Slashdot Mirror
Obayashi To Build Space Elevator By 2050
mattr writes "Japan's Obayashi Corp. has announced plans to build a space elevator by 2050. They are famous for wrecking skylines with the over-sized bullet train station in Kyoto, the world's tallest self-supporting tower Tokyo Sky Tree and just recently, the beginnings of the Taipei Dome. It will take a week at 200 kph for your party of 30 to reach the 36,000-km-high terminal station, while the counterweight [swings along at] 96 km high, a quarter of the way to the Moon."
It would be easier to believe that "Japan's Obayashi Corp" are out of their mind if we would have a link to this on their own web site.
It probably won't hurt your corporate image too much to bolster some idealism every once in a while.
I was the real korpiq until I woke up clowned.
It's bad enough sharing a lift with 5 or 6 people for 30 seconds, let alone sharing one with 30 people for a week.
I wish them luck and hope the technology is ready before I'm too old to ride the thing.
Forecast for this thread. 56% never gonna happen. 10% certain it will happen. 18% about how impossible it is. and the rest finding a way to blame MS for the failure.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
1. The fact that we don't have the necessary structural materials yet to actually make a space elevator.
2. Neither Japan nor any Japanese company has the financial solvency to undertake such an effort
2. No no wants to spend a week in an elevator even if it means you get to go into orbit. Christ I can barely make it to the 15th floor without some jackass farting. A whole week. Don't think so.
Every so often some company in need of cashflow creates some nonsensical grandiose concept in the hopes of securing ignorant investor funding (See Moller flying cars). And such companies usually have spent the bulk of the cash on P.R. - hence the slashdot article.
It's bullshit. It's always bullshit.
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
WTF does that last sentence even mean?
The fact that we don't have the necessary structural materials yet to actually make a space elevator.
And we'll continue not having them until someone pays to build a space elevator and does the needed research. By 2050 it's not impossible to think materials will be around to make this feasible.
Neither Japan nor any Japanese company has the financial solvency to undertake such an effort
Possibly, hard to say. They put up some really large buildings. They could get a huge loan.
No one wants to spend a week in an elevator even if it means you get to go into orbit.
I would happily pay 20k to go to said stationary station for a few days. Even if it took a week to get there in cramped quarters.
By then there may be a number of cheaper options to visit pace though, Virgin Galactic is making a go at it. I really only want to go up if I can spend a day or two though, so mere flights up and down do not interest me much...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
submitter has it wrong. tfa states that it's ONE OF the tallest, with a meagre 600-odd meters.
I was under the impression that we didn't have materials with the tension strength to build a space elevator?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
even when technology is mature enough to manufacture a carbon nanotube cable of this magnitude, how can it be set into the required position? An outline that is confirmed to work once it is built is nice, but I have seen no plan how to actually install it... How does one get started to place the first part of the cable?
if you think "that guy" who ate the burrito is bad..
just wait until you find out that there is only 1 song played over ... and over..
You do not have to go to 36000 km height to have a space experience. The international Space Station orbits at 300 km height and provides us with fantastic pictures. The authors mention the 36000 km height because geostationary satellites are at that height. And, apparently, something big like the terminal staion must be at that height to hold the elevator cable in place.
I only now realize it says 96km. :/
Earth moon distance is 392937km. ChatHaunt said it best: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2685249&cid=39121887
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Whilst geosynchronous orbit is achieved at about 36,000 Kms, the atmosphere ends at roughly 120kms. Using some kind of rail to continue to elevate the payload will be hideously inefficient outside the atmosphere.
Furthermore, using the term 'elevator' is clearly an attempt to dumb-down the technology (kind of like called a Philosopher's Stone a 'Magic Stone').
Don't have a citation, but I believe that even using carbon nanotubes, the tether cable needs to be about 10 metres thick. This would mean that the project would require some 36 x 10 ^ 8 cubic metres of carbon nanotubes. Idaho Space Materials makes about 50gms per hour - at a cost measured in hundres of $ per gram.
I don't know that this is all practically do-able yet.
If we're ever to permanently escape the cradle of humanity, this is the way to do it. I'm just disappointed that they're setting their target date 28 years in the future!
There will be nay-sayers, of course -- "It can't be done" "It will be too expensive" etc... but I believe that once we actually get down to accomplishing this, it will turn out to be both easier and cheaper than we expect. And, of course, once we have ONE elevator, putting up new ones will be much quicker & cheaper than putting up the first one.
Then I can finally move to L5!! ("Home on Lagrange" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_on_Lagrange_(The_L5_Song))
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
Look, ultimately you can't know if a technology is a good idea without actually building the tech, full scale, and spending the time and money to create revised versions to fix the major problems.
After you do that, some technologies are still a dog, no matter how you try to hide it. Nuclear power is an instance of that : sure it works, but the risk of catastrophe overshadows everything, and means that if you try to build and run a reactor everything costs too much because of the dangers. In the long run, nuclear is not feasible because other technologies will keep getting cheaper.
I feel a space elevator is a dog for a similar fundamental reason : there's one 36,000 km high structure.
Any serious failure to a manufacturing defect along 36,000 km of cable, and you lose every last dime invested in the project. (not to mention the falling cable might cause some nasty problems). If someone ever wants to attack a space elevator, it's a perfect terrorism target. One homemade cruise missile (in 2050, I suspect making a cruise missile won't be much harder than RC airplanes are today. Heck, some garage tinkerers already have done similar projects) and the ENTIRE elevator falls.
Not to mention laser fire, railgun fire, bad weather, etc etc. There's a lot of things and it only has to fail at one point.
Furthermore, you have to complete the elevator project before it is worth anything. Invest all that money to FINISH the cable, you can't get incremental results. And this multi-billion dollar structure (realistically probably hundreds of billions) has a rather limited cargo capacity : one load of passengers a week is NOT a rapid movement to space.
So, no. It's an idea that has somehow gained traction, but it is most likely a non-starter.
I propose a much simpler idea : rather than use lasers on the ground to transmit power to the elevator climber car, scale up those laser arrays a few orders of magnitude to the point that they can vaporize propellant off the bottom of the spacecraft. Pulse the beams right, and planar shockwaves will be created, giving net thrust without any kind of nozzle.
Advantages :
1. Ablative Laser propulsion doesn't require anything in the spacecraft in the way of aerospace hardware but a small instrument package to report attitude and accelerations back to the ground. Gyroscopes for stabilization would be nice, but not essential.
2. If a laser module on the ground fails or wears out, the launch continues..10 or 50% redundancy is entirely feasible.
3. You can do one launch every few minutes, assuming you use LED diode pumped fiber optic lasers, and have sufficient cooling capacity to remove the waste heat and sufficient power generation. That could be a metric ton or so to orbit every 15 minutes, 24/7, 7 days a week.
4. You do 1000 or 10,000 unmanned cargo launches before you send the first man up in a spacecraft identical to the one used for cargo (well, with life support inside, but identical flight hardware). This kind of sampling size allows you to honestly evaluate the safety of the system. In the event of a problem, you turn the beam off instantly and deploy parachutes. (such as beam heating of the side walls or something). No rocket to explode.
5. Each spacecraft will be extremely cheap, just a block of an inert solid bolted to the bottom, and a small instrument package (an iphone has all the circuitry needed, although of course you would use more sensitive accelerometers) and a radio. Obviously, some kind of orbital maneuvering system is also needed, but you can get to orbit without it.
Disadvantages :
1. Reflected beams from the lasers might cause problems for observers on the ground. Might have to create a large exclusion zone around the launch site, with air travel forbidden in a large radius. Not a big deal, tons of places in the Arizona desert. Still, with so many people involved, it seems likely a few people would be blinded if the lasers used were visible light.
2. It would r
. . . is located here. It includes a bit more about the proposed construction, starting date, and other interesting bits.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
The counterweight is 1/4 the distance to the moon. Not the terminal station.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Nope, this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1EG-MKy4so
Where ever they build the land-based part, I'd not go within 96km of that location.
When/if the cable falls, it won't be good.
It'll be a small matter of downloading the plans from an interweb and running the 3D printer overnight. A long weekend at most.
As for the financial aspects, bitcoin will solve all that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Great destination! The view never changes! Sun rises and sets once per day; just like home!
Their they're doing there hair.
I'll be in my early 70's, hopefully still alive...
Really? With the train station in Kyoto? Seriously? I've been there, both in the train station and in the surrounding area. It's big, but it's not exactly skyline wrecking unless you happen to live in an apartment which directly faces it. There are plenty of other buildings nearby which are close to the same height and once you get about two blocks away, you can't even see it from the street. If you don't believe me, here's a picture from above which shows the surrounding area. Plenty of other 8+ story buildings in the area. Here's a view from the top of the hotel in the train station. What skyline is it that they're destroying exactly?
Kyoto is a lovely city. It has myriad beautiful temples and gardens and the nearby country-side is lovely. People flock to it to see the cherry trees when they are in bloom. But none of these things are very tall. Most of the famous temples aren't even visible when you're half a block away from them, nevermind part of the skyline. It does not now have an impressive skyline and if it ever did, it must have been centuries ago, and although the train station big enough to be clearly visible for a couple of blocks around, it's not exactly a sky-scraper. Honestly, its width and shininess stand out as much as its height. So, if the person writing the article thinks that the Kyoto train station (which has far more non-shinkansen platforms than shinkansen platforms) is too big or too shiny, then fine, but saying that it wrecks the skyline is just dumb.
The elevator has 150 people trapped in it, and your ship gets a distress call. You go to the rescue, and five Klingon ships appear from nowhere and start firing proton missiles at you. What do you do?
Without substantial advancements in material research, this cannot happen. No current or upcoming material exists that can withstand the extreme shear forces that would be exerted on a space elevator.
Space elevators are currently the realm of science fiction, and will likely remain so even in 2050. If we had the technology and materials to build it right now, a 2050 completion would still be unlikely. And we have neither the tech nor the materials.
My understanding is that it will have to be the equator, which gives them a choice of Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Sao Tome & Principe, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Maldives, Indonesia and Kiribati. Or maybe they're going to build an artificial island and port, I would imagine that's child's play compared to the elevator itself.
Imagine the fire escape. How long will it take to walk up/down in a space suit?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I read your blog "The Problem with Motion". Your problem is that there is no problem. And that, yes sir, you are a fruitcake and a crackpot.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I applaud them for exploring the possibilities. The only thing I would question is whether carbon nanotubes are strong enough? No one has been able to make them in quantity but my understanding was that even if you made it out of complete strands of carbon nanotubes... that is if you had monomolecular strands of the stuff stretching from geo sync orbit to the ground it wouldn't be strong enough to take the stress. I have in no way done the calculations on that and have no links to back up that statement. But I was given to understand that in past discussions.
Anyone want to confirm or deny that? Twenty times stronger then steel sounds strong until you realize they're talking about a cable far a lot longer then 20 times longer then what you'd ever consider making out of steel. As such, while 20 times is great... it's probably at least a thousand times too weak.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I agree with you. Nobody would want to be in an ordinary elevator for a week. I don't think anyone can be crammed into an ordinary elevator with 10 people in 2 m2, without food, drinks, seats/beds, for a week. Also, the lack of toilets in an ordinary elevator would be rather disturbing after a few hours.
So, this machine will hopefully be a little different than a regular elevator. Also, I hope it has a panorama window.
if you don't hold your breath.
Anyone know the stock ticker? With management like that it seems like an excellent short target.
Deleted
How unambitious. I'm hoping they get that whole anti-senescence thing worked out. Preferably either before I get to the nasty bits of being old or in a way that allows them to reverse the damage.
And anyway, why are you such a self-centered cunt? Even if you're dead or a drooling on yourself with age (rather than stupidity, which is what seems to be happening now) why wouldn't you want future generations to have awesome shit like a space elevator? This sort of thing is AWESOME, sure it's probably not gonna happen on Obayashi's timeframe and might be flat out impossible but you can't find out if you don't try and it would be really neat (as well as incredibly useful) if they managed to make one. No one thought the Wright Brothers would be able to make a plane...
I'd be interested in that. That size wont mess about with the huge planet at all. At what scale does it start to cause a problem?
I was thinking Kiddy Grade. Effectively the spaceship would "drive" up the "beanstalk" which is a zillion more times efficient than using a rocket.
Of course it all depends on having SOMEPLACE TO GO once you get to the top!!!
The atmosphere itself weighs 5 quadrillion (5Ã--10^15) tonnes and extends 100km. I don't think it's going to be a balance problem to stick a cocktail stick into the side of an elephant.
That said, my reply to this article is: Okay then. Off you go. Call us when you're close and we'll take a look.
Until then, it's still just science-fiction.
Vandalism, terrorist or not, and theft are probably the biggest issues. Carbon fibre hasn't taken over for the cables of suspension footbridges for just that reason.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
No quotation marks needed. The problems in designing very strong materials have been known since WW2. The challenge can be expressed very simply: the more the strength depends on having a complete covalent structure (in CNTs the bonds have some ionic characteristic owing to the p-hybridisation but the same logic applies) , the greater the weakening effect of even a single fault. If a cosmic ray unzips a few bonds, the stresses will concentrate on the bonds on either side, and the split is likely to propagate. In strong metals we fix this with alloying components, very crudely like the gravel in concrete, which stop those dislocations from extending right through the material, but equally adding alloy components reduces the ultimately obtainable strength from a perfect structure. It is a tradeoff, as usual.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
And the editors' ability is 2/3 of the distance to the moon, compared to where it should be.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
They were planning to build a ladder to heaven!
maybe 200km/hr in the atmosphere ...
but that is only necessary for a half hour - once your past "the skys the limit" as far as speed goes
Now that's what I call black-sky thinking...or thinking inside the box!
214 comments and no one's mentioned Arthur C. Clarke yet?!
Someone on Slashdot must have read Fountains of Paradise, surely...
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw
And 17 years after that first wobbly flight there was a commercial airline.
I think the plan is ambitious, and perhaps not feasible, but I would not bet against the ingenuity of creative and motivated people. Even if they don't accomplish their goal, imagine the new tech that could be spun off from the research.
(p.s. You'd make your point a lot more effectively without the potty mouth).
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Current Carbon nanotube technology is still far from what's needed for a space elevator and (IMO) the field would benefit from a dramatic infusion of cash. It's not clear from this article whether they are planning to support such research, but (again, IMO) if they are not, then this is just idle day-dreaming.
There would be at least an order of magnitude increase in fiber length, and many orders of magnitude increases in fiber production rates, before a carbon nanotube space elevator would become a viable prospect. This is for a terrestrial elevator, a Lunar elevator could be built with existing fiber technology.
Yeah. Not so funny if you're the one in the elevator. And let's hope they don't play that cheery elevator music for a week, or they'll discover a bunch of suicide victims when the doors open.
It is sad to see that the U.S. has lost vision and become a nation of empty-headed belttlers. Certainly building a space elevator is a non-trivial task, but there is no scientific reason to dismiss it as impossible. Carbon nanotubes are theoretically strong enough to support a tether-style space elevator. And space elevators would make space travel economically feasible and open up the solar system to commercial exploitation and human occupation.
I would prefer if the entrepreneurial vision and spirit to build a space elevator came from the U.S. But, when you get down to it, that is simply selfish pride. If the Japanese, Chinese, Brazilians, Emirati or even Russians (it was their idea to begin with) are to do it, more power to them. It is going to get done eventually.
I wanna ride the space elevator with Natalie Portman, naked and petrified, and my pants full of hot grits.
An important parameter for a space elevator is the "free breaking length" - the length of constant width cable that can support its own weight under 1 g (remember, for any real elevator, the actual force of (gravity + rotation) declines rapidly as you ascend).
A terrestrial space elevator needs a material with a free breaking length of 4,960 kilometers. The free breaking length of steel is about 30 km, nanotubes are expected to have breaking lengths of ~ 5000 km.
Any real elevator cable will be tapered (i.e., the width will increase with altitude), but (very roughly) the amount of the taper (in area) is e^(4960/free breaking length). So, for steel, you need a taper of ~ e^160, so a steel space elevator would have to be thicker than the entire galaxy by the time it reaches geostationary altitude, which is of course ridiculous. To have a chance to make a real elevator, you need a free breaking length of at least 1000 km, which no one has exhibited so far, but which nanotubes can probably provide.
Pegasus was the right idea, we just need a bigger runway and a bigger jet purpose built for lifting the rocket.
I hardly trust NORMAL elevators. Wake me up when they have space stairs.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
As long as it's got internet, it's got to have a better view than your mom's basement. Better enjoy that view too, because once you get to the moon, you're just in another basement -- just on another planet.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Will we end up with a 96,000 mile super-strong elevator cable effectively wrapping itself around the planet 4 times?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
...think about it, a week-long loop of a Dixieland Jazz ringtone version of The Girl From Ipanema?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Just wanted to add: even if the cable might have to be 10 meters thick at its thickest, it does not have to be equally thick everywhere.
Guys, we really need to start ganging up on Japan. They're finishing the space elevator soon. Once they launch their Alpha Centauri colony, they'll win!
My userid is prime!
" more likely, burn up in the atmosphere"
The atmosphere isn't a magic burn up place. At the speeds they will be falling, there won't be any signigicant 'burn up'. Meterao are travelling thousands of miles an hour. It will be STATIONARY*, unlike satellites, space stations, and space shuuttles that revolve around the earth at a high rate of speed.
The strength of the material required to do a space elevator means it's going to have unpredictable results and have a huge negative impact to the rest of the world.
"some would go into Earth orbit"
Thus moving willy nilly risking satellites, and even the future of spavce travel...then fall to the earth.
"and a good chunk would be thrown out into interplanetary space.
WHAT? you fail at orbital mechanics.
"countermeasures"
Ah, nice.. countermeasures.. such as...?
The most common retort is packing it with explosives....but what people like you fail to take into account is that explosives wont reduce the mass. Do you have a different solution?
You need to spend less time at the movies, and more time in a classroom.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
commenting that don't show even the most basic understanding of physics, much less orbital mechanics, is astounding.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For Taliban, Americans, and other terrorists.
Everyone stop laughing right now and they'll only go 12 years past their initial projection.
Clarke was a genius about these things.
Of course, this is a huge amount of energy that has to be constantly put out, every single day for as long as we maintain this thing. If we want to demolish it, it will take as long to unbuild as it takes to build.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
There are so many problems and impracticalities with a space elevator that I believe we are better off looking at other technologies such as a Launch Loop. It has some serious issues of its own, but not the number or scale that the Space Elevator has. Nonetheless, I wish Obayashi success.
With the first space elevator in place, it is relatively straightforward to use it to build the second elevator next to it.
In fact, once the first elevator is built, and thanks to the economy of scale already done on it (96'000km of theter), why stop at a 2nd elevator? a 3rd would be even cheaper as the industry of cable-production gets perfected.
Before 2100 Earth could be surrounded by some kind of orbital ring. A ring lookoing like a spiked bycicle wheel: with lots of tethers going down to eath and up to 96km. Formely used as anchoring and counter weight. But once you got the whole ring, the ring itself should be mostly orbitally stable. The inner theters will mostly be used as numerous access way to the ring, the outher theters as numerous launch point to send stuff beyond the gravity well.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
"Obayashi to enter bankruptcy by 2050"
the last time we made a structure that tall it collapsed and everyone ended up speaking different languages. i mean...what?
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
For some reason I read "moon" as "moron". Couldn't be the association with editors, could it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wow. A week in an elevator.
Yeah, that didn't sound right to me either, and the article doesn't mention the reason why it needs to be 36,000 km. International Space Station is only 200-250 miles, or 320-400 km, so 36,000 km would zoom right past it. Why does it need to be 36,000 km?
Also the earth's radius is only 6,400 km, so 36,000 km is HUGE. It would be waaaaaay out into space. Closest easily visualized equivalent would be similar to a lolipop, with earth being the candy part and the elevator being the stick. That's ridiculous to the point of absurd, are we sure this is correct? Anything over 500 km really wouldn't make much sense.
Could they have meant 360 km? That would put it at the ISS which makes a whole lot more sense.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I'm holding out for instantaneous teleportation!
So long as our world doesn't have an atmosphere of highly combustible gases... oh wait.
nope, cut the cable at the anchor point and the whole thing is pulled by the counterweight into interplanetary space.
Aerospace engineer who has worked on orbital tether design speaking here.
A cable with a tip velocity of 30% of orbital speed is feasible with existing materials. Since the center of the cable is at orbital velocity by definition, the tip is then at 70% of orbital velocity at the bottom of it's rotation. A vehicle coming from the ground then needs half the kinetic energy as a full ground-to-orbit one does (Kinetic energy goes as 0.5 times velocity squared). That makes single stage launch vehicles very feasible. If the tip is at 1 gravity, then the cable radius is 516 km, and the center would be at an altitude of 750 km or thereabouts, so it does not see too much drag at the low point. Half a rotation later (12 minutes) at top of the rotation, you can let go, and now be going at 130% of orbit velocity, which is nearly GEO transfer or escape. Escape is 141% of orbit velocity.
If you wanted to get to zero g, then it's a 516 km ride, which beats the fuck out of a stationary elevator. The elevator will be heavy relative to the vehicles coming up and down, but you need onboard propulsion to make up for traffic differences. Anything going up tends to lower the elevator orbit, anything going down tends to raise it. Whatever is left over you need to make up, preferably with an efficient electric thruster. Arrival means landing on a platform that is at one gee. With modern GPS and laser navigation, that should be fairly easy. Make the platform hundreds of meters wide if you need a bigger target. Missed landings just means the vehicle heads back down sooner than it was supposed to. It should not present a safety problem.
Building something like this is a bootstrapping task. Start with a small rotating station, and extend cables from it. Keep adding sections of cable one at a time. Get your cable from near earth asteroids which have carbon, so you don't have to launch the whole thing from Earth. As the thing grows, the velocity to reach it from the ground goes down, so the payload a vehicle can carry goes up.
Oh, I forgot to mention, if you ride up the cable somewhere between the tip and the center, and time when you let go, you can inject into any transfer orbit you want. Also the Moon is a lot smaller than Earth, so a rotating cable in Lunar orbit can reach all the way to zero velocity. That makes getting up and down from the Moon very easy.
So now you've got the context and you can stop thinking or pretending that I've just jumped on one of your comments from nowhere.
Now do I have to mention the sub-orbital thing again or can you see or remember the previous comment?
So can you compare the magnitude of this to a true space elevator, in terms of technology, need for unobtanium, difficulty, etc?
Last I heard there were to be 3 tether experiments from the shuttle, one with a 50km tether down and two with a 150km tether, once up and once down. Last I'd heard they had problems (electrostatic?) with the 50km down tether, and I got the impression that they abandoned the whole thing.
You talked of needing to adjust orbit... David Brin wrote a story called "Tank Farm Dynamo" that involved tethers. He had plenty of electricity from solar panels, and pushed current through conductors on the tethers to torque against the Earth's magnetic field. They were able to to station-keeping without "throwing away mass."
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
r0ball,
I (and just about everybody else) got the joke.
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