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."

Comments

gotta love the attitude

[korpique]

It probably won't hurt your corporate image too much to bolster some idealism every once in a while.

Re:Is that so?

[mikael_j]

Well, here's a list of some of their previous projects.

Re:Is that so?

[Cryacin]

Wow. A week in an elevator. Here's hoping you're not in the elevator with "that guy". You know the one. Who eats about a ton of burrito's or whatever causes his usual gastric disturbances.

Counterpoint

[SuperKendall]

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...

Re:Counterpoint

[CrimsonAvenger]

Actually no. A space elevator is a bit like a train track with only 2 stations at each end. If you want to go anywhere else, it is more or less useless. For example its almost totally useless for LEO. Well tbh it is totally useless for LEO.

Umm, no.

Below the terminus at GEO, the elevator is moving at less than orbital speed. Above the terminus (all the way to the counterweight), it is moving at more than orbital speed.

This can be taken advantage of to deploy things to positions in LEO (release something at just the right altitude along the space elevator, it'll drop down to a perigee at the altitude you want it, then a small boost from a conventional rocket, and you're in a circular orbit in LEO. At much lower cost than a rocket from the ground.

Likewise, it can be used to toss things into the outer system - the counterweight is moving at far above escape speed (~7000 m/s at 96000 km), so you can just let something go there, and it'll be heading off in the general direction of Jupiter. It won't go as high as Saturn's orbit without a higher counterweight, of course, but lower aphelions are possible by releasing at a lower altitude than the counterweight...

Re:English?

[ChatHuant]

WTF does that last sentence even mean?

It's just the editors being up to their usual standards of quality. The elevator cable doesn't end at the geostationary station (at 36000 km); it continues beyond it for another 60000 km, and terminates in a counterweight. This counterweight is supposed to be positioned 96 THOUSAND kilometers from the surface, hence the mention of the quarter of the distance to the moon.

Kenny G

[lemur3]

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..

Re:Kenny G

[Joce640k]

I'm more worried that some idiot will press all the buttons so it stops at every floor.

Re:Great concept except for ....

[ray_nicov]

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.

To get from Vladivostok to Moscow on the train you would need 9 days. It used to take a couple of weeks or more. One train carriage carry approximately 30 people and the either share cabins with 3 other travellers or the whole carriage is one big cabin. People used to travel this way all the time before flying started to be an option. I suppose with our iPads etc the journey will be even less difficult

Tea, Earl Grey, hot.

[Hognoxious]

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.

Re:Great concept except for ....

[TheTurtlesMoves]

We do not in fact have the materials. No matter how much money you spend you cannot get even a foot of +6GPa strength cable. Not only have we not ever made such a material, but we don't know how yet either. It is a R&D project. It is also not a given that it is even possible.

Re:Good luck and I want the 13th ride up

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they don't do it, I'm pretty sure in the process they're gonna find/invent some cool stuff that will probably make them a shitload of money. They are doing exactly what all technology companies should be doing: push the limits and try the impossible. It's always a win-win idea.

Materials science 101

[Kupfernigk]

There has already been a paper suggesting that SWCN may not be up to the task due to "dislocations".

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.