Slashdot Mirror
Carefully Timed Jerks Could Power Space Elevator
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC has an interesting article on the long-standing issue of how to power the 'climber' that would ascend a space elevator into space. Previous ideas have included delivering microwave or laser power to the climber beamed from the Earth's surface, but now European Space Agency ground station engineer Age-Raymond Riise has demonstrated a device that could provide a "lift into space" for cheaper space missions along a 100,000-km long tether anchored to the Earth. Riise demonstrated sending power mechanically by providing carefully timed jerks of the cable at its base with a broomstick to represent the cable held in tension, an electric sander to provide a rhythmic vibration to the bottom of the stick, and three brushes representing the climber with their bristles pointing downwards allowing the climber assembly to slide upward along the broomstick as it moved slightly downward, but grip it as it moved slightly upward. 'It would be possible to make a suspension system that completely decouples the cabin where the passengers are,' says Riise. 'For them it would be a linear movement with very little disturbance.' Riise says that he has been approached by commercial elevator companies, who are researching new ideas for elevators in superscrapers where the simplicity of the approach makes it attractive when compared to other ideas for powering lifts, such as compressed air."
Something tells me the average slashdotter might be able to offer assistance in this "scientific research"
...can be used to power the space kleenex dispenser.
these jerks of whom you speak?
Too...many...jokes... [head explodes]
How do you time a jerk? What exact activity of said jerk would you measure? I mean, I don't like mean people, but how will they power the space elevator? This is more ridiculous than the buttered bread on cat's back train to Chicago.
I've had it with jerks sitting around doing nothing, it's about time they do something useful.
EVER is a long time.
The Space Elevator is something an advanced civilization with a few hours to kill might whip up.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Yeah? Well the jerk store called and they're running out of you!
Y'know, this just might work, seeing that there is such a plentiful supply of jerks on the planet.
Will there be a new countdown system?
5..4..3..2..1..JERK OFF!
Jeez I knew it could make ya blind.. but space?
Now I can tell mom all that practice in the bathtub was good for something!
What's the difference? You're their all-time best seller.
per dolorem ad astra
Slashdot: Setup lines for bad jokes. Stuff that splatters.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
With criticism like this, I would say this idea is destined to succeed.
I'll file "Jerk powered space-elevators" right next to "Anger powered jetpacks".
http://www.legorobotcomics.com/?id=68
"Why is everyone so obsessed with this terrible idea? Even if we got it to work, there's no way we'd be able to afford the maintenance and energy costs. It just isn't viable."
This guy just copied and pasted his post. I found this same post about plane flight, the space shuttle, the hubble, the mars rover, and the lightbulb.
ok, i lied, but you get the point :)
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Something that uses orders of magnitude less power than rockets is not viable? We'd build space elevators today if we knew how to work carbon nanotubes. It's just that much more efficient. As for the maintanence, it's manageable if we build multiple space elevators so we could have redundancy, a platform to work on the elevators from, etc.
Consider how much energy it would take to move this massively long cable. There is no way in hell that is going to be efficient. You're going to be wasting a massive amount of energy as you move the entire cable the whole time the thing is climbing.
To the naive this approach seems workable because it looks simple. The fact is that it takes a certain amount of energy to do things and this is probably a very poor method that will become quite obvious at the scale we are talking about. In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics and all that...
Then you have to consider the wear and tear on the mechanical parts, especially that really expensive long cable into space. This just seems like a bad idea all around.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
although i like the beauty of it's simplicity, wasn't vibration in the tether already a problem?
it's like a 300 mile long guitar string with a slide going up and down.
one of these days we'll have a /. story about the music of the space elevator.
Yeah? Well, I had sex with your wife!
This is not flamebait - its a classic seinfeld episode: Synopsis full episode.
C'mon now. I know hourly workers in the high tech industry can be a pain sometimes, but that's no reason to slander them!
The jerk store called. They want the third derivative of the position function back.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
His wife's in a coma...
That would take a while to get up. Then again, with enough jerking I'm sure anything is possibly.
Jerk.
Considering that it appears that the space elevator will not work from a suspension point of view, isn't it kind of moot to think about how to power the thing?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
So if I'm reading the title correctly, Lawyers with rolexes could get us into space?
Are those crickets?
jerks power you!
load "$",8,1
At the risk of _being_ a jerk.....
The commonly used phrase is "for all intents and purposes", and please, google "begs the question".
Interesting summary but for some strange reason after I finished reading it I felt like I had just finished watching an Enzyte commercial...
Carefully timed jerks could power space elevator? Hmmm...I'm not too sure about that. I've been to frat parties and those guys can't even play beer pong all that well.
Jerking at the base is ok, but jerking at the top works much better.
...space elevator jerks you!
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
You beat me to it, to perfect for a Seinfeld qoute.
(mumbles to self) Well the life support machine called... Wait! Thats it! You just screwed yourself Riley!
Hey, what kind of comment do you think this is???
Oh yeah, a towering jerk is an unraveled circle jerk?
Testosterone supplements anyone?
They have a new term for, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, Jerk Off!
Ok these are really bad jokes but don't cry over spilled milk.
Jerks.
After all, he is a jerk with an impeccable sense of timing.
Ok, that's a cool little video clip... Notice how the ad in front of it was longer than the clip itself, though?
OMGWTFBBC?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
...and I find this bit of idiocy.
To make the elevator car climb along the cable, we must accelerate the cable downward with an acceleration exceeding g=9.8 m/s2, so that it descends faster than the car falls.
So the article's answer to the problem of providing a force of mass-of-car * gravity to the elevator car is to provide a force of mass-of-cable * gravity to the cable.
Congratulations, you just made the problem a million times harder.
at least this seems to work in politics. *snicker*
for example: http://www.azonano.com/Details.asp?ArticleID=1586
the elevator lift mechanism is a secondary problem when compared to the seemingly insurmountable material science problem. Namely, there is no material in the world with a high enough strength to weight ratio to sustain a space elevator!!!
Finally we have a way of recycling old Politicians
power Slashdot
*DrugCheese rants*
...to get a better watch
You report, Slashdot decides
Prevueing you're poast ownly hellps iff ewe no how two spel inn teh furst plase
an advanced civilization with a few hours to kill
There isn't any evidence that such things exist, of course... :-) "Advanced civilizations," that is.
In my experience, jerks don't even listen to instructions - I wouldn't count on them to carefully time anything.
If it's not Consolidated Lint, it's just fuzz!
For a moment I wasn't sure if I was reading /. or penthouse...
...providing carefully timed jerks of the cable at its base...
...with their bristles pointing downwards allowing the climber assembly to slide upward along the broomstick as it moved slightly downward, but grip it as it moved slightly upward...
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
a 100,000-km long tether anchored to the Earth.
The space elevator cable is a quarter of the distance from the earth to the moon? 8 times the diameter of the earth?
Mom: "Hello"
Me: "Mom, uh mom, I know it is late but.."
Mom: "Oh hi honey..."
Me: "Hey Mom, do you remember those sincere times when you tearfully told me to quit playing with myself and stop using so much water back in the day and how no good would come of it?"
Mom: "Honey.. It was in your best interest..."
Pause for dramatic effect, a little static on the line, the sound of dad snoring and breathing heavy..
Me: "Mom, NASA just called. They need an expert. I am going to space Momma!..."
Mom: "Oh Darling! I never knew you would succeed like this.. Your father will be so proud! What...what time is it? 2 o'clock?">BR> *rustling covers* *wierd pause* Space? I thought you were happy bagging groceries...
Me: "Well they needed an expert. That's what us experts do. I just got a call on the emergency line. I am gonna have step up training, and need to get started. Tell Dad I love him Mah. Tell dad I love him. If I don't make it.. you can have the cats..."
Mom:" What will you be doing again?"
Is this thing on? Check. Check.
it might be necessary to power manually: "You, jerk!" "What?! I didn't cut the power!"
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Was this supposed to be a reply to a different comment?
It's one thing to vibrate a broomstick in that manner, and quite another to do so with a 36,000 km space elevator. No matter what material you're using, you're looking at a very large mass; wikipedia estimates "a minimal, very low payload space elevator 'seed ribbon' could have a mass of at least 18,000 kg." -- or just shy of 20 tons. For hauling passengers and goods, you'll need much more. Now, we're talking about accelerating and decelerating this mass of at least 20 tons multiple times per second.
Think about that. We're talking bringing something the weight of a big-rig, accelerating it to a decent speed, and then bringing it back to a stop in a fraction of a second. That requires incredible force. Now, think about the time it takes to accelerate a big rig to highway speeds, and then bring it to a full stop. Now, remember, that's the *minimum* mass we're dealing with. A full-scale elevator is likely to be quite a bit heavier. For another point of reference, the 250 ton commuter train I ride to work every day, if it applies full breaking force in an emergency situation, takes roughly 2,500 feet to come to a complete stop.
And not only do you have to do that, you have to not shake the thing apart in the process. And on top of that, you have to do that without exerting too much force on your passengers; humans can't handle much more than a few Gs.
The other glaring hole is the brush bristles. It's one thing for a coarse brush to support a few ounces of wood, and quite another for it to support a multi-ton cargo container while undergoing rapid acceleration multiple times per second.
Has anyone done the math necessary to show that this idea can actually scale? Because at first blush, it sounds ridiculous.
please, google "begs the question".
Right away, sir. To whom shall I send the results?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
I was talking about us.. in a few thousand years.. hopefully after all the dickwads who think making the earth a utopia is achievable have buggered off.
How we know is more important than what we know.
...from take offs to jerk offs? Evolution!
when you make a jerk tick?
Yeah, I'd much rather have them manually triggered than timed.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Don't forget the Aerosmith jokes about "love in an elevator."
So, if we harnessed all the terrorists and just convinced them that delivering "jerks" to the space elevator would damage it, then they wouldn't destroy it with their explosions, but could propel it?
But ... what if they happened to fall off the side during this action or their makeshift ropes broke and killed people?
A space elevator might work fine on the moon, and maybe even on Mars, but I can't think of a safe place to build one on Earth, and that's due to vulnerabilities that someone will want to expose.
Expecting rational behavior from irrational people is the classic definition of insanity.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
> Actually, this is something the average person can see at home.
If anyone here had been a kid back in the last century, we could all have shared the memory of kite riders (no, I don't really know what they are called in english). While flying a kite, put a piece of paper on the string, and in a strong wind it will ratchet itself up. You could improve them, of course, one of the favorite mods being a release rod which would release the payload upon reaching the kite. You couldn't lift a lot of weight this way, but strategic stinkbomb bombardment was possible. Yes... Kids these days are sure missing out on a lot of things...
His wife is dead...
No,you are jerking off.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
Propulsion.
Now thats an idea.
NO SIG
providing carefully timed jerks of the cable at its base with a broomstick to represent the cable held in tension, an electric sander to provide a rhythmic vibration to the bottom of the stick, and three brushes representing the climber with their bristles pointing downwards allowing the climber assembly to slide upward along the broomstick as it moved slightly downward, but grip it as it moved slightly upward.
Clearly this man has a calling in erotic literature.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
What does this "google" mean? Is that a new word you just made up?
Oh right, it's ok for you to invent new words but not anyone else.
What makes you think we'll be more advanced in a few thousand years?
Currently hooked on AMP
"we'll be more advanced" suggests some kind of progression of the liberal arts sense.. I was just referring to technological advancement.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Does anyone else find it prophetic that the ground station engineer working on the space elevator is named Riise? Like Dr. Frankenstein - Rise... Riise... Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiise!!!!!!!!!!
They still haven't killed this idea off?
How about focusing on space based electric generation and using the carbon nanotubes as super-strength vertical conductive wires which Barack Obama is preparing to fund research into?
Wake up people, we need solutions now, not theories which may or may not pan out in 25 years.
Sincerely,
A. C.
They still have to figure out how to build the actual ribbon - even carbon/fullerene nanomaterials have not achieved the required tensile strengths. lasers or some guy with a broomstick doesn't matter if the cable snaps on deployment.
This is why honest ROCKETS make so much more sense - proven tech that gets cheaper as frequency of flight increases.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
The enormous size of the concept makes all of the engineering specs daunting, but it does not violate any basic physical or engineering principles. It seems that you have to consider two scenarios about how this works - one in which the apex of the cable, or its center of gravity would be displaced downward with each "micro"-jerk, and one in which the position of the cable remains strictly stationary, one of which would be energy inefficient, and one of which could be engineered to be efficient and possibly workable.
Scenario 1 - In this, the whole elevator wire is displaced with each downward jerk. This is the bad idea. Even if it moves by just by millimeters or even microns at a time, displacing the whole cable means moving it against it's own kinetic energy and angular momentum, losing energy. To re-elevate the cable, a thruster at the top could restore its angular velocity, lifting it back to its "stationary" position, dragging the payload climber up in the process. The jerking at the bottom dissipates energy in the cable to "reload" it; the top thruster supplies the lifting energy, restoring the lost energy to the cable, and also supplying energy to lift the climber. Note that energy is expended to lift both cable and climber. Note too the repetitive loads and unloads on the cable, with degrees of slack, deformation, and sudden re-tensioning, all of which may wear the cable, causing ultimate failure or the need for regular maintenance and replacement.
Scenario 2 - What though if the top of the cable remains stationary, maintaining its precise altitude, via the very principles of the space elevator? The overall inertia of the cable could keep in stationary, but forces acting axially would stretch the cable according to its elastic properties and parameters. What then if the cable was engineered in such a way that its material, width, length, and density all create a resonant frequency that the vibrator could match. The cable might tense and de-tense symmetrically along its length, acting as any type of oscillating spring, without any net change in length nor significant 2- and 3-dimensional deformation. At a non-resonant harmonic, the cable would lose energy, and the vibrator at the bottom and a thruster at the top would have to pump it back in, just like in scenario #1. But if the vibration goes at the right frequency, the cable could be kept oscillating at minimum energy, just enough to overcome internal friction and inertance. Seems to me that a lot of energy would have to be put in in the first place to get the system running, but once there, only a little bit of power needs to be supplied to keep it tuned. In that sense, it is no different than any other mechanical or electronic oscillator, eg the tank circuit in a radio receiver, that can be kept running with only minimum new energy at the resonant frequency. The climber would be lifted with each local upward recoil of the cable. This would dampen the oscillation a bit, and this is where the vibrator at the bottom would react on each cycle to put that energy back into the system, to keep it oscillating on frequency. If this is running at the cable's prime frequency, then the only energy expended is in lifting the climber. (Resupplying internal heat losses in the cable is part of the baseline overhead of running the system, not a cost against lifting the payload). And, there is much less wear on the cable, so maintenance costs are down. The caveat to this is that the cable must be vibrating non-stop. The energy of resonance would be like a giant flywheel or stretched spring, and it would be way too expensive to power it up and down each time you want to use it. So, power it up just once, putting gobs of energy into oscillating the cable at its resonant frequency, then maintain that frequency with tiny squirts of energy on each cycle. When a climber wants to climb, the "kicker" on the vibrator simple puts in a bit more force or energy on each cycle to supply the energy needed to lift the climber. More energy is needed in th
His wife's in a coma...
Heh!
When I fuck 'em, they STAY fucked!
Surely with the world's mean unemployment rate, they could just hook up huge engines to millions of treadmills...
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Sarah+Palin&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2
Proceed with carefully timed jerks...
Now that I think about it, I'm not sure that's any better, but whuddeva.
Also need to work some reference to going blind . . .
Most historic progress is the result of timely jerks.
The article is about "engineer Age-Raymond Riise", and no jokes yet about, you know?
carefully timed jerks was referring to our Congressional elections.
And afterwards the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Seven Samurai, The Uncut Frost/Nixon interviews and every Episode of Seinfeld ever made.
*DING* *crackling speaker* "First floor: Radiation, Vacuum and Anti-Gravity Masturbation"
Upon first reading about this, I was wondering:
Wouldnt an elevator protruding from our atmosphere release our precious oxygen into the vacuum of space?
I mean, if you blow a really big soap bubble, and shove a straw into with the bubble still intact, wouldnt it deflate in a lower-pressured environment?
Like a track team or a bunch of swimmers?
Why bother
It might not be Flamebait but theres no mod option for 'Pathetic unfunny shit'.
Am I the only one who read that and understood he was worried about chafing?
Karma: Non-Heinous
At the risk of _being_ a jerk.....
The commonly used phrase is "for all intents and purposes", and please, google "begs the question".
Whoosh! BIG whoosh!
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Isn't the length/stength issue more significant? After all, if we could jerk a 100k ribbon safely, why wouldn't we just make a 200k loop like a conveyer belt.
Which intensive purposes... oh all of them. But wait I care and whom is a very important word.
But for all intents and purposes your sig is irrelevant.
Why bother
But you agree that "whom" isn't a word?
Either you're not getting his joke, or I'm not getting yours.
I was waiting all afternoon to get home so I could finally read the responses to this headline. /. doesn't dissapoint. Comedy gold. Now get your mom to make you some more pizza pockets and get back to writing, damnit.
...*because* he had sex with her.
I hate printers.
....get my broomstick pointing to skyward!
/crude
... a diode?
Couldn't the thing be made like a big air-tight tube? That way, you could suck all the air out above the payload, then open the base of the tube. Woosh!
Did the elevator move?
C-C-C-C-Combo breaker!
I need the money.
.
I'm somewhat musically inclined, and I think my timing could be improved (at least according to my ex-wives), so perhaps there is financial hope for me yet.
So.
Just what do I have to do to power this ridiculous "space elevator"?
.
- aqk
F U
That's alright. It means that people have to read what you've written from time to time. Helps boost your fragile little ego.
Also Seinfeld does actually suck ass.
So instead starting the space trip with a lift off do we start with a jerk off?
Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you, Sparky?
I was hoping to read some interesting posts about this topic, but this thread is mostly just really bad amateur comedians making very redundant moronic jokes.
Don't quit your day jobs! Seriously!
If you're going to uprate posts as 'funny' at least make sure the material is actually funny.
... on the count of THREE! ...
This shouldn't be moderated "Troll".
"Carefully timed jerks" is a very good description of the hustlers who keep this "space elevator" scam alive.
This particular one should raise the snake oil flag for anyone with an ounce of common sense; Shaking the base of a 100,000 km flexible structure in the hope that any of the energy would be available for propulsion at the far end of the structure? Yeah right.
If I was the ESA, I'd be asking this "scientist" for an energy efficiency report on his shaky broomstick before kicking his ass and sending him back to janitorial duties.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
No, you see, we just use a bunch of carefully timed nuclear bombs to move the cable back and forth... oh and we change the elevator cable to a giant steel plate...
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
"Hoist Hurl Hell" might find its own special place inside the general field of motion sickness.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
It's worse than that actually. The distance to Geosynch is 36000 km. Moving at a 100 km/h (about 55mph) you'd still be underway for 360 hours. There's no way any climbing-mechanism that depends on mechanical transfer from the ribbon will be able to climb even close to fast enough to make the thing practical.
The demonstration shows a climbrate of around 0.1m/s at which speed it'd reach geosynchornous orbit after about 15 years of climbing. Dumbest idea ever.
The thing with space elevators is that they can be built on any body in space. Its a silly idea for earth, but for Mars its theoretically possible, for the moon it might be practically possible for a high cost, and for some asteroid, it might be better than rockets even if its built for only one take-off.
So while it's usually presented as a crack pot vision, it's not at all worthless to do research into this field. It will without a doubt have some application, what that application might be depends on how effective we can make this stuff.
Why should an american be allowed to comment on grammar? you guys invented "rediculous" "defiantely" and "could care less". Go boil your head.
Recent analysis indicates that shear stress and forces generated by solar wind would probably make a space elevator very unlikely (I mean on top of the already difficult job of building 60,000 miles of cable fiber cable, and coming up with a workable lifting technology.
The only safe way to lift would take weeks to get a payload into space. Though if you have a continuous system with separate up and down cables and can run continuous cars both ways, you would still have a viable technology for material lifting. It would simply be untenable for lifting people.
Well I did everything except actually post the Seinfeld slap-bass outro - which is still possible, I just don't think /. mods would take kindly to an entire comment comprised of my pasting the binary output of `cat ~/Music/seinfeldoutro.ogg`.
But hey, the option is certainly still there.
I suddenly had an image of some hastily drawn Scott Adams contraption hurling Elbonians into meteoric reentry to generate thrust.
You're provision of a grammar lesson in your sig, while simultaneously misquoting the expression "for all intents and purposes," is ironic to the max. Congratulations on setting a new standard!
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
This is folly, and as usual we want taxpayers to pick up the tab. The tether would snap long before it got to be 100,000km long. The non-linear forces would snap it. NASA already tried this less than a mile long in space and it snapped.
I think you are misunderstanding the scale of things as well as the likely materials involved.
Such brushes could and probably would be made of nano-fibers--billions and billions of them.
True like any mechanical part they would wear out, but stopping a fall would be simila to the time-honored method we use for elevators--automatic clamps.
Odds of enough of them being worn to cause a problem before the wear was detected are dependent upon inspection techniques and frequency. Operational decisions, not physics.
Note that most airplane mechanical failures happen because of missed, botched or otherwise bad operational procedure in inspection--not because the failure wasn't planned for.
The most major problem of a space elevator is not how to move along the cable, but how to prevent the cable from whipping into the ground at thousands of km per hour if it is broken at altitude.
The building of the thing in the first place is another, although there are several apparently feasible plans.
Note that this system depends upon the stiffness of the cable, and thus can only be used AFTER construction...unless the cable itself is stiff enough, which might be for at least a few km.
wizodd
It's the only way anyone on Slashdot will ever get laid!
Could this be the first palindromic 'In Soviet Russia Joke'?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
...they are called Breaks, like in a car, but a bit different. In case of a catastrophic failure of these bristles, brakes kick in. They let the elevator slide down in a controlled manner.
1. Think up kickass new porn genre.
2. Profit!
That's "First Posters", is it not?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Thank God there are Slashdot posters to make vague comments about "forces" and "snapping". Without them, engineers would have to rely on analysis, simulation, and experimentation.
Jerks always seem to get the girl too. Bastards.
mod parent up
...this SO reminds me of a high-school science project - a submersible, somewhat-terrain-independent vehicle prototype, using brushes instead of wheels or tracks. Take a small electric motor, attach an offset weight to the shaft, install the motor + battery + switch inside a suitable watertight plastic enclosure. Cut the handle off a brush with semi-soft bristles, glue the bristle part to the plastic enclosure. Set the thing on any relatively level surface, flip the switch, and watch it roll around *on brushes*. Offset weight on motor bounces the vehicle up & down, bristles propel it forward with each jump. Directional control can be accomplished by using 2 independent motors and 2 sets of bristle pads. Totally self-contained, no openings that must be sealed, no tires that can rupture, no tracks that can misalign. Not only suitable for space elevators, but also as potential chassis for extreme-environment exploration probes. Everything old is new again.
From the sound of the title, I thought they were going to synchronize the entire population of France to power the thing.
Slashdot is kind of like Playboy; we aren't here to read the articles.
1. There is no physical track. The "ribbon"consists solely of ions being flung vertically up by a cyclotron. You ride up it by magnetically grabbing on to the stream of ions. Vehicles have to be relatively small to ride the stream of ions up. I.E. Yo ride up in an SUV sized vehicle, not a 747 sized vehicle.
2. In the lower area, you build a sealed tower to keep air out.
3. On top of the fountain is a gigantic magnetic U, catching the ions and returning them back to earth. This becomes a base for a space station.
4. We can actually afford to build one now.
5. If power is cut to the cyclotron, the existing ions keep the hole thing powered up for hours, possibly days. The only real problem would be a terrorist/military attack on the base unit. Put it in a no-fly zone, near a nuclear power plant.
6. As we increase the technology, we can build a second cyclotron in space to increase security.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
.
But the upper end relies on being in geosynch orbit or there'd have to be a bunch of rockets keeping it up. The moon rotates once per MONTH. Where is the geosynch for a one-month orbit? We know radius = cuberoot((G*M)/w^2). Putting in 7.36x10^22 kg for the mass of the moon, and 29.5 days for a rotation, we get a radius of about 432 MILLION KILOMETERS!
I'd say it's MUCH more likely one will be built for the Earth than for the Moon.
Geosynchronous orbit for the moon exceeds 400 MILLION kilometers. That'd be a damn long cable....
I've seen the same thing demonstrated on a flat surface using a paint shaker moving a weight at a 45 degree angle. It was in Popular Science in the 60s. Rather than angled bristles or what not, it used differential friction, but the principle is the same.
It will not work on a space elevator. The ribbon will have some degree of elasticity. The 'shaker' will induce waves into the ribbon. As it moves the period of oscillation in the ribbon will change and eventually find resonance with its period, and amplify itself to destruction.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Hey I like that!
Screw the space elevator, let's build teleporters! They're orders of magnitude* more efficient and safer than even the space elevator! We'd build teleporters if we only knew how to implement the technology. But that's just a minor detail, we should build them because they're better.
Oh and while we're at it, I want my fscking jet pack as promised, and I wish everyone here gets a pony too!
-dZ.
* or is it order of magnitudes, or maybe orders of magnutides?
Carol vs. Ghost
"He hates these space elevators!"
All they would need in an Aluminum rail and magnets on the car. Using Magnetic induction and hysteresis they could push the car up and down and just use mechanical breaks once the car is stopped to hold it in place.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Carefully Timed Jerks... Yes, I know a lot of them... They were very clever in timing their pranks just right... I personally called them BULLIES. But hey, whatever works for you.
Say... get a load of this...
So, if this "shot" comes off succexxsfully, is that bank shot a money shot? Will the in-dus-try get more bang for its "buck". Gives a nude meaning or meaning-full-end to "space shot"... What will "thruster packs" cost. Will this space shot lead to a new form of penetrating oil to loosen stuck nuts and bolts? Will these timed jerks yield a new strain of/for "rods of the gods?" Will "da fie ji" (loosely, "launch little airplanes", in Chinese...) become the watchword of the lay, ummm, day?
At what Mach speed will the "first hump" be broken? Isn't it great how technology can "blow your mind"...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Use the centripital force to hold them taught, arange them in a loop, and LIFT stuff up with a gear mechanism at the top or bottom. Heck, make it a REAL elevator, with a counterweight on the other side.
In Liberty, Rene
Do I win a prize
872835240
That's actually not true.
It is true that you can be in orbit 100km up. But you need velocity for that, rather a lot of it too. If you climb 100km up this cable, and then let go, what happens is you plunge back down to earth, because you have only a small fraction of the horisontal velocity needed to be in orbit.
That is why SpaceShip One wasn't even remotely close to being in orbit, despite having reached an altitude of 100km.
More spesifically, you need a velocity of around 8km/s, and the cable, at that altitude, will have a velocity of around 0.5km/s. So, to insert yourself in LEO, you need to climb to 100km altitude, and then do a 7.5km/s rocket-burn or something. Which ain't all that much easier than just doing a 9km/s burn starting from earth. (9 not 8 because if you're starting from earth you'll lose some energy to atmospheric friction the first 20km or so)
I wonder how to jerk the cable when you pull it up, e.g. to protect from storms and other weather-related events? I understood that is the way you awoid it being blown away (feel free to pick up on the pun, guys - no gals in this audience...).