Plans for Space Elevator

Jadeite · Post by **Jadeite** » 2002-11-24 02:36pm

http://www.msnbc.com/news/837772.asp?cp1=1

Pretty interesting, neat idea they have.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2002-11-24 02:55pm

Interesting and I hope it works. I'd love to a see such a project work but the bottleneck is going to be the availability of the carbon nanotubes. We can't make them yet and who knows if we'll be able to make them in quantitiy.

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2002-11-24 03:15pm

How many John Tesh albums do you have to listen to on that ride?

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2002-11-24 03:18pm

That's pretty cool. And I like the pictures. I don't think that 40 million will be enough of a budget though.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2002-11-24 03:20pm

neoolong wrote:That's pretty cool. And I like the pictures. I don't think that 40 million will be enough of a budget though.

I think it's mostly R&D, Engineeringm and design. They're not planning for that to be the constreuction budget.

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2002-11-24 04:02pm

Stormbringer wrote:
neoolong wrote:That's pretty cool. And I like the pictures. I don't think that 40 million will be enough of a budget though.
I think it's mostly R&D, Engineeringm and design. They're not planning for that to be the constreuction budget.

"Being sought by the upstart firm is about $40 million, more than half of which would be for space elevator engineering, design and testing. Around $13 million is earmarked for carbon nanotube composite research — the ultra-strong material that’s key to building an elevator to space. "

So what's the rest of the money for?

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2002-11-24 04:10pm

neoolong wrote:
Stormbringer wrote:
neoolong wrote:That's pretty cool. And I like the pictures. I don't think that 40 million will be enough of a budget though.
I think it's mostly R&D, Engineeringm and design. They're not planning for that to be the constreuction budget.
"Being sought by the upstart firm is about $40 million, more than half of which would be for space elevator engineering, design and testing. Around $13 million is earmarked for carbon nanotube composite research — the ultra-strong material that’s key to building an elevator to space. "

So what's the rest of the money for?

The 13 million is for carbon nanotube research. I'd assume the rest is for other engineering and design work. Do you have any idea how much design, engineering, and testing (as they say!) is involved in a project like that?

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2002-11-24 04:20pm

I guess it's 13 for nano-tube and 27 for the elevator then. They could have just said so.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2002-11-24 04:22pm

neoolong wrote:I guess it's 13 for nano-tube and 27 for the elevator then. They could have just said so.

They did. How could you miss that? It's right there in the article, you quoted it for god's sake!

Drewcifer · Post by **Drewcifer** » 2002-11-24 05:22pm

Actually, I think this idea has been around for quite awhile, at least since the 1960's.

There's some additional information about orbital elevators in general in the rec.arts.sf.science FAQ

Sidebar: Orbital elevators brought me here, so to speak. I was searching for information about them online, and found ASVS, which eventually led me here.

Edit: from the faq: "The orbital tower, or elevator, is described in Clarke's novel The Fountains of Paradise; Clarke attributes the idea to Yuri Artsutanov, who described it as early as 1960"

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2002-11-24 05:26pm

Stormbringer wrote:
neoolong wrote:I guess it's 13 for nano-tube and 27 for the elevator then. They could have just said so.
They did. How could you miss that? It's right there in the article, you quoted it for god's sake!

They could have used the number 27 instead of just more than half. It could be 21 for elevator research, 13 for nano tube research, and 6 for embezzling.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2002-11-24 05:50pm

neoolong wrote:
Stormbringer wrote:
neoolong wrote:I guess it's 13 for nano-tube and 27 for the elevator then. They could have just said so.
They did. How could you miss that? It's right there in the article, you quoted it for god's sake!
They could have used the number 27 instead of just more than half. It could be 21 for elevator research, 13 for nano tube research, and 6 for embezzling.

Oh god damn it. Just do a little bit of math. Of course they aren't going to give an exact breakdown but why is it all of a sudden a possible crime because they didn't account for every penny in a news article!

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2002-11-24 05:53pm

Sounds like an interesting program. Though I doubt well see the end result anytime soon. Hopefully they will get there funding, which is not all that much by many standards.

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2002-11-24 05:56pm

Stormbringer wrote:Oh god damn it. Just do a little bit of math. Of course they aren't going to give an exact breakdown but why is it all of a sudden a possible crime because they didn't account for every penny in a news article!

Ok. But I like things explicit. I like it in my porn and I like it in my news article. That's just me though.

Ted · Post by **Ted** » 2002-11-24 06:06pm

neoolong wrote:
Stormbringer wrote:Oh god damn it. Just do a little bit of math. Of course they aren't going to give an exact breakdown but why is it all of a sudden a possible crime because they didn't account for every penny in a news article!
Ok. But I like things explicit. I like it in my porn and I like it in my news article. That's just me though.

Gotta have explicit porn.

Probably a few million are gonna go towards financing all the prostitutes needed for those late night "meetings".

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2002-11-24 06:58pm

In Traveller 2300 AD ( a role playing game) this was called a beanstalk and there were two in human existance. One in France and one off world.

Its an interesting concept, but nothing like this could ever get built until terrorism is a non isse. It would be too tempting a target for the loonies.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2002-11-24 07:00pm

TrailerParkJawa wrote:In Traveller 2300 AD ( a role playing game) this was called a beanstalk and there were two in human existance. One in France and one off world.

Its an interesting concept, but nothing like this could ever get built until terrorism is a non isse. It would be too tempting a target for the loonies.

Read Green Mars, bring something like that down across Earth would make a hell of a strike. It'd be a very tempting target indeed.

ArmorPierce · Post by **ArmorPierce** » 2002-11-24 07:02pm

bah the link doesn't work for me for some reason

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2002-11-24 07:07pm

I had to try the link two or three times and it finally worked.

Popular Mechanics had an issue on this concept not too long ago.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2002-11-24 10:26pm

The concept has been thrown around by dozens of people(3001, Science Of Discworld, numerous short stories..), because it's such a brilliant idea. The internal space is immense, the cost for moving the elevators is low, much lower than using a rocket.. It's just an all-around good idea. Not to mention it'll provide complete coverage for transmissions in it's LOS. And when the tower extends to orbit, it's got the ultimate LOS.

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2002-11-26 01:34am

Stormbringer wrote:Read Green Mars, bring something like that down across Earth would make a hell of a strike. It'd be a very tempting target indeed.

It's possible to design a beanstalk such that it won't have have any catastrophic failure modes that will result in surface-damage over a wide area. The key concepts here are to use a web of interconnected strands with enough margin that one or two strands can be Islamicised without the beanstalk structure failing, to plant the ground structure on the east coast of a landmass, and to mount remote-controlled severing charges on the portion of the stalk above the atmosphere so that in the event of failure the stalk can be cut up into segments short enough to burn up in the atmosphere rather than hit the ground. Even with these kind of safety measures it's of course still a very good idea to enforce a Muslim-free zone for a few hundred KM around the beanstalk to prevent the loss of the structure and its payloads.

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2002-11-26 01:35am

SirNitram wrote:The concept has been thrown around by dozens of people(3001, Science Of Discworld, numerous short stories..), because it's such a brilliant idea. The internal space is immense, the cost for moving the elevators is low, much lower than using a rocket.. It's just an all-around good idea. Not to mention it'll provide complete coverage for transmissions in it's LOS. And when the tower extends to orbit, it's got the ultimate LOS.

Beanstalks are tensile rather than compressive structures. They have to be bult from the top down, not from the ground up.

XaLEv · Post by **XaLEv** » 2002-11-26 01:44am

Stormbringer wrote: Read Green Mars, bring something like that down across Earth would make a hell of a strike. It'd be a very tempting target indeed.

IIRC, it was stated in Blue Mars that Earth had ten.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2002-11-26 03:02am

Enlightenment wrote:
SirNitram wrote:The concept has been thrown around by dozens of people(3001, Science Of Discworld, numerous short stories..), because it's such a brilliant idea. The internal space is immense, the cost for moving the elevators is low, much lower than using a rocket.. It's just an all-around good idea. Not to mention it'll provide complete coverage for transmissions in it's LOS. And when the tower extends to orbit, it's got the ultimate LOS.
Beanstalks are tensile rather than compressive structures. They have to be bult from the top down, not from the ground up.

Oh, they do? Oops. Stupid mistake.

Of course, this is much different. It appears they intend to use a single ribbon and something to climb it.. Not as cheap, energy wise, as a true elevator, but a very useful setup, and easily within our reach. And, as they say, once you do it once, things get easier.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-11-26 03:06am

How would the cable be maintained? I'm talking specifically about locating and fixing failed segment strands.