Sir Arthur Speaks

rw2 wrote to us with an interview with Clarke in the NY Times. Login, of course, is required, but the interview is worth reading. Talks about space elevators, Kubrick & 2001 amongst other interesting subjects.

Comments

Space Elevator

[chromatic]

Did anyone else think of Red Mars and start to worry about the idea of a Space Elevator? At least when a rocket explodes or a satellite orbit decays, it only ruins a small chunk of real estate.

Sure, it would be cool... but you won't catch me moving to the equator.

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QDMerge 0.4!

Re:Space Elevator

[rde]

I read Red Mars, but didn't worry about the idea of a space elevator. But then again, I've also read The Web between the Worlds and The Fountains of Paradise.
The former, btw, was written by Charles Sheffield who's been described as a successor to both Heinlein and Clarke. These labels don't do him justice.

Good article

[Otto]

I'd read about his space elevator concept, both in his books and in actual papers on the subject.. Like all good ideas, it's very, very simple.. But I still thought diamond was the way to go.. I'd never considered bucky tubes.. genius man, genius..

Good Line here:
By the way, I'm an absentee landlord of a hundred square miles of some rather rugged territory near the orbit of Mars. I have an asteroid named after me. Isaac Asimov's got one too. It's smaller and more eccentric.

Ha! Asimov would have loved that..

Let's see here... more browsing.. ah ha! He talks about how he originally came up with the idea for the geosyncronous satellite for communications:

Q. One of the legends about you is that you came up with the idea for Comsat in an article you wrote in 1945 and that you never patented the idea.

A. Oh, so you want to ask me about how I lost a billion dollars in my spare time? Well, you see when I wrote my "comsat" paper, it was 1945....I didn't think that satellites could be launched until the end of the century.... I just wrote this article and sent it off and got £15 for it....what I should have done is to try to copyright the word "comsat." If I'd done that....

Good one.. Bit uninformative of anything new, and definitely the article is way too short.. I'd really like to see an indepth interview, or at least to read about whatever he wants to write about.. Someone like Clarke, well, they're just plain interesting, all the time..




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Clarke is the man

[wilkinsm]

51% percent of survival? I'd buy that. I would like to know what he thinks about that UN population implosion report.

I did not realize that nanotubular carbon was so strong. In high school (it was a long time ago) about I did a paper on Bucky Ball (aka C-60) and it's ability to encapulate RNA for gene repair.

Why can't nanotubes be produced in bulk? What kind of contrants are involved in it's production process?

Re:Clarke is the man

[Bearpaw]

Why can't nanotubes be produced in bulk? What kind of contrants are involved in it's production process?

The current production technique is a bit awkward and labor intensive. But samples can be purchased here.

Re:Clarke is the man

[Big Electric Cat]

To clarify, all the current ways of producing nanotubes involve making a big mess out of some carbon, and then separating the nanotubes out. While the percentage of molecules that turn out to be nanotubes can be improved with sophisticated techniques like the one described above, it seems like what you'd want for construction would be long tubes. I can't see how you'd get those other than with nano- or organic assemblers...

Space Elevator materials.

[Tau Zero]

You wouldn't be using Buckyballs, you'd be using Buckytubes. A Buckyball is an interesting molecule, but it's a ball; not very useful for making a cable. A Buckytube is made along the same principles of connected triangles of carbon, but there's a large section between the two ends which is like a plane of graphite wrapped around and spliced to itself, forming a pipe. Now THAT can make a cable.

The problem with a geosynchronous skyhook is that if it breaks, there's a hell of a lot of stuff that's coming down, hard. Fortunately, you don't have to use a skyhook for that. "Space fountains", Lofstrom loops, Jacobs Ladders and other ways of exploiting kinetic momentum could build structures that wouldn't be so tall that they'd span an ocean if they failed; if they were all sited on Eastern shores with nothing but open water to the dawnward, breaking them would only make some waves (ahem).
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interesting electrical properties too

[garyrich]

In addition to great strength, by changing
the orientation of the carbon rings you can
get a conductor, a diode or a semiconductor.
Extremely cool things. The 1st folks that
can make them in industrial quantities are
going to get fantastically rich.

in re falling skyhooks: couldn't you set it
up so that a disaster would cause a disconnect
at the base so that it would (in most cases)
fall up rather than down? I still wouldn't want
to be on it at the time. I recall some papers
from a few years ago also that showed skyhooks
to be fairly stable, statically and dynamically.

garyr

Dinosoars didn't have...

[Wah]

Q. One reason you advocate space travel is fear of asteroids?

A. I'm always quoting the science fiction writer Larry Niven that "the dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program."

Or electricity for heaters, or bomb shelters, or the ability to grow food without soil or direct sunlight, or the ability to clone species, or yada, yada, yada. If we have the ability to relocate a large enough population to an acceptable destination, I'm gonna guess we can stop an asteroid (yes I know how difficult it is).

Re:Somebody please post the article here.

[Mr. Slippery]

Use login cypherpunks01, password cypherpunks01. Or cypherpunks02, etcetera. Someone mentioned in another thread that there are over a hundred "cypherpunksN accounts on the NYT site.

Terminal ballistic qualities if it falls ;-)

[Tau Zero]

What would happen to the attached end I couldn't say...

It goes the only place it can: down. And since it is rotating along with the Earth but at a greater radius, it has a greater eastward velocity than the Earth's surface so it falls to the east, wrapping itself around the equator like string around a ball.

It wouldn't be particularly nice to be around, like a broken steel cable whipping into its attachments and ripping up anything that gets in its way. It would be best to be elsewhere.
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Re:Terminal ballistic qualities if it falls ;-)

[Tau Zero]

It might be designed to 'break-up' into sections in such a case, with parachute or balloon assist.

If the break was 4000 miles up (18,300 miles down from geosync), the bit at the top end of the bottom segment would have an eastward velocity of about 1050 MPH relative to the surface and potential energy equivalent to a speed of roughly 18,000 MPH. You are NOT going to stop this thing with a parachute.

Or perhaps the broken Earthward end could be retracted at such a rate that it never completely 'falls over'

You can only guide it while it is moving slower than the speed of sound in its own material; after that, any change of tension or direction gets shoved downward by the motion of the material faster than it can propagate upward. On the other hand, by reeling it in you can increase the speed (thus kinetic energy) of what's about to smack you. If that happens, osculate your posterior farewell!

One thing here: The entire skyhook, which is rotating about the Earth's axis on the same 23 hour 56 minute sidereal schedule, is moving eastward and will keep moving eastward; the downward pull of the lower sections will "crack the whip" and accelerate the upper sections to even higher velocities (eastward and downward) than they would attain as disconnected masses.

Or it could be made to 'disintigrate' on demand

This is about the only thing you could do. Since Buckytubes are made out of carbon, they can burn in an oxygen atmosphere. After the speed gets up to a couple thousand MPH, the heat created by the supersonic passage through the air should be enough to keep a flame going. If the skyhook cable could separate itself into very fine filaments on its way down, it would either burn or turn to dust. The dust may be harmful, but at least it would not make tsunamis.

As for the sonic booms this might create, I have no idea how damaging they might be.
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Re:Terminal ballistic qualities if it falls ;-)

[Tau Zero]

No, it can't come straight down, except the first infinitesimal increment of motion.

I could go into detail, but at this hour the only thing I'm going to tell you is to review your coursework relative to rotating frames of reference, which is a rather important issue you appear to have neglected. Check out Coriolis acceleration if you are having difficulties.
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Re:Sir? Arthur C. Clarke

[Bearpaw]

It was a rumour in one of the British tabloids.

The knighthood had already been granted, but the timing of the story was such that Clarke asked that the ceremony be postponed until he could respond to the charges.

Statement by Sir Arthur's Executive Secretary, on the SFWA website

I haven't heard anything about the outcome of Sir Arthur's legal action against the paper.

Clarke, Technology, and this Interview

[Hrunting]

Given the fact that this item is up on the NYT home page and not buried in a paper somewhere (although I'm sure it's there, too), I wonder what Sir Arthur's connection to all this technology that he's always seemed to predict is. Does he use the Internet? Does he think computers with HAL's intellect will one day exist and should we fear them?

He'd make a great target for a Slashdot interview. The questions from the NYT were nice, but I don't think they were posed by a geek. Given the reverence to which we hold Clarke, I'm sure that if we were asking the questions, you could probably write a whole 'nother novel with the answers.

3001

[eries]

Too bad the author didn't get a chance to talk about 3001. I felt like such a sucker after buying that - I found it really immature and ideological. What could he have been thinking? He seems pretty smart in the article, I guess he just doesn't take his fans too seriously. Alas

Re:Sir? Arthur C. Clarke

[the eric conspiracy]

I'm glad to hear that it turned out this way. It's unfortunate that the initial splash of scandal gets widely publicized, but the resolution that the scandal was in fact libel never seems to get the same level of publicity.

I've long been an admirer of Sir Arthur's writings, especially the hilarious Tales from the White Hart, and the marvelous Childhood's End. Neither receive the publicity of his later 2001 and Rama related work, but in my opinion are far more interesting.