Thoughts on the Space Elevator

Keith Curtis writes to tell us that Glenn Reynolds, of Instapundit fame, has posted his thoughts on why NASA should be building a space elevator instead or their current plans. Keith has also posted his throughts from an engineer's perspective (although admittadly still not a rocket scientist). "The challenges are many, but it has been a viable option since carbon nanotubes, structures so strong that one the width of a human hair could lift a car, were invented. A space elevator could be between 10 and 2000 times cheaper than conventional technology and will force NASA to change just about everything they do. Hopefully one day that bureaucracy will wake up and realize it."

Musak

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but who wants to listen to that god awful music?

Doom and gloom

[millisa]

I like the idea of the space elevator . . . but won't it be a prime target for terrorist attacks? I mean, if I was a terrorist, it'd be the first place I'd direct my hijacked pla . . . moment, there's a knock at my door.

Space elevator musac?

[Safe Sex Goddess]

What would you recommend for space elevator musac?

It's going to be one hell of a long ride and I'd hate to overdose on strings.

Engineer's perspective

[HermanAB]

First of all, the ribbon idea won't work, it will get curled up since it will stretch unevenly and wind and dirt will do the rest. The only practical shape for a rope is a round one. Secondly, building a climber with motors and lasers and crap is totally ridiculous, unbalanced and inefficient. Put a friggen pully at the counterweight, with solar panels and an electric motor and another damn pully at the bottom with another motor, then run two cars up and down. Then the system is balanced. Yes, the two cars will probably bang against each other when passing - so slow down when halfway and shape them to handle it so they won't get stuck even if the ropes are twisted. KISS.

Re:Musak

[Crash McBang]

You get used to it after the first 5,000 floors...

That's one small step for man...

[Chysn]

...one giant leap for the first wise ass to press all the buttons (Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, Thermosphere, Exosphere...) and piss off the other astronauts.

Re:Space elevator musac?

[Herkum01]

Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven"! :)

Re:I dont get it...

[cephyn]

You make a good point. nanotube based teleporters would be faster and more cost-effective than a space elevator!

I say we put $12bn or so into nanotube powered teleporters. who's with me!?

Re:It may be more cost effective technically..

[adam.conf]

Well, one of the best things we can do is build the elevator at a Pole. Once you get to about 120 km, the power of centrifical force will overpower that of gravity, and a 120 km (not too long) nanotube cable with a counterweight could remain erect in space. That being said, 120 km isn't a very fun place to put stuff (the Clarke makes much more sense). However, if we do have a 120 km elevator, we can simply build more onto it, slowly moving the counterweight up as we go. This would make the project gradual (spread out the cost) and would enable us to start now, yet still take advantage of technologies not yet invented (as soon as we get a more effective fiber, use the current elevator to thread the new fiber into space).

The benefits of a space elevator are too tremendous to ignore... the cost of placing things into orbit (and beyond) would decrease by many orders of magnitude.

Re:another engineer's perspective

[HermanAB]

The force in a rope is always tension and always the same everywhere along its length (assuming zero mass). You can't push a rope.

Therefore, a system with two cars and pulleys will always be almost in balance. The actual force in the rope will change depending on where exactly the cars are, due to centripetal forces.

The 'almost' is due to taking up more stuff than you are bringing down, or the other way round if you are mining a solid naquata asteroid, or due to a load of gold plated latinum as payment from the Firengi...

By keeping the system in near balance, the energy required is much reduced and you don't need any friggen sharks with lasers on their heads to power the system.

Space elevator funding is short sighted.

[patternjuggler]

I think we need billions of dollars of investment in upgrading our antimatter production facilities. The space elevator only gets you into orbit, antimatter [psu.edu] can get you to nearby stars.

Re:I dont get it...

[bornyesterday]

what's the average velocity of a horse and carriage vs. the average speed of an orbiting body? African or European?

Re:Doom and gloom

[WindBourne]

that would be your neighbor. These days, terrorists and the feds do not bother knocking.

Re:Pixiedust

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA is taking the correct approach. They are building something that they *know* works first. They can then work out the pixie dust^H^H space elevator next.

I realize your terminal is broken and displays ^H everytime you press the backspace. But for those of us who upgraded to the nifty vt100's, please either delete the entire word, or leave it all in.

.

Re:Pixiedust

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need is to do a test run. We didn't blast rockets into space off the bat, first we started with smaller rockets and worked on the theory. We need to make a tiny space elevator that can load something small into space like soccer balls or whatever. If that proof of concept works, then work on the version that can bring up ships and space stations and all that jazz.

Re:Musak

[fermion]

not to mention the movie and safety talk. I think Red Dwarf said it best

Welcome to Xpress Lifts, descent to floor sixteen. You will be going down two thousand, five hundred and sixty-seven floors and, for a small extra charge, you can enjoy the in-lift movie 'Gone With the Wind'. If you look to your right and to your left, you will notice there are no exits. In the highly unlikely event of the lift having to make a crash-landing, death is certain. Under your seats you will find a cassette for recording your last-minute testament, and from above your head a bag will drop containing sedatives and cyanide capsules.

I would think the biggest issue would be safety. Two shuttle breakups in 15 some odd years is bad enough, but what will be required when we really have the promised trip to space every week.

Re:Musak

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Didn't Max Payne tought you how to deal with Musak? Just shoot the damn speaker. Ok, making a hole in a capsule that's heading to space might not be such a good idea, so lets replace the gun with a screwdriver and wire cutter. Just don't cut the wrong wire, the one leading to certain live support systems for example.

Re:"Unobtainium"

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe a space pyramid would be cheaper than a space elevator.

What would it cost to make a large mountain heap of carbon nanotubes, much larger than Mt Everest, and climb up the side of it?

Would that be easier to construct than a space elevator? You could heap up a loose stack of nanotubes somehow, maybe by burning an ash and having it blow onto the pile, like cotton candy.

That sounds easier to construct than a ribbon of nanotubes. I bet we could build it where Brazil is now. It's right on the equator.

Re:Musak

[uncoveror]

The X-4000 Launch Aparatus [uncoveror.com] would be cheaper and easier to build than the Space Elevator. It would also be more likely to actually work.