I do have a solid background in math and physics, being a physics major and all:). So I do know what I'm talking about. And there are plenty of other scientists who agree entirely with my points, but you don't usually hear about them, because people don't want to hear about how this really cool sounding thing they really want can't exist! And in general, you won't find scientists spending a lot of time refusing crackpot ideas, either, they mostly just laugh at them and go about their business. And don't think that because people like NASA are interested means anything, either! Government agencies have a bad habit of hiring crazy people to come in and "research" things like free energy and levitation devices because some politician wants to have a statue of himself somewhere as the person who made this magical technology possible. I'd like to also point out that I haven't seen anywhere a real analysis of these things, either. It's not good enough just to claim effect A can be ignored, you have to actually show that it can, without ignoring anything else. This isn't a high school physics class where we can assume everything works nicely, and follows nice algebraic equations like E = mgh, in real life, it's not so easy, and you usually can't even get a nice closed form for your answers! In fact, with many of the problems with the space elevator we can't get actual answers because we don't know enough about how these things behave!
If you want a good example of other physicists saying it's impossible, post a question about it to sci.physics, and then count how many times "Uncle Al" calls you an idiot. If you pose the question really well, and ask why it won't work instead of trying to say why you think it should work, you might even get an explanation to go with your insults!
The elevator does have to be a solid structure, you can't just dangle a rope down from space! Believe me, that idea has been around for a *long* time, and doesn't even come close to working. But even if it was just a rope it would still change sizes (and strengths) depending on it's temperature, *everything* behaves like that.
Now, on something smaller, like an asteroid, something like a space elevator could work out fairly well, but not on something like the Earth. Also, I don't know where the hell space.com comes up with a length of 100,000 km for it! I mean, the Moon is only 384,000 km away, and GEO is only 36,000 km.
And that's the argument people always give when people mention these kind of things. "Well, they *must* have already thought of these things." Well, that's the point, they *haven't* been addressed because they *can't be* addressed. I have read plenty of articles on them and there's nothing but hand-waving about any of these topics. "we have materials that come close to being that strong" "it looks like this might be possible sometime soon," etc, etc, and when they do actually talk about something, they talk about idealized cases, "well, let's assume gravitational effects from the moon can be ignored" "let's assume this" "let's assume that," well, guess what, you *can't* assume things like that, because they have non-trivial effects! When people wanted to go to the moon, did our scientists say "well, this looks like it might be possible with materials we'll have soon," or "neglecting stresses on the space capsule caused by heating and cooling..." NO, they didn't, they actually went out and did it instead. There's a reason things went that way.
There's no way a space elevator can be built with any kind of materials we know about today. Not even close. It's a fun idea to think about, but expect to see it built about the same time we invent warp drives and start learning new things from our Vulcan neighbors. Here are just a few thoughts of why off the top of my head, but there are easily hundreds of reasons more.
Move a wire through a magnetic field, and what happens? A current is induced in the wire, proportional to the change in the magnetic field (or, equivalently, the motion of the wire in a uniform magnetic field). Well, a space elevator is definitely moving, and the magnetic field it moves through is definitely not uniform. These currents would easily be enough to vaporize a steel structure like this. Ok, you say, make it out of something entirely non-conductive (i.e., non-metal). Out of what, rubber? Carbon nanotubes are very conductive, as you CS people should know. Try to build it out of something like diamond and it isn't strong enough. And you have to get something nearly entirely non-conductive, too, a high resistance won't work. If you don't know why, ask your oven, it knows. No known material ends up doing a good job at this.
The minimum energy curve from the ground to orbit isn't a straight line because of the Earth's rotation. The elevator couldn't be straight, or anywhere near straight. Consider that at the Earth's surface, we move around at a "horizontal" speed of about 1047 mph (1685 kph) (4000 mi * 2 * pi / 24 hours), at a geosynchronous orbit we're at 6860 mph (11040 kph). That means to move on a straight line you need to be changing your horizontal speed by a few thousand miles an hour! I.e., you'd need a force pushing sideways on your elevator and tower to keep it straight, but unless you want to put rockets on the sides of it, there's nothing you can do to add that kind of force, so you need to make it curved, like an Archimedean spiral, in fact. But, with it shaped like that, you've got a very tall curved structure, and gravity is still pulling it straight down. So it turns out you need to make it out of a much stronger material than you would for a straight tower on a non-rotating Earth.
Any object when heated is going to expand, which is a non-trivial effect even for small objects. Look at concrete bridges, even small ones, for example. Periodically there are gaps in them an inch or so wide, to allow for thermal expansion of the bridge, if those gaps weren't there, the bridge would break. Bridges even only on the order of tens of meters long need these. A space elevator obviously couldn't have gaps, and will be on the order of thousands of kilometers! This means there will be *significant* changes in where the top of the elevator is, which means you need a significant change in the angular momentum at the top of the tower to keep it from collapsing. Of course, that's only if the tower is straight, if it's spiral-shaped, like a real one would need to be, you've got a much more serious problem, because the shape of your spiral just changed! You've got even more of a problem when you consider that the temperatures along different points of the structure will be different, and will be constantly changing, particularly the points near the top--what's the temperature of an object in space in darkness vs. direct sunlight!? And then there's the problem that this will cause the strength of the material the elevator is made up of to change, too! So you end up with an elevator that's longer than it was a minute ago, weaker than it was a minute ago, and no longer the same shape, trying to do the same job!
But that's not all, you also have to consider that deformations only propagate along the structure at the speed of sound in the material. This isn't an issue in a small structure, but one that's 100,000 km high, it's a serious issue! When part of the structure expands or contracts the whole thing won't move instantly! There will be serious waves of compression and expansion propagating through it. The structure will *bend* because it can't move out of its way fast enough for its expansion.
I looked through a bunch of the pictures with a hex editor, and looked at a bunch of the random messages on the pages. It also seems some of the pictures have multiple "corrupted" versions of them, with different messages in them. Here's a (long) list of the messages I made while looking through the page. Ones with quotes around them are from pictures, the stuff after them is near where I found them with the hex editor. I don't know if I got them all or not, though.
Ok, slashdot seems to have issues with not wanting this to look right, complaining I have too few characters per line, etc, so check out my list here: jprice991.home.comcast.net/aaa.htm
I looked through a bunch of the pictures with a hex editor, and looked at a bunch of the random messages on the pages. It also seems some of the pictures have multiple "corrupted" versions of them, with different messages in them. Here's a (long) list of the messages I made while looking through the page. Ones with quotes around them are from pictures, the stuff after them is near where I found them with the hex editor. I don't know if I got them all or not, though.
"When her Queen" 1c8
margaret.jpg
-----
"it lay many broken blocks from the ruined" DA8
danadress.jpg
-----
"peeled skin from the" 428
bee2_margaretphoto.jpg
----
"MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY
black beach, nothing but sand and darkness. Sometimes, in the distance, dry lightning: in the flash I see pieces
of the wreck around me, the spars and rigging of my brain
-hold on. hold on. Steady up. Get a grip, girl. You have to fight through this.
Take a deep breath.
Survival Key #3: How Badly Are You Hurt?
I keep slipping in and out of consciousness.
links.html
----
net:
!attach
act | drop
!attach
act | drop
!attach
act | drop
!route
proc attach proc net
!route
proc attach proc grope
!route
proc attach proc surg
net:
!attach
act | drop
!attach
act | drop
!attach
act | drop
!packet analysis
chatter protocol ancestor
!parse packet
analysis complete
!route
proc attach proc store
net:
!attach
act | drop recurse
!extern proc 0
log accessed
honey.html
----
MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY
black beach, nothing but sand and darkness. Sometimes, in the distance, dry lightning: in the flash I see pieces
of the wreck around me, the spars and rigging of my brain
-hold on. hold on. Steady up. Get a grip, girl. You have to fight through this.
Take a deep breath.
Survival Key #3: How Badly Are You Hurt
I keep slipping in and out of consciousness.
Physically, subject is paralyzed but moving.
Okay.
What the hell does THAT mean?
Held down: yes. As if strapped to a table. Could I be in traction in some sick bay, some hospital ward?
Not necessarily one of ours.
But at the same time, parts of me being moved around, emptied out. As if under general anaesthetic, dimly
conscious, half-aware as the surgeon cuts off my feet and sews them onto my shoulders. She opens my head with a
medical hammer and sand spills out.
I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO-
-no.
never that.
survive evade reveal escape. That is all you know, or need to know.
links.html
----
net:
!attach
act | drop
!attach
act | drop
!attach
act | drop
grope:
!probe master sector
fail
surg:
!invntry primary sector proc
proc invntry 343
working 0
dmg 38
dmg unk 2
broken 102
abs 201
!invntry primary sector mem
mem invntry 678223072849
clear 0.0007
dmg 0.0014
frgm 1.41
abs 98.5879
hives.html
----
"the" 0
"way" 26
"was" 98
"open" E4
BUTHONEY.GIF
----
"She cut her a" 0
"new mouth and" E4
"fed her" 10A
ALSO
"Queen's" 0
"heart" 0
"began" BE
"to beat" 1EE
ALSO
"sand" 0
"dand" 26
"last" 72
"the" 72
BUT_FUN.gif
----
"lremnants of" 0
"the Castle's outer" 98
"NETSCAPE2" BE
"GifBuilder 0.5 by Yves Piguet" BE
"wall, but the" DA8
CUTEBEE.GIF
----
"Animated by JO GRAHAM 1998" 2F8
"NETSCAPE2" 31E
BEEWITHH.GIF
----
MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY
Getting muddled here. Sick, obviously.
Broken inside. Not thinking straight.
Got to go back to first principles.
Survive evade reveal escape.
Survive-well, I'm not dead yet.
Evade-don't want to evade. I want to be FOUND....unless......of course, if I am behind enemy lines, then constantly shouting for help wouldn't be the smartest play in the
world, would it?
got to run silent. got to run deep.
hide and go seek
links.html
----
I keep slipping in and out of consciousness.
Physically, subject is paralyzed but moving.
Okay.
What the hell does THAT mean?
Held down: yes. As if strapped to a table. Could I be in traction in some sick bay, some hospital ward?
Not necessarily one of ours.
But at the same time, parts of me being moved around, emptied out. As if under general anaesthetic, dimly
cons
Slashdot Mirror
I do have a solid background in math and physics, being a physics major and all :). So I do know what I'm talking about. And there are plenty of other scientists who agree entirely with my points, but you don't usually hear about them, because people don't want to hear about how this really cool sounding thing they really want can't exist! And in general, you won't find scientists spending a lot of time refusing crackpot ideas, either, they mostly just laugh at them and go about their business. And don't think that because people like NASA are interested means anything, either! Government agencies have a bad habit of hiring crazy people to come in and "research" things like free energy and levitation devices because some politician wants to have a statue of himself somewhere as the person who made this magical technology possible. I'd like to also point out that I haven't seen anywhere a real analysis of these things, either. It's not good enough just to claim effect A can be ignored, you have to actually show that it can, without ignoring anything else. This isn't a high school physics class where we can assume everything works nicely, and follows nice algebraic equations like E = mgh, in real life, it's not so easy, and you usually can't even get a nice closed form for your answers! In fact, with many of the problems with the space elevator we can't get actual answers because we don't know enough about how these things behave!
If you want a good example of other physicists saying it's impossible, post a question about it to sci.physics, and then count how many times "Uncle Al" calls you an idiot. If you pose the question really well, and ask why it won't work instead of trying to say why you think it should work, you might even get an explanation to go with your insults!
The elevator does have to be a solid structure, you can't just dangle a rope down from space! Believe me, that idea has been around for a *long* time, and doesn't even come close to working. But even if it was just a rope it would still change sizes (and strengths) depending on it's temperature, *everything* behaves like that.
Now, on something smaller, like an asteroid, something like a space elevator could work out fairly well, but not on something like the Earth. Also, I don't know where the hell space.com comes up with a length of 100,000 km for it! I mean, the Moon is only 384,000 km away, and GEO is only 36,000 km.
And that's the argument people always give when people mention these kind of things. "Well, they *must* have already thought of these things." Well, that's the point, they *haven't* been addressed because they *can't be* addressed. I have read plenty of articles on them and there's nothing but hand-waving about any of these topics. "we have materials that come close to being that strong" "it looks like this might be possible sometime soon," etc, etc, and when they do actually talk about something, they talk about idealized cases, "well, let's assume gravitational effects from the moon can be ignored" "let's assume this" "let's assume that," well, guess what, you *can't* assume things like that, because they have non-trivial effects! When people wanted to go to the moon, did our scientists say "well, this looks like it might be possible with materials we'll have soon," or "neglecting stresses on the space capsule caused by heating and cooling..." NO, they didn't, they actually went out and did it instead. There's a reason things went that way.
There's no way a space elevator can be built with any kind of materials we know about today. Not even close. It's a fun idea to think about, but expect to see it built about the same time we invent warp drives and start learning new things from our Vulcan neighbors. Here are just a few thoughts of why off the top of my head, but there are easily hundreds of reasons more.
Move a wire through a magnetic field, and what happens? A current is induced in the wire, proportional to the change in the magnetic field (or, equivalently, the motion of the wire in a uniform magnetic field). Well, a space elevator is definitely moving, and the magnetic field it moves through is definitely not uniform. These currents would easily be enough to vaporize a steel structure like this. Ok, you say, make it out of something entirely non-conductive (i.e., non-metal). Out of what, rubber? Carbon nanotubes are very conductive, as you CS people should know. Try to build it out of something like diamond and it isn't strong enough. And you have to get something nearly entirely non-conductive, too, a high resistance won't work. If you don't know why, ask your oven, it knows. No known material ends up doing a good job at this.
The minimum energy curve from the ground to orbit isn't a straight line because of the Earth's rotation. The elevator couldn't be straight, or anywhere near straight. Consider that at the Earth's surface, we move around at a "horizontal" speed of about 1047 mph (1685 kph) (4000 mi * 2 * pi / 24 hours), at a geosynchronous orbit we're at 6860 mph (11040 kph). That means to move on a straight line you need to be changing your horizontal speed by a few thousand miles an hour! I.e., you'd need a force pushing sideways on your elevator and tower to keep it straight, but unless you want to put rockets on the sides of it, there's nothing you can do to add that kind of force, so you need to make it curved, like an Archimedean spiral, in fact. But, with it shaped like that, you've got a very tall curved structure, and gravity is still pulling it straight down. So it turns out you need to make it out of a much stronger material than you would for a straight tower on a non-rotating Earth.
Any object when heated is going to expand, which is a non-trivial effect even for small objects. Look at concrete bridges, even small ones, for example. Periodically there are gaps in them an inch or so wide, to allow for thermal expansion of the bridge, if those gaps weren't there, the bridge would break. Bridges even only on the order of tens of meters long need these. A space elevator obviously couldn't have gaps, and will be on the order of thousands of kilometers! This means there will be *significant* changes in where the top of the elevator is, which means you need a significant change in the angular momentum at the top of the tower to keep it from collapsing. Of course, that's only if the tower is straight, if it's spiral-shaped, like a real one would need to be, you've got a much more serious problem, because the shape of your spiral just changed! You've got even more of a problem when you consider that the temperatures along different points of the structure will be different, and will be constantly changing, particularly the points near the top--what's the temperature of an object in space in darkness vs. direct sunlight!? And then there's the problem that this will cause the strength of the material the elevator is made up of to change, too! So you end up with an elevator that's longer than it was a minute ago, weaker than it was a minute ago, and no longer the same shape, trying to do the same job!
But that's not all, you also have to consider that deformations only propagate along the structure at the speed of sound in the material. This isn't an issue in a small structure, but one that's 100,000 km high, it's a serious issue! When part of the structure expands or contracts the whole thing won't move instantly! There will be serious waves of compression and expansion propagating through it. The structure will *bend* because it can't move out of its way fast enough for its expansion.
Ok, let's try this again with spaces this time...
I looked through a bunch of the pictures with a hex editor, and looked at a bunch of the random messages on the pages. It also seems some of the pictures have multiple "corrupted" versions of them, with different messages in them. Here's a (long) list of the messages I made while looking through the page. Ones with quotes around them are from pictures, the stuff after them is near where I found them with the hex editor. I don't know if I got them all or not, though. Ok, slashdot seems to have issues with not wanting this to look right, complaining I have too few characters per line, etc, so check out my list here: jprice991.home.comcast.net/aaa.htm
I looked through a bunch of the pictures with a hex editor, and looked at a bunch of the random messages on the pages. It also seems some of the pictures have multiple "corrupted" versions of them, with different messages in them. Here's a (long) list of the messages I made while looking through the page. Ones with quotes around them are from pictures, the stuff after them is near where I found them with the hex editor. I don't know if I got them all or not, though. "When her Queen" 1c8 margaret.jpg ----- "it lay many broken blocks from the ruined" DA8 danadress.jpg ----- "peeled skin from the" 428 bee2_margaretphoto.jpg ---- "MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY black beach, nothing but sand and darkness. Sometimes, in the distance, dry lightning: in the flash I see pieces of the wreck around me, the spars and rigging of my brain -hold on. hold on. Steady up. Get a grip, girl. You have to fight through this. Take a deep breath. Survival Key #3: How Badly Are You Hurt? I keep slipping in and out of consciousness. links.html ---- net: !attach act | drop !attach act | drop !attach act | drop !route proc attach proc net !route proc attach proc grope !route proc attach proc surg net: !attach act | drop !attach act | drop !attach act | drop !packet analysis chatter protocol ancestor !parse packet analysis complete !route proc attach proc store net: !attach act | drop recurse !extern proc 0 log accessed honey.html ---- MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY black beach, nothing but sand and darkness. Sometimes, in the distance, dry lightning: in the flash I see pieces of the wreck around me, the spars and rigging of my brain -hold on. hold on. Steady up. Get a grip, girl. You have to fight through this. Take a deep breath. Survival Key #3: How Badly Are You Hurt I keep slipping in and out of consciousness. Physically, subject is paralyzed but moving. Okay. What the hell does THAT mean? Held down: yes. As if strapped to a table. Could I be in traction in some sick bay, some hospital ward? Not necessarily one of ours. But at the same time, parts of me being moved around, emptied out. As if under general anaesthetic, dimly conscious, half-aware as the surgeon cuts off my feet and sews them onto my shoulders. She opens my head with a medical hammer and sand spills out. I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO- -no. never that. survive evade reveal escape. That is all you know, or need to know. links.html ---- net: !attach act | drop !attach act | drop !attach act | drop grope: !probe master sector fail surg: !invntry primary sector proc proc invntry 343 working 0 dmg 38 dmg unk 2 broken 102 abs 201 !invntry primary sector mem mem invntry 678223072849 clear 0.0007 dmg 0.0014 frgm 1.41 abs 98.5879 hives.html ---- "the" 0 "way" 26 "was" 98 "open" E4 BUTHONEY.GIF ---- "She cut her a" 0 "new mouth and" E4 "fed her" 10A ALSO "Queen's" 0 "heart" 0 "began" BE "to beat" 1EE ALSO "sand" 0 "dand" 26 "last" 72 "the" 72 BUT_FUN.gif ---- "lremnants of" 0 "the Castle's outer" 98 "NETSCAPE2" BE "GifBuilder 0.5 by Yves Piguet" BE "wall, but the" DA8 CUTEBEE.GIF ---- "Animated by JO GRAHAM 1998" 2F8 "NETSCAPE2" 31E BEEWITHH.GIF ---- MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY Getting muddled here. Sick, obviously. Broken inside. Not thinking straight. Got to go back to first principles. Survive evade reveal escape. Survive-well, I'm not dead yet. Evade-don't want to evade. I want to be FOUND. ...unless... ...of course, if I am behind enemy lines, then constantly shouting for help wouldn't be the smartest play in the
world, would it?
got to run silent. got to run deep.
hide and go seek
links.html
----
I keep slipping in and out of consciousness.
Physically, subject is paralyzed but moving.
Okay.
What the hell does THAT mean?
Held down: yes. As if strapped to a table. Could I be in traction in some sick bay, some hospital ward?
Not necessarily one of ours.
But at the same time, parts of me being moved around, emptied out. As if under general anaesthetic, dimly
cons