Space Elevator Prizes Proposed

colonist writes "Space elevator proponents are planning competitions for space elevator technologies, similar to the Ansari X Prize. Elevator:2010 will organize annual competitions for climbers, ribbons and power-beaming systems. In other space elevator news, researcher Bradley C. Edwards recently left the Institute for Scientific Research to work at two companies on materials and technology. Also, the space elevator has caught the interest of Google's founders: 'At a space camp in Alabama last year, Brin talked about creating a space elevator to transport cargo up a special tether attached to earth. Also last year, Brin joined Page in proclaiming they should found a nanotech lab at Google.'"

Lab? Isn't that a forum?

[mangu]

last year, Brin joined Page in proclaiming they should found a nanotech lab at Google.

No link to pursue, but one feels that if it's at Google that would be more like a discussion forum than a lab. Unless, of course, they are proposing that Google starts funding a research center. If they follow, for instance, IBM's and ATT's footsteps, that would be a Great Thing(TM).

As I understand it...

[Anonymous Coward]

A space elevator is a really long "superstrong" ribbon.

But then things get confusing. It's pretty obvious one end hooks to Earth, but what do you hook the other to? The Moon? An asteroid?

Assuming we find a substance strong enough to build such a cable from, don't we then have to worry about the strength of the tethers and ultimately the consequences of altering Earth's rotation?

I like sci-fi as much as the next person, but maybe this project calls for some long-term planning.

This is one thing I'd like to see before I die.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm almost 40 so I'm probably halfway through my life, but the space elevator is one thing I'd like to see, along with a manned landing on Mars, true artificial intelligence, proof of extraterrestrial civilization, and a Libertarian president.

If we can get that far without destroying the hope of future generations I think mankind might have a chance to be more successful than the dinosaurs were.

Has Google jumped the shark?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, these guys must be developing some sort of messiah complex if they think space elevators and nanotech have anything to do with their core skills. I met Brin in 2000 and he was getting full of himself then. The last few years of success and money must have convinced these two they're invincible and that any field could benefit from their presence. It's the same "I'm rich because I'm the smartest" attitude that too-young Wall Street traders get after they get rich at the first thing they try.

The real test if Google is any different from any other flash-in-the-pan will be when they hit some real adversity. Until then, they're just the latest Lycos/Altavista/Inktomi fair-haired boy to make a splash with VC funding and a slightly better idea. The truth is, no search engine has substantially improved once it's been deployed on a large scale. If no one's passed Google on quality, it's mainly because they were the last to get funded before the crash.

Flame away

Rename "Clarke orbit"?

[AndroidCat]

From a link from the FA link: [nasa.gov]

In 1895 a Russian scientist named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky looked at the Eiffel Tower in Paris and thought about such a tower. He wanted to put a "celestial castle" at the end of a spindle shaped cable, with the "castle" orbiting the earth in a geosynchronous orbit (i.e. the castle would remain over the same spot on the earth). The tower would be built from the ground to an altitude of 35,800 kilometers. It would be similar to the fabled beanstalk in the children's story "Jack and the Beanstalk," except that on Tsiolkovsky's tower an elevator would ride up the cable to the "castle".

Depending on how it was written, wouldn't this cover at least part of Arthur C. Clarke's idea (and patent) for using geostationary orbits? To fully cover it, the castle would have needed radios, but Marconi hadn't stolen the radio yet... Did it have semaphores?

Rotovator(tm)

[Baldrson]

Such prize awards might have a wonderful side-effect.

Hans Moravec's Rotovator(tm) [google.com] picks up hypersonic (near mach 12) payloads from an altitude of 100km and slings them to orbit.

Current proposals for implementation of the Moravec's design [tethers.com] rely on a hypersonic air-breather of advanced aerodynamic design like the Boeing DF-9 (that exists only on paper).

Is there anything likely come along in the near future that could take paylods to 100km and mach 12?

Probably the same thing that is driving the bureaucrats to make all this noise about space elevators now:

The prospect that centralized space programs will be left behind by the emergence of a competitive suborbital launch industry with the emergence of suborbital space tourism and prizes like the Ansari X-Prize.

A key to the Rotovator(tm) is getting hub mass in place to keep it out of the atmosphere while it picks up mass from 100km@mach12 -- but that mass can be any old space junk (what is the dry weight of the International Space Station?) -- at least at the hub where it counts the most for high strength materials like carbon nanotubes. However, you can do a Rotovator(tm) with off-the-shelf commercially available fibers and still have a factor of 2.

Nice thing about Rotovators(tm) is that they can be built with much lower capitaliztion over a much shorter period of time using existing commercial materials. All you need is a bunch of mass orbiting near earth, some quite-doable tethers, and sufficient manuverability and speed in the atmospheric leg to hook up with the tether as it reaches the nadir.

Modest prize awards toward early milestones of a space elevator could end up enabling the Rotovator(tm) as well.

Re:I'm not so sure

[g129951]

"They have ideas on how to avoid the space junk."

I wouldn't suggest that reducing the total cost to low earth orbit is a bad idea --it's a great idea, that needs to be considered very carefully. I don't think raising a valid criticism or reasonable doubt constitutes jumping to conclusions either.

I was stationed at NORAD in the early eighties and junk in low earth orbit was a major concern as the shuttle program transitioned from idea to reality. I expect the problem is much worse now. I think "cloud" is a more apt description of the debris field. Yes, stuff re-enters the atmosphere all day every day, so I guess you could say it's a self healing process, but it's a long process.

The trouble with ideas is that they cost taxpayer dollars even if it turns out to be a bust.

I don't think most people have any idea what it would take to successfully swing a cable through maybe 20,000 objects at various altitudes, all travelling at 17,000 MPH or so, all day every day without hitting anything.

There's a long ugly road between this idea and reality.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if NASA didn't fund the programs. It would be O.K. with me if someone with an idea wanted to fund the research themselves or recruit funding from corporate types.

MADMEN is a similar boondoggle. But, don't take my word for it, ask Duncan Steele, PhD. In 1995 Steele published a book called "Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets" addressing this particular option (throwing material off an dangerous asteroid using a mass driver). Thomas Ahrens and Alan Harris at the California Institute of Technology looked at this very system (page 229). They dismissed it in 1992 because the ejection requirement was "...many thousands of tons..." over a lot of years. What did they come up with in answer to that? A "fleet" of mass drivers throwing stuff off. MADMEN indeed.

Re:Google Should fund it

[Tango42]

The best solution to that i've heard is making it in sections that separate in an emergency and all burn up during re-entry. I still wouldn't want to be withing a mile or two of the base station though...

Re:Google Should fund it

[magarity]

After their IPO, they can afford it!

If you have a viable design for a space elevator, you can have your own IPO and raise plenty of cash. That's why there's no real need for artificial prizes. The revenue generated by the thing would be the real prize.

Re:Cool...but

[caswelmo]

Not that it would be fool-proof, but I'm willing to bet that access to space of this type would be an incredibly precious commodity, both militarily & commercially (not to mention tourism!). As such, I'm betting there would be a no-fly zone 50 miles wide around this thing, with military air support from an internationally diverse force. Plus, I'm sure there would be incredibly hefty ground security as well.

All I'm saying is, I can hardly imagine some nut getting close enough to do damage (or climb :^) this thing. But then again, if it's used for tourism, we would be hard-pressed to keep some suicide-murdering nutjob from find some way. So perhaps no tourism. Damn! As with all terrorism, the common man/woman suffers & the powers-that-be keep on truckin'.

Did that just turn into a rant?..... Oops! :P

Re:Cool...but

[CmdrGravy]

Why would it be any easier to conduct a terrorist attack against a space elevator compared to against the Space Shuttle launch facility ?

Re:Rotovator(tm)

[dargaud]

I'm very skeptical about this rotovator thing:

• the end of it will go at hypersonic speed in the upper atmosphere: how many rotations before it falls apart from ablation ?
• If it picks up an object and raises it, then itself must come down: basic energy conservation. How does it raise its orbit before the next pickup ? Only classic rocket engines would work, which need gas. Back to square one, you could have used that gas to raise the playload in the first place (yeah, yeah, you'll be able to use a more efficient engine like an ion drive, but still).
• When you bring the last 2 points together, you can figure out that atmospheric drag will bring the rotovator down. How much each orbit ?

Re:Cool...but

[Jeremi]

But then again, if it's used for tourism, we would be hard-pressed to keep some suicide-
murdering nutjob from find some way. So perhaps no tourism. Damn!

You're probably right -- the world's only space elevator would be too valuable to let the general public near. Fortunately one thing our first space elevator would be really good at is lifting into orbit materials for the second space elevator. Once there are a few dozen space elevators in place, it would be less catastrophic if one or two of them were lost, so access to them could be less restricted.

Babysteps

[mcrbids]

I think the idea of building a space elevator the instant we can is fundamentally flawed.

A space elevator would be an insanely profitable project, one that has tremendous implications for things like power generation, communications, space exploration, tourism, and precision manufacturing.

No doubt about any of those things.

But, before we go building a space elevator, wouldn't it be a good idea to give it a few thorough evaluations here dirtside?

There are countless questions that people are going to want to ask - is it strong enough? What if it breaks? Are C-tubes durable enough? Will it conduct electricity and "short out" the ionosphere? What about storms? What about terrorists? Do C-tubes wear out?

The first, best use of C-tubes would be a good bridge. If you had a suspension bridge built with pencil-thick C-tubes, people would get used to the idea that something to small would be so strong.

I figure the best place would be to build a suspension bridge over the straight of Gibraltar. Can you imagine how beautiful and spider-web like such a bridge would/could be?

That would provide major economic boon to North Africa, provide cheap tourism for Europeans, and provide an excellent proof of the viability of C-tubes as a building tool all in one.