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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.
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.
...string theory.
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.
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.
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
One would have thought that to drop something 150km one would need a 150km rope?
You don't know anything about space, clearly, so just shut up. Leave this stuff to us experts.
(aside: Hey Bob, I have an idea why our space tether idea didn't work our right, get this: what if we used MORE than 30km of...)
I thought it was "ah, I see provlum, wodca lid stuck in gear," and then some kind of wise crack about moose and squirrel.
We are the Borg...