If it returns, then the experiment is 100% successful. How much of the rope unwinds in this case makes absolutely no difference, especially taking into account the fact that no one knows yet how much is really necessary. That's actually one of the things they are trying to determine by this experiment in the first place.
Sure you could deliver a package anywhere in the world in a couple of hours, but it will take a few more hours to a few days to clear customs anyway.
(I had a _very_ bad experience shipping a friend's dog to Turkey recently... they decided to classify a spayed pet coon hound as an "exotic breeding animal" which required a few days of chasing around the proper forms, finding the proper officials to fill them out/stamp them, and of course all the taxes and fees. FIVE days in a box instead of the scheduled two. I suspect the forms were thrown out and the fees pocketed, and the dog officially admitted as a pet. Turkey is ranked 64 on the list of corrupt nations)
More music, fewer hits
Doesn't the low density requirement turn it into even harder to get unobtanium? The problem with space elevators isn't really the safety aspect--nobody who matters lives on the equator anyway. >:) The real problem is the materials science. We don't have anything close to strong enough to build this thing with yet, and I'm not as enthusiastic about carbon nanotubes being the solution as a lot of the people in the industry.
I read the internet for the articles.
I guess "I'm sick and tired of the freewheeling science geeks" was only against scientists, not science itself. My mistake.
Both vaccine research and automobiles were described as dangerous and useless in the beginning (Don't toy with nature, you're going to kill us all! Who needs horseless carriages when we have horses?), just as you describe black holes and space elevators now, so I figure it a valid comparison.
Someone's been watching too much of the SciFi channel...
If particle accelerators were able to create black holes, those black holes would be so minuscule as to dissipate immediately (we do not have anywhere near the level of technology needed to create non-transient black holes, and if we did, we'd also have the technology to create them away from existing gravity wells). As another poster pointed out, space elevators could be designed such that they fail upward, just as we can now design nuclear fission reactors that cannot melt down.
Also, just to throw it in, a small fusion reaction in a magnetic bottle would not create gravity, just in case you saw Spider-Man 2.
Yep, you are absolutely correct, an earth based space elevator may very well be impossible even in theory because of the demands on the tether, and that's even before considering issues with climbers, wear and tear, etc... The people who put their faith in carbon nanotubes are blind to the facts.
However, on the moon or on mars, a space elevator is possible in theory. I expect that in the next 20 years, we'll see more and more detailed proposals for a space elevator on the moon. If one is built in our lifetime or not probably depends more on politics and money than on technology development.
Are you kidding? If I could get products from China delivered here in the US within hours economically that would be HUGELY beneficial. Long delivery lead times are an enormous cost for a huge variety of products. It takes weeks for a ship to cross the ocean. Cut that to days or hours (at a reasonable cost) and you have altered the global economy forever. That's just products. There is a lot of value in being able to deliver people to distant destinations quickly as well. The problem is that the technology doesn't exist to make such transport both quick and cheap. But the need is there even if the technology isn't (economically) there yet.
sending a parcel from space to Earth ... fell short of its goal .... rope did not fully unwind
Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
They tried to get Slim, but he would NEVER work for the Ruskies! He's in Vegas with his survival kit.
Well, pushing rope is known to be a problem, while smoking rope is an acient passtime. When they finally did manage to talk to the satellite, it said: "Hey, dude...".
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I get the following:
The tether was made of Dyneema.
Wikipedia says this is a synonym for ultra high molecular weight polyethylene
Regarding the weaknesses of UHMWPE, thermal properties are highlighted and consist of the following:
The weak bonding between olefin molecules allows local thermal excitations to disrupt the crystalline order of a given chain piece-by-piece, giving it much poorer heat resistance than other high-strength fibers. Its melting point is around 144 to 152 degrees Celsius, and according to DSM, it is not advisable to use UHMWPE fibers at temperatures exceeding 80 to 100C for long periods of time. It becomes brittle at temperatures below -150C.
Googling for the temperature outside of the space station turns up a Yahoo answers page.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061215121108AASpIMx&show=7
Which says the answer is -250 F. Convert to Celsius and we get -156.7C
Maybe this helps to explain what might have happened.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.