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Japanese Begin Working On Space Elevator
thebryce writes "From cyborg housemaids and waterpowered cars to dog translators and rocket boots, Japanese boffins have racked up plenty of near-misses in the quest to turn science fiction into reality. Now the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Man has so far conquered space by painfully and inefficiently blasting himself out of the atmosphere but the 21st century should bring a more leisurely ride to the final frontier. Japan is increasingly confident that its sprawling academic and industrial base can solve those issues, and has even put the astonishingly low price tag of a trillion yen (£5 billion) on building the elevator. Japan is renowned as a global leader in the precision engineering and high-quality material production without which the idea could never be possible."
Just imagine fourteen hours of Japanese elevator music. I couldn't stand that much symphonic David Hasselhoff. And when you get to space and arrive at the Japanese Sky Deck, you can eat very expensive steak, while being entertained by a Max Headroom stylized recreation of David Hasselhoff, and groped by Hentai-motivated space-whores.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The concept of a space elevator, of course, requires a very very tall structure, or a pully of sorts from space. That would need to be a really damn strong system, to pull somebody up that high...
In other words, their "space elevator" will probably more closely resember a sleeker rocket/airplane design, and less like an actual elevator...
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
$9 Billion Here, $9 Billion there -- pretty soon we'll start talking about real money.
They're going to use Mothra for the lift engine of the elevators.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
A trillion yen is about 9.5 billion USD or roughly 6.5 billion Euros. That sounds like a bargin to me.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
"The greatest sci-fi vision ..."
"Man has so far conquered space by ..."
No to both. A space elevator is not the greatest "sci-fi" vision, nor has man "conquered space."
TFC felt it necessary to convert Japanese Yen into GBP. Thanks so much.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Absent any stunning advances in material sciences, the space elevator is still in pipe dream territory along with FTL drives, AI, androids indistinguishable from people, and world peace.
This is just a Popular Science article, i.e. "hey wouldn't it be neat if but it ain't happening so we're really just jerking your chain."
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I can't tell you how many times I've needed one of those.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Sounds a lot like when the Japanese tried to build a ladder to heaven (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Ladder_to_Heaven). They got there before the Yanks as well!
1.) Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
2.) Metal is stronger when being pulled then pushed.
3.) If we make a space elevator, the elevator will need to move vertically, which will cause downward force. This will either be absorbed by the bottom (very unlikely), the top (Seems possible, but improbable since the top will need fuel to pull the item upward), or using boosters (not very different from the current method).
Is there an advantage that I am not seeing? Every method requires fuel unless all of the weight is absorbed by the bottom, which is unlikely if they use metal.
Japan has always been able to make things better. But a space elevator will take invention, not improvement on existing ideas. They need an injection of protoculture to get some out of the box thinking going on.
"The first space elevator will be built about fify years after everyone stops laughing."
-Arthur C. Clarke
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Well it isn't, it had to be said. Let's try to be accurate here people, we're meant to geeks. Let's not limit human possibility so much.
The Japanese just want to be the first to build a ladder to Heaven.
1 Trillion yen (1,000,000,000,000.00) = £5,094,913,016.76 = $9,384,938,337.77 ($9.3 billion).
Now, let's start the flame fest of comparing this low value to other multi-billion dollar "investments" the US Government has made...
If the Japanese actually do this, can we expect to be dining on
Bandersnatchi steaks in the terminus Restaurant?
Smivs on the intertubes!
I am curious if they will be able to construct a cable/ribbon that's strong enough. The article refers to nanotube technology that should bring 180 times the tensil strength of steel. Even so, having a cable segment carrying 36000km of cable below it (which becomes lighter with height, but still), and the payload as well, that's far from trivial. To compare with nanotubes, this is similar to use a steel cable that can support 200 km of cable and payload hanging below it. I hope they succeed at it but these are incredible numbers.
Supposed you were to get stuck near the very top in space? Who is going to come and rescue you? Ultra-Man? Optimus Prime? Godzilla?
It certainly isn't going to be Otis or the Fire Department.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I would have thought achieving immortality? Transluminal flight? Infinite power?
A space elevator has always been a distinct possibility. Our materials engineering just needed to play catch-up to our construction abilities.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
My only knowledge of space elevators is probably what I've read on Slashdot and the occasional pop article, so for now it seems like a pipe dream - however, its a pipe dream that seems likely to come true at some point. Most articles fail to get passed the concept however, so I have some questions:
:)
lampsie
1) How would one get the opposite end of the "tether" into space after its been bolted to the Earth?
2) What kind of payloads are the likely going to be capable of carrying?
3) Will the tether and the space-end of the tether need regular augmentations? (e.g. alignment, raising, maintenance etc)
Thanks
Elon Musk throws a chair at his Sony flat-screen TV upon hearing the news.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
maintaining geosynchronous orbit while tethered to the ground is not a good idea. there are so many factors that could turn a space elevator into a complete disaster. a cat-4 or 5 hurricane could potentially put so much drag onto the cable that the whole thing tumbles to earth. an earthquake could yank it out of orbit. tidal pulls from the moon could rip it from the ground. lightning damage. i'd love to see this become a reality, but i just dont think that will happen.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
A practical space elevator could use vehicles powered by electric motors, which would get about 70-80% efficiency. On the way down, the motors could be used as generators, getting back probably around 30-50% of the original energy supplied. The total energy consumption might only be a percent or so of that needed for a rocket. The design of the cable with electrical conductors on either side reaching all the way up to geostationary orbit is, of course, left as an exercise to the reader.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Who cares?
As long as the risk of failure can be made fairly low, for the opportunity to use this thing I (and many other people) would be comfortable with a contingency plan of "If it gets stuck you're going to have to jump".
Not everything needs to be 100% safe. Some things less so than others.
Only Five Billion? How long till Google buys one and starts launching communications satellites en masse?
Nothing the Japanese, the Protectors or the Puppeteers can do in materials will be able to succeed until they can counterbalance it. That involves mass. Clarke used an asteroid, "moved" into position.
I'm not saying it can't be done (in this post;-). I'm saying it can't be done for 10 Bills.
Ok, maybe if they devise a way to collect all of the space junk into a blob. Maybe launch a 100m blob of chewing gum against the orbital grain to absorb the detritus to get things started.
...No space elevator is going anywhere without the necessary nanotube manufacturing breakthrough, and that includes the Japanese.
Good thing I started Colossus last turn.
It would have been great if the fracking summary wasn't copy-pasted from the article.
I mean, how difficult is it to write a short blurb with a link in it ?
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Arthur Clarke always gets credit for the concept, but Charles Sheffield wrote The Web Between Worlds the same year (1979). I haven't read Clarke's book, but TWbW is a pretty engaging novel of how such a space elevator might be built.
so when did the Japanese government get permission to use the Sri Lanka lands for the anchor of the Space Elevator. Don't we need to develop carbon nanotubes first? or are we going to use Buckminsterfullerene?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_babel
It didn't work out so well from what I recall.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
This was an idea that I had a very long tie ago when I was still a teenager (before I had ever heard of space elevators). Lets imagine you had a geostationary satellite in orbit above your construction site. That satellite then lowers a cable into the atmosphere (due to it being geostationary there should be minimal re-entry friction) your main concern would be dealing with the winds on a 100km long cable dangling in the air. Once you have connected the cable to the land, fire some booster rockets on the satellite to get it into the desired orbit (say L1), you could even have the shuttle attach some larger equipment to it to increase it's mass.
With an increase in mass and the longer distance from the planet, centrifugal force should keep the cable taut. You now can start having things 'climb' the cable to build a larger platform.
Why wouldn't this work?
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
They just saw that the EU completed the LHC world wonder so they are building a Space Elevator wonder to prevent a cultural victory.
I'm always afraid of getting stuck halfway up on a space elevator (one bustle in your hedgerow and the whole thing gets jammed up). I'll just take a Stairway to Heaven, there's a lady I've heard good things about that is buying one.
Probably a Veritech pilot (from Macross). Makes the most sense to me....
I like basketball!!1!
should have read Foutains of Paradise. you build two elevators at once. it's called redundancy :P
I'd imagine some sorta pulley system with a giant robot piloted by an angsty teenager to pull the elevator along using his massive human shaped war machine robot.
Either that or or they are going to renew Gundam 00, or they want to build the system depicted in Gundam 00, which would be awesome, and it would solve our energy problems.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
...that the first small child to get in will press all the buttons, right?
If I find a golden ticket in my package of ramen noodles, do I get to ride the space elevator?
Yeh, Yeh, but where's my flying car?
America, Home of the Brave.
Sure they might not make it, but the attempt will surely breed at least some new innovation. You don't always have to succeed to win.
The elevators traveling speed will be measured in GFIp/t ("Girl from Ipanema" plays per transport).
Do not trust this signature.
Greatest, in terms of biggest, would have to be a Dyson sphere. I see the Japanese haven't started on THAT one yet.
I piss off bigots.
Unless the actual structure breaks, in which case people may have other things to worry about depending on the design, getting down need not be a huge problem. Harness, govenor, liftshaft rail, start walking after a few km gravity kicks in and you are home in a few hours.
How can you get stuck at the top? If its made of carbon fiber its practically unbreakable, and they can use gravity to get them down with a small initial thrust. Just stick drop pods with parachutes and a small booster in the satellite if they're worried about it.
Equip it with high altitude parachutes/pressure and have the people literally jump out if needed. Successful jumps from helium balloons have been made from over 31,000 meters (102,800 feet specifically) above the surface. That's nearly 20 miles. Now LEO is considered to start around 200 miles, so this is still not quite there, but I'm sure that the parachute idea could stretch a bit further if needed.
Now, is there still quite a risk in doing the parachute "bail out"? Yeah. And the viability still isn't quite likely to hold out all the way up to LEO. That said, there can never be an always "but what if . . ." when it comes to safety in space. Eventually the answer to one of those "what ifs" becomes "you die". That's the reality of the universe, and you'll never eliminate that risk. You simply reduce it to acceptable limits and go from there.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Why not use the technology for more usefull purposes in everyday living like gathering solar power for our needs instead of luxuries to satisfy the pretensious desires of the most wealthy like going on honeymoon in space.
Sure now queue in the not financially viable critics that already crossed my mind, but then, tell me how more financially viable can a space elevator/hotel be compared to a strutcture that could actually benefit in satisfying our energy needs?
"astonishingly low price tag of a trillion yen (£5 billion)"
in the spirit of "one space elevator per child", not less.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I don't know but at least getting rescued is an option. I prefer the 'stuck in elevator' failure mode to 'fiery death' that current rockets offer.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
If you are at the very top (which would be slightly above geostationary orbit), and you jump, which way do you expect to fall? (assuming the action of jumping doesn't add significant speed in any direction)
More like Another-guy-in-an-elevator man.
Can we please not use the word "Boffin" to describe scientists. Its a words used by the British tabloids, usually out of ignorance, and in a derogatory sense.
Because all it takes is for that thing to topple somehow, and we have an extinction level event when it whips into the surface.
Welcome to Xpress Lifts, descent to floor sixteen. You will be going down two thousand, five hundred and sixty-seven floors and, for a small extra charge, you can enjoy the in-lift movie "Gone With the Wind". If you look to your right and to your left, you will notice there are no exits. In the highly unlikely event of the lift having to make a crash-landing, death is certain. Under your seats you will find a cassette for recording your last-minute testament, and from above your head a bag will drop containing sedatives and cyanide capsules.
This sig all sigs devours
Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.
The Japanese giving the best chance because of their technological superiority over the Chinese.
Why those two cultures? Because of how they work. The US effort would be bogged down by politically expedient (read correct) requirements that would doom it before it got off the ground. Look at the last really major undertaking in this country too see how government control by special interest groups kills any chance for the large scale projects to work (ref: The Big Dig). Hell we can't even agree on a good BDB design because we are too busy appeasing groups not even related to the real task at hand
Europe, too busy trying to hide the fact immigrants are causing a drag on them and certain SI groups are also showing dominance one way or another.
Russia? To busy trying to the USSR again with Emperor for Life Putin. Too broke to do anything but sail rusty ships around and dig itself financially into a hole trying to buy non-rusty stuff.
No, either China or Japan who both can conjure up real nationalistic pride. Hell Japan recently elected a budget cutting tax cutting nationalist. Both compete fiercely with each other while other countries rattle broken sabers all day or just trade insults.
Japan could do it. I hope they do. They always feel the need to be better than the rest of us, just be glad their society was able to adapt this need and energy into peaceful outcomes.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Solar power obviously. The station at the top of the elevator is nearly always in sunlight. The elevator car could also have solar panels, or draw power from the cable.
The problem for the Japanese is that a space elevator has to be on the equator - Japan is too far north.
is that like a ladder to heaven?
Why would you need someone to come up and rescue you? The vehicles have to be designed so they can detach themselves from the ribbon anyway.
If there's a "rescue vessel" in orbit, have it shoot a grapple to the car, make it detach, and reel it up.
Or, you could have relatively small thrusters on-board to try and get that "last mile".
Regardless of either of the above, *I* would make sure the climbers (or at least the cargo/passenger portion) could survive a dead-stick reentry, a-la the Apollo capsules.
I thought the greatest science fiction endeavor of all was actually getting a girlfriend!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is good, I think - although the investment in terms of resources is probably huge, most of it's also (hopefully) a one-time investment. ...whereas, every time we send a rocket up, we permanently lose an awful lot of materials - among other things, those precious hydrocarbons.... ...at least, until we're able to mine asteroids / other planets.
Never mind an elevator. If the technology is available, use it to build massive pipes from the Antarctica and Greenland icesheets. Antartica is the highest continent on average, so you won't even need pumping equipment. Just strong joints to deal with the pressure.
The cross-Britain maglev (16 billion pounds, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Glasgow#Future_Plans) is estimated at approximately twice the price of mankind's rope into space.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_babel
It didn't work out so well from what I recall.
Hah! I call BS, there's no way you could recall that with a 6-digit id.
X-38 to the rescue!
What? Over 140 posts and no mention of the Mars trilogy? Bah.
I do wonder how the engineers would manage the potential collapse of a 62,000 mile carbon-tube cable. That's enough to wrap around the the Earth ~2.5 times.
The wikipedia article suggests that it'd mostly burn up on re-entry. So not quite as apocalyptic as what happened in "Red Mars", I guess.
I dunno... I'm excited by the idea of cheap(-ish) access to geosynchronous orbit, but I'm pretty skeptical that the idea will ever get off the ground.
And I suppose the British, or anyone else shouldn't feel the same way if the poster had converted to USD instead.
You insensitive^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H parochial clod!
TFC felt it necessary to convert Japanese Yen into GBP. Thanks so much.
"...devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all..."
Devoting themselves to FTL travel? Cybernetic consciousness? Mass migration of humanity to the stars?
No.
While this is cool, I hardly would call it the greatest sci-fi vision of all.
(Posting as anon because I can't find my login information...)
Supposed you were to get stuck near the very top in space? Who is going to come and rescue you? Ultra-Man? Optimus Prime? Godzilla?
Don't be stupid. Godzilla never went to space.
Queue the jokes about Hillary Clinton and having 1-too-few parachutes.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Just make sure the first elevator car includes a "Release Connection To Cable At Halfway Mark" button.
Will these elevators be able to see into the not so distant future and anticipate your arrival, or am I going to have to wait a really really long time for it to go from the "top floor"?
A special rescue ship?
It would be fairly trivial to have several rocket powered ships if you can deliver stuff to GSO cheaply.
From orbit they rule/
The planet at their command/
base belong to us.
Way to go! You broke Wikipedia.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Watch for the butterflies...
Even assuming you speed up once you reach upper atmosphere/vacuum, a 22k mile journey at an average speed of 100mph will take 220 hours, or just over 9 days.
Getting right to the top isn't strictly necessary depending on what you want to do.
A low- or medium-earth orbit would be useful for resupplying the ISS and launching other space craft. Once you're at that height they use their own thrust system.
Is Tower of Babel ringing a bell for anyone right now?
It would be nice to have some answers to some very simple questions:
(1) How much will this thing weigh?
(2) How you gonna pay for the launch costs? At $5K a pound, that's a lot of bucks.
(3) What do you do about lightning strikes and winds?
(4) What are the chances you'll melt the ribbon with the lasers?
(5) What insurance company will insure this thing for liability and collision? You think a Ferrari is expensive to insure!
It's fun to think about a space elevator, for the first 45 seconds, then you get to the sticky bits.
It could be Alain Robert's biggest challenge!
What's that in Volkswagen Beetles?
Seems like just last turn Judaism was founded in a distant land!
Particles, stuff that matters.
a year or so (maybe more) ago that I thought pegged the price at around $10B.
Regardless of either of the above, *I* would make sure the climbers (or at least the cargo/passenger portion) could survive a dead-stick reentry, a-la the Apollo capsules.
Yeah... they'd just have to make sure it landed in the ocean and not Russia or China.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Forgot to add that the caterpillar is very strong... he works out a lot. Don't worry about him flying off the rope.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
As always:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Ladder_to_Heaven
The "Tower of Babel" project was abandoned before they installed the bell on top.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Japan isn't going to build it alone. Japan is located at ~35 degrees N. For both construction purposes and to minimize the coriolis effect during usage, you would want to build the elevator on the equator exactly. Factor in other issues such as weather, geological activity, political stability, ocean access, and there only a few potential candidates right now. Brazil might work.
Unlike the Apollo program the space elevator won't be built, designed or operated by one country. I believe it will be an international organization analogous to CERN.
Hell, a 12 foot ladder is high enough for me! Who's the guy that gets to climb up and change the light bulb on top?!
A space elevator is hardly the greatest sci-fi vision of all. The greatest sci-fi vision of all (aside from higher ratings for the SciFi Channel allowing them to produce more original features) is faster than light interstellar travel. A space elevator to nowhere pales compared to that.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Exactly. What was the last national project of any significant size? The space shuttle? The Hubble (I had to look this one up; Congress funded it in 1978)? Wonderful projects but their inceptions date back to the 70's. My entire life, almost, has been spent in a country that only is willing to spend money on the military and, lately, banking company bailouts.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
i KNEW it.. they are going to build gundams up there!
The only reason shuttle re-entry is such a big deal is their huge speed relative to the earth. They orbit the earth something like once every 8 minutes... that's pretty freaking fast. To land they have to come to a dead stop, and they don't have long to do it.
Someone on the top of a space elevator, on the other hand, is already at rest with respect to the surface of the earth. They could put on a space suit and a parachute and they'd be pretty much fine in an emergency. More realistically you'd have an escape pod, because you will pick up *some* speed before you hit the atmosphere and slow down to terminal velocity, and escape pods would be easier to get into and launch quickly, easier to maintain, and safer. It'd still just be a metal shell with some parachutes, though, they wouldn't have to worry about huge heat shields or burning up in the atmosphere or anything.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
Where the 13th floor should be.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Somehow the idea of Captain Jean Luc Picard settling into his chair and pointing at row of buttons while saying, "8000th floor number one!", isn't quite as inspiring as him saying, "Engage!". This will be done someday, like others I doubt that it can be done for 5 billion. However, when it's done, it will change everything. And compared to the filth generated by a booster, this thing is nearly as green as Jack's magic bean stock!
How about the ISS? I doubt it's going to be of much use by the time the materials are ready.
particles?
I don't think I'd consider them particles.
More like tiny tubes made of carbon.
Gee, let's hope that a war over the elevator doesn't break out, causing a young pilot to detonate the Space/Time Oscillation Bomb and splitting time/space into lots of little pieces.
"Japanese Begin Working On Space Elevator"
Did that headline make anyone else feel like we're in one big game of "Civilization"?
It's a good thing someone thought of the space fountain, then.
Um, yeah, this is not likely to work. The key is making a cable four times stronger than anything currently existing, 50,000 miles long, with no flaws. Gambatte, guys. (Incidentally, it would be much easier to build a cable that would work for the moon or for Mars.) In the 1980s, the Japanese government funded a massive "Fifth Generation" computer project, which was supposed to revolutionize parallel computing and AI. By almost all accounts, it was a total waste of money. I expect this project may be as well. (Although, any increase in lightweight cable strength would have commercial applications, as would the beamed power required to make the crawlers work...)
Welcome to Xpress Lifts, descent to floor sixteen. You will be going down two thousand, five hundred and sixty-seven floors and, for a small extra charge, you can enjoy the in-lift movie "Gone With the Wind." If you look to your right and to your left, you will notice there are no exits. In the highly unlikely event of the lift having to make a crash-landing, death is certain. Under your seats you will find a cassette for recording your last-minute testament, and from above your head a bag will drop containing sedatives and cyanide capsules. --Xpress Lift lady, Stasis Leak, Red Dwarf
The carbon will mostly go UP if the bottom of the tether is broken. Think of whirling a stone on a string. When you let go of the end of the string, does the stone come back and smack you in the face?
No.
The small amount going down will burn up.
Just throwing this out there and i guess it sells the elevator idea short but here it goes. Perhaps the space elevator is more like a "fishing line" dropped from space that does not tie to the ground and only comes into the atmosphere as far as is needed for it to be reached by a lighter than air vehicle. This vehicle would ascend to the bottom of the line (which i imagine would be a moving target) and at that point attach a load to the line that can either self propel up the line or be drawn in. Im also guessing it would require a lighter than air vehicle that is much larger than anything we have in use currently to move enough payload to be useful. And of course we should fill it with hydrogen so if anything goes wrong it makes a great highlight reel. But i see the advantages of this to be mainly avoiding natural disasters especially those of the "every 100 years" order of magnitude. for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_altitude_balloon
Not for the counterbalance. But maybe for the CrapSweeper.
We all know what a Bussard Ram Jet is. What about using the ISS (Retired) to deploy a huge field of some electro-magnetic-gravitonic-strange-charmed-hip* quark cone to suck in space debris? The Bussard Hip Sucker? Ionize the mass and use as energy and propellant to perpetually sweep LEO for detritus... OMG, that sounds like...
*I predict the discovery by the LHC of the "hip" quark. I've made the suggestion often, but it's seldom leapt on.
Whenever the elevator applies force to haul up cargo, there must be an equal force applied on the top of the elevator, dragging it downwards to earth. The only way I can imagine to keep the whole thing from falling down would be to keep the thing up by having some sort of (rocket?) drive that pushes it upwards while it hauls cargo up. But wouldn't that be just as expensive as a regular rocket or space shuttle?
I just don't get how this would work, would somebody mind explaining?
The Japanese already have developed the prerequisite technology.
Nanaaa nana nanana na naa na Katamari Damacy~
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
NASA with the the Italian Space Program tried long (up to 5 km) space tethers several times. Either cable fries and breaks from huge electrostatic charge breakup or the satellite fries. Anyone whose flown a kite with a metal wire knows the problem is even worse in the atmosphere.
Is it possible to go build a cable that would get us to a low earth orbit and then use ionized air accelerated "down" (powered from say a big nuke plant on the ground) to provide force to keep the station from falling down?
If not, what about using the same idea (in reverse, the ionized air or whatever would point out into space instead of back toward earth) to reduce stress on a GSO station cable. Do this maybe every couple of miles?
Colossus, eh? Neat. Just a litte word of advice, though: If Colossus tells you there is another system DON'T CONNECT THEM WITH EACH OTHER!
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I have always hated the idea of GEO to Earth space cables. A "flying" space cable would be much more efficient, is possible with current technology, and would be able to provide service to much of the earth. Just think of 4,000 km cable with it's lower end just above the atmosphere(100km-150km up). The bottom end is traveling at less than orbital velocity for it's elevation and the top end is traveling at more than orbital velocity for it's elevation. This could reduce launch costs so that sub orbital launch vehicles could reach the lower end from most major international airports. Think of it as a vertical Panama Canal to space.
Last thing they need is to have a huge chunk of the terminal flung into space.
Much like being 'sucked out into space' due to decompression, the terminal would not be flung out into space, but pulled.
I *think* the plan is to have centripital force acting as the counter to the downward force. You know the whole ball on the end of a spinning string analogy. It would be dependent on mass of the "ball" and angular velocity (speed of rotation).
First I didn't quite understand the wording of your post, it almost made it seem that Raygun was talking TODAY (whereas I'm sure you know he's gone to the great laser shield in the sky for over a decade).
Anyway, we are still FAR FAR from an SDI. Although it MIGHT be capable of taking out a few primitive N. Korean warheads with few or no decoys, there is NO CHANCE that it could do so against a major power bent on raining hellish death on the U.S. A complete SDI system is what Reagan wanted; a comprehensive STRATEGIC (not tactical) defense system that could rid the world (actually just us) of nuclear terror.
When you consider that the major powers can easily launch many decoys, explode nukes in space (EMP), blind satellites with lasers, use maneuverable re-entry vehicles, attack (prior to the main assault) early warning, tracking and defensive systems as well as BRUTE FORCE OVERWHELMING the system with THOUSANDS OF WARHEADS, any rational person (Raygun?) will know it is infeasible now and for probably a few more decades. Why? Because Nuclear Weapons are so CHEAP (relative to the damage they create) and it is sooo hard to hit "a bullet with a bullet".
Of course that's the reasoning that the U.S. is trying to sell the Russians on regarding our ABM system in eastern europe, that the Russians could swat it aside like a bug.
Well, that's just as well, because I _don't_ want the androids to be indistinguishable from people. When somebody builds that hot android maid, well, if she's just real people, she'll tell me to get lost and she'll go marry a jock. Or pretend to like me only as long as I clean spyware off her computer, then go write online prose with it about how nerdy, self-proclaimed Nice Guys are, like, so yuck, and how sexist of them it is to put you on a pedestal.
I don't want _that_. I want an android nobody can possibly confuse with the real thing. I want her to be more like, "mmm, I find your milky-white manboobs soo sexy. Lemme fix you dinner, then we'll fuck like crazy rabbits, and then we'll go farm those feathers on WoW together. Won't that be romantic?"
(Ok, ok, I know that's very sexist and all, but it's all for a greater cause: comedy. That's how selfless a guy I am;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"The only reason shuttle re-entry is such a big deal is their huge speed relative to the earth. They orbit the earth something like once every 8 minutes... that's pretty freaking fast. To land they have to come to a dead stop, and they don't have long to do it."
an orbit takes 90mins dude, orbital velocity is only like 27,0000kph
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
oh god, horrible typo. Remove one of them zero's from 27,0000kph =P
it should b 27,000kph
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
How about a space elevator that doesn't reach all the way?
How far would it reach with todays materials at same cost?
(Still centered at geostationary height, so you would have to fly up to it.)
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Sounds like something gnomes would build.
Why not have a "wheel" with "spokes"?
The "wheel" would be a GSO object circumventing the GSO line around the globe with several solid stations along the circumference and many "spokes" that would be tethers along the equator.
While we're at it, the "wheel" could be host to permanent satellites.
Whether the "wheel" is rigid or not would be up for debate, but if it were to work like a bicycle wheel it would have to be somewhat rigid.
If anyone has read the Mars trilogy, they set up an elevator to space on the Red planet. At one point, it falls down and keeps accelerating until it hits Earth, the top going at tremendous speeds when it hit and destroying a lot of stuff.
Is that a feasible way to see how a space elevator would fall to Earth?
Another elevator climber?
Suppose you get stuck near the very top (or at the very top) of an orbital rocket flight. Who comes to rescue you then? Answer: nobody.
You only need a big countermass if you end your cable just above geosynchronous orbit. If you extend it far enough you don't need a counterweight at all and, as a bonus, you can fling spacecraft to the outer planets for free.
You know, if we just increased the spin of Earth, we wouldn't need as long of a cable to get to GEO.
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You have to extend it AT LEAST as far a geosynch is high, plus the mass of what you lift in cable mass. And you add a whipping end. Stability drops, especially under stress of solar wind/flares, Coronal Mass ejections, etc.
;-), you get a standing wave action, with harmonics.
Try it yourself. Hang a rope 20 feet/meters with a dense weight on the bottom. Measure the deflection under a breeze. Hang a 40 feet/meter rope and measure the deflection under a breeze at the 20 (unit) mark. Aside from more drag from the extra 20 cubits
THAT is my principal opposition to wasting effort on space elevators. By the time you've built it, you've spent the propellant you were trying to save.
At a distance of (iirc) about 2/3rds of the way to geosynchronous orbit, an object dropped off the elevator will be in an elliptical orbit that just barely misses the atmosphere. Anything lower than that will re-enter. With rockets, of course, you could drop things lower and/or achieve round orbits.
Launching from beyond geosynchronous orbit ultimately robs the earth of its rotational energy (something that happens all the time anyways because of tides), so that's not really a big deal for the elevator as long as it can handle the additional tension. It would be a great way to launch things towards the rest of the solar system without wasting fuel.
Okay, so what happens when it falls down? What about the fact that the earth is rotating (at the equator a little over 1000 mph I believe) and that it is rotating fast enough to cause the earth itself to bulge around the equator? Seems like this would lead to some lean issues.
Assuming that it doesn't fall and wrap almost ALL the way around the world, what about the effects of having an object running from ground through the different atmospheres into space?
What about earth's magnetic field? What about solar radiation and other forms of energy interacting with, following the path of least resistance? What about creating a leak point for atmospheric layers? No saying the atmosphere is a balloon and will pop.. not likely, but in the same way a needle can "shoot" ions wouldn't certain principles that we have observe indicate that this would cause problems? Surface tension pulls liquid up a surface.. wouldn't we bulge the atmosphere? And I don't care how strong it is, that's not going to withstand a meteorite or meteor impact. Does anyone else see massive problems with this idea?
then theres the brute Force way. does no one else think that building a giant elevator is the wrong way to go about doing this?
Charles Sheffield wrote "The Web Between The Worlds" at the same time as Clarke wrote his book. Sheffield had his Elevator built in space and then with an asteroid counterweight attached flown in and dropped through the atmosphere to its base. They had seconds to anchor it before it passed back up. I would love them to have the space infrastrutcher to do that but don't think I want to live on a planet where anyone is crazy enough to try it
If one end is connected to the ground, you could store some of that resultant charge. This could be a good thing. It's really a matter of engineering.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
..the second part of the latest series starts again in a couple of weeks, and makes prominent feature of space elevators...
I guess that means they beat us to Super Tensile Solids, and will now be able to do orbital insertions as needed...
"In one moment, Earth; in the next, heaven." -- Academecian Prokhor Zakharov, For I Have Tasted The Fruit
This
Here in Amsterdam we can't even build a few km of metro line for that without wrecking the occasional irreplacable 17th century house.
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http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18925331.200-take-a-leap-into-hyperspace.html
SDI doesn't need to be 100% effective to change the way a rational enemy with a few missiles will behave.
Besides it's really a first generation flying saucer defense system. You've got to crawl before you walk and walk before you run.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Well, if you're going there, why not just remember to pack your Cyclone?
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Another poster got it wrong the same way as you did when another article about a space elevator was posted here so I'll quote the correction by cybercuzco:
the elevator is in orbit around the earth just like the moon or any other satellite. the center of gravity of the elevator is in geosynchronous orbit (36000 km or 6.6 ER) Geosynchronous orbit has an orbital period the same as the rotation rate of the earth. A geostationary earth has a period of 24 hours and coincides with one spot on the earths surface. In other words, anything in that orbit will remain over the exact same spot essentially forever. The elevator goes into a geostationary orbit. Since its long, they can put the cable down anywhere within a 45 degree arc. The only thing you need an anchor for is to keep track of the cable. The greatest tension on the cable is at its center of gravity, because at that point, half the cable above it is centripetally trying to be flung into space, and the other half is trying to fall down to the earth. But this is located in geostationary orbit. Theres little if any tension on the cable at ground level.
In your example, the weight would fly away if the string snapped but a space elevator actually wouldn't.
Seems like the cable could be much shorter if you anchored it to one of the poles.
Maybe the other system would be Starglider :)
Take a look at some of the space elevator proposals. You don't use anywhere NEAR as much propellant as you save. There was one that quite credibly outlined how you could get yourself a nanotube space elevator with something like three shuttle flights.
You ever play Civilization on a harder setting, and get busy with a few wars? Even little ones, but you're moving your units over and it's taking time and funding which adds up... then all the sudden another race starts building the wonders?
That's usually a sign the game is about to go downhill fast if you don't get your crap together and focus on your tech tree.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Hasn't it been shown that a large cable dragging thru the atmosphere generates static electricity at an alarming rate? I remember nasa or someone doing an experiment where they dropped several thousand feet of cable into the atmosphere and it glowed brightly enough to see from the ground, and then burnt itself and snapped. So long as this thing is less resistant then air, I would think it would build a charge and be at the least magnetic and at the most crazy dangerous.
Even if not for the static, then I would expect it to be a lighting rod.
I'm not an expert of course, so any clarification would be appreciated
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
When the article says "Japan," it doesn't actually mean the Japanese government, or JAXA, or any similarly empowered or authoratative group. It means the "Japan Space Elevator Association", an independent enthusiast group.
They don't have a trillion yen, or even detailed designs to base a trillion yen cost estimate on. Nothing I see indicates this group has actually done anything to address the critical challenges of a space elevator: material strength, power transmission, and assembly. They just reference other groups' advances with carbon nanotubes and imply that this past advancement can simply be extrapolated into a super high tech, 60,000 mile long megamachine that only costs slightly than the proposed Interstate 5 replacement bridge over the Columbia River ($4.7 billion for that).
It's nice to see more people enthusiastic about the idea of a space elevator, but let's be at least remotely realistic.
So this is what Hideo Kojima has been doing lately...
Anchored to what? A beowulf cluster of inflatable Natalie Portman Dolls?
Seriously. Show me this proposal.
do it on the moon.
you can even use kevlar for the ribbon.
$9.5B is a little over 100th, not 10th, of the bank bailout.
Mining. Mining. Mining. Mining. Mining.
We dont like fucking up our planet for iron, silver and other nice metals. There are plenty of ugly, presumably uninhabited floating rocks out there that have more metal on them then we could possibly dream of.
Hell, Mars alone is covered with a farily refined form of iron pellet. Many astroids are like 50% iron (vs our 7%).
Mining. Mining is what will make all this stuff pay off. Mining and space porn.
Why not a system where you send payloads to the far point of the cable and the centrifugal force produced by them being approximately twice the distance of geosynchronous orbit (GSO) is used to pull up loads from below.
These loads could be hooked to a look cable of sorts, since the side of the cable with an attached load would be heavier it would pull outward and the other side of the loop could run around pulleys which would cause it to be pulled down.
Crazy, yes. Problems galore yes. But this double ribbon might just work for scenarios where you are constantly launching shit into space, and constantly attaching stuff to the side that goes down. Just fly the to earth-surface-bound to GSO, and let the space bound stuff go all the way up.
This scenario assumes heavy extra-planetary commerce, but isn't that the point to expand our horizons? Now for the griping about how much cheaper it is for Mars to send stuff to us, than it is for us to send stuff to them. Mars is the new China! Not cheap labor, just cheaper to Earth transportation than Earth to Mars.
"Where have all the good people gone?" - Jack Johnson
Wouldn't it only be a lift to geo-stationary orbit height, and then a fall after that? It would be like cycling up a 100km-high mountain, imagine the coast 'downhill' to the far end!
Couldn't it be started from earth by making buoyant cylinders? I'm imagining like cells in the stalk of an underwater plant, only filled with hydrogen or something. You'd have to have some thrusters on them to counteract the wind, and maybe for some upthrust at high altitude where the load from wind might be less.
Done right, it could make a catastrophic failure less catastrophic, with pieces earth-side having a limited ability for a soft landing, and pieces space-side perhaps not following the Valley Forge.
Disclaimer: I Am An Engineer In A Totally Unrelated Field. I didn't RTFA, and I haven't done any calcs. But at least I didn't suggest a pulley with counterweights.
involving materials processing in microgravity.
There are lots of processes which would be cheaper to perform in space if we only had a cheap way to get materials and people up there and back again.
Big, defect-free semiconductor crystals, for instance.
Golly, once we have enough Hydrogen to power our cars, and have solved both the worrisome global energy crisis, and that nasty global warming, then:
We can use all our excess HYDROGEN to power our big rockets, that go "Vrooom Vroom" into outer-space!
They will carry these wonderful carbon "nanotubes", that will be, of course, made from all that excess carbon that we have not "sequestered"!
Toyota and Honda will lead the way!
The future looks WONDERFUL from here!
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- aqk
F U
I think it's a great idea to build a tethered station. I guess if they want to do rocket launches up there, they could bring all the parts up the elevator to the neutral point where there's no gravity and just store all the stuff floating around at that height (so it will not load the tether.) Once they have all the stuff there, they could just assemble and launch.
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This is very interesting and should be modded up, it might explain the missing matter problem, and the pioneer anomaly.
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
Supposed you were to get stuck near the very top in space? Who is going to come and rescue you? Ultra-Man? Optimus Prime? Godzilla? It certainly isn't going to be Otis or the Fire Department.
What about all the all the potential vomit, diarrhea and pee. I think we need to build a Space Elevator Bathroom, the women go down as the men go up, and vice versa.
FTA:
Wouldn't the counterweight only have to be as far away as necessary to generate enough centripetal force to counter the weight of the cable below the geostationary point plus whatever payload the cable can handle?
It seems to me that with a large enough counterweight (captive asteroid or something?) it could be a lot closer. Since no one has commented on it, why am I wrong?
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
I guess this would be a fictitious centrifugal force, sorry about that :)
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Nothing the Japanese, the Protectors or the Puppeteers can do in materials will be able to succeed until they can counterbalance it. That involves mass. Clarke used an asteroid, "moved" into position.
I'm not saying it can't be done (in this post;-). I'm saying it can't be done for 10 Bills.
Ok, maybe if they devise a way to collect all of the space junk into a blob. Maybe launch a 100m blob of chewing gum against the orbital grain to absorb the detritus to get things started.
Counterbalance? That's the easy part. All it has to do is be equal to the mass of the rest of the cable, and be located in an appropriate position to make the center of mass of the whole contraption be at Geo-Synchronous Orbit.
Want to know the easy way to do that? Just double the length of the cable. If you can successfully make a 22,236mi cable, then chances are good that you can also successfully make a 44,472mi cable.
This also has the added benefit that the far end of the cable at 2x GSO makes an excellent slingshot for launching vehicles to other planets.
You DO realize that the phrase "lifted himself up by his own bootstraps" is a figure of speech, and doesn't work in real life.
I see what they are selling. Looks great. So does Vista. Let me make a simple statement and you can deduce the rest.
Simple statement: What you end with is a cable which is only a cable. No lifting capability. All of that is on the climber. Even given the "beam-the-power idea", you need something as big as a Prius to lift to LEO. When you get to LEO, you need to be able to accelerate the payload to Local Circular Velocity (Call it 18,000MPH ballpark.) That means to lift a usable satellite, you also have to lift the booster to take it from ~1000 (equatorial velocity) to 18,000MPH in about 10 minutes. (ignoring the "drop/fire sequence" to prevent fluttering the cable.) That's SRM-class thrust. You gonna lift that with a Prius? And if you do, the counterweight needs to be again bigger.
Getting a cable up? Maybe. Easy as it sounds? Not really. Do it for 10 Bills NO WAY.
I've already had this discussion, here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=971653&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=25115539#25122841
But to short answer you. Correction: "All it has to do is be equal to the mass of the rest of the cable, PLUS the mass of the climber and payload. And that leaves you at neutral, like a balloon equal in bouyancy to it's payload. Add the force of lifting the payload and the balloon drops. So you need an excess.
And this talk of SLINGSHOT! You are missing something... Angular momentum of the climber. That will cause a strong horizontal component to the force vector on the cable. That will be like slowly plucking a string. Think "Integral Trees" by Larry Niven. Clarke assumed a massive counterweight, so that component would be negligible, but not so with the "cable is its own counterweight" approach.
Climbing to GSO, the mass tries to trail behind the cable, and the cable would have to use its excess tension to hold it, or get coiled around the earth. And then, when the mass reaches GSO, it would begin to fall up, and braking is needed. And then, it becomes the bottom of a pendulum. You will DEFINITELY need a massive counterweight, or you will not be able to stop the swinging. If all you have is "neutral tension" at GSO, you will end up WEARING that cable. Where WEARING = "clothed in silly string"