Space Elevators Could Be Lethal

Maggie McKee writes, "A new study reports that passengers on space elevators of current design could be killed by radiation. Even traveling at 200 kilometers per hour, passengers would spend several days in the Van Allen radiation belts, long enough to kill them." Looks like the elevator scientists will get this one solved before liftoff.

Oh, the horror!

[Vraylle]

From TA: "it's going to make things a little more complicated and a little more expensive"

Everybody panic! Apparently, "a little more expensive" == "potentially lethal"!

I guess people should buy from Wal Mart instead of Target, since the latter is "a little more expensive". Obviously making a purchase at Target will kill you. I love sensationalist headlines.

ya think?

[Phroggy]

I thought the main idea was to send equipment, not people? If we can get one in place (which doesn't seem particularly likely any time soon), it'd be far cheaper to send tons of heavy stuff into orbit via a tether than via a rocket.

Re:Oh, the horror!

[Meatloaf Surprise]

A new study reports that passengers on space elevators of current design could be killed by radiation. Even traveling at 200 kilometers per hour, passengers would spend several days in the Van Allen radiation belts, long enough to kill them."

Potentially lethal because of the radiation, which in turn makes it a little more expensive. NOT potentially lethal because its a little more expensive.

I really hope you were trolling

Re:Aqua viva

[camperdave]

Don't worry about that. It'll be a solid block of ice by the time it reaches the top of the beanstalk.

Re:Oh, the horror!

[Smidge204]

I like how you quote the LAST line of the article - the part that talks about solution discussions - completely out of context and then complain about sensationalist headlines.

The full, in-context quote is: "I'm confident that we can solve it," Jorgensen says of the radiation problem, "but it's going to make things a little more complicated and a little more expensive."

=Smidge=

Re:Aqua viva

[LWATCDR]

"All that radiation doesn't just disappear."
Your right. I mean look at the lamp next to you pumping out radiation when you turn it off it doesn't just go away!
Actually most of the radiation in the Van Allen belts would possibly heat the water a little. a tiny amount might convert some of it to deuterium and maybe He3.
Another option would be to use really powerful magnets to shield the car. The radiation in the belts is there because it is charged and is earth's magnetic field keeps it deflects it. Can you say superconductors?

Plenty of time

[jfengel]

Looks like the elevator scientists will get this one solved before liftoff.

You betcha they will. Compared to the problem of running a cable tens of thousands of miles straight up, and strong enough not to tear under its own weight, this sounds downright trivial. We're still a dozen orders of magnitude off.

space elevator - environmental impact

[NATP]

In the same vein -- Always wondered how you'd pass an environmental "impact" review for one of these things. What happens when your 20,000 nmi long cable to geosynch breaks -- or is intentionally damaged by the "bad guys" -- halfway up and 10,000 nmi of cable falls down to earth-- a cable 10,000 nmi would stretch from the coast of Ecuador to somewhere on the island of Borneo.... even bigger mess if it falls over land...

Re:Aqua viva

[quizzicus]

But how do you avoid the radiation on the way back down? Free fall?

Re:Yeah...

[COMON$]

Never underestimate the arrogance of man. Even if we didn't need the tether, we would still create it because we could. So your statement will join a long line of comments through history.

"Yeah - Like China will build a 4000 mile long wall."

"Yeah - We are going to build a tunnel under the English Channel."

"Yeah - We are going to dig a ditch to let boats cross America."

"Yeah - The Egyptians are going to build a gigantic pyramid that will still be standing in 4500 years."

"Yeah - We will propel a highly explosive cargo ship to the moon carrying people."

Re:C'mon, COMMON SENSE!

[painandgreed]

Why would we research unavailable materials? To make those materials obtainable. After they are obtained and the structure built, most of what you are bitching about will be trivial. You don't beam power up to the transport module. You have a power generator in deep space where it is free and plentyful and then you send it back down the cable to the surface where it can power cities. Along the way, the transport module can tap into that and use it for a constant acceleration for a realativly speedy ride up and down.

The rest of you post is simply the ranting of a man that doesn't understand the conversation. Right now, a space elevator woudl be the prefered end result because it would be the cheapest and easiest way to move things up from and down into of the gravity well. It's not being propsed as an immediate solution. If another method can be shown to be a cheaper end result, then I'm sure people will be looking at it. in the meantime, I suspect the vast amount of research that is going towards this project, such as the development of material needed for the tether, is coming from other research that has other purposes. Even if they stopped trying to devlop a space elevator, the same research would be carried out because I suspect that hardly any in the grand scale of things is being carried out soley for the goal of building a space elevator.

Your use of caps does not say much for your mental state either.

Re:Aqua viva

[dattaway]

Gamma radiation is cool, but neutron radiation rocks. It makes things radioactive long after its gone!

Hard water may be a problem here, but have you had to drink heavy water?

Rockets for humans, elevators for cargo

[billstewart]

If we want to do anything serious in space, we'll need to haul lots of cargo up there, but we don't actually need that many workers if they can stay for a while. So if there isn't an easy way to deal with radiation shielding in the Van Allen belts, send the people up on expensive rocket busses, and use the cheap elevators for all the construction material, fuel, and supplies they need.

And the downward trip is easy - drop capsules with parachutes are a lot simpler and more reliable than fancier rockets like the space shuttle, and you'd want to keep a bunch of them around for emergencies anyway.

Re:Math error?

[spike hay]

To low earth orbit, yes. But remember that the cable is stationary above the Earth, so one orbit is exactly 24 hours (it's more like 90 minutes in LEO). Thus, to move fast enough to actually be in orbit, rather than just falling back down to Earth, the elevator must go all the way to geosynchronous orbit, which is more like 24,000 miles out.

Why? who needs humans!

[bussdriver]

Seriously, why humans? Get your fix riding your local space tower / space needle ride.

The problem it solves is CHEAP transport into space for cargo. NOT people. robots will be better than humans for nearly all space work. It will be a long time before we NEED human space transport.

Re:Aqua viva

[Moofie]

Do you seriously think this would be a major design impediment? Look, you figure out how to make a structure 36,000+ miles long, I'll take care of the glorified container truck.

Re:C'mon, COMMON SENSE!

[roystgnr]

It's a horrid idea, and it STILL takes just as much actual energy to put anything in orbit...

No, it doesn't. Most of the energy used by a rocket goes into the exhaust's temperature and velocity, not into the payload's velocity. Better yet, much of the energy that goes into a space elevator payload comes from the Earth's angular momentum, not from the beamed power source.

You're right that laser launch may be a good idea, and you're right that the materials necessary to build a geosynchronous tether on Earth do not exist in bulk and may never be good enough... but there's obviously still a gap between the amount of passion you've spent learning about both subjects and the amount you spend speaking about them. Calm down, take a deep breath, and back slowly away from the Caps Lock key...

Re:Math error?

[The_K4]

This however assumes that one is allways going to "the top floor" so to sepak. Nothing should prevent the elvator from stopping a LEO and letting people off......

Re:Who cares about it being a little more expensiv

[Jeremi]

But don't worry, kids, after we have it we'll find a way to get a trillion dollars out of it!

Actually, unlike other get-rich-in-space-schemes like tourism, a Space Elevator would be a major revenue generator, and not just a novelty. With the ability to safely lift tons of material into space on a daily basis, a lot of industries would become viable: mining, solar power satellites, regular interplanetary travel, zero-gravity factories, non-trivial space stations, etc. Oh yeah, tourism too.

Space right now is like the Wild West before the invention of the train. You can send a few people out there, sure, but it'll never really be settled in any non-trivial way until there is a bulk-shipping infrastructure in place.

Forget the passengers -- worry about the structure

[Dr. Zowie]

Ionizing radiation is just awful on chemical bonds and crystal structures. After all, it works by knocking electrons or whole atoms loose from the nice, bound states they were in. That's how the radiation damages you, too -- it's just that biological systems are a whole lot more sensitive to being scrambled, than are bulk objects like bricks or (to pick a not-so-random example) bundles of carbon nanotubes.

High doses of radiation do strange things to materials -- increase cross-links, damage coherent structure, add skillions of crystal defects. If you lower a nice flexible, white piece of polyethelene plastic into a nuclear reactor for a while, you are liable to pull out a yellow, harder, brittle, fragile piece that has the same overall shape.

If I understand the nature of the space elevator right, each particle "hit" would tear apart a carbon nanotube, gradually shortening the average tube length and weakening the whole bulk structure. I'm sure someone has thought of this effect, but we haven't seen much of it in the space elevator press packets.

Re:Yeah...

[Ceriel Nosforit]

Reading that, I realize we're all insane. Quite insane.

Re:Jeez

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Well here's something else that completely skips the problem. Get off the elevator in low earth orbit! Why ride it all the way out if you don't have to? Sure, you can get a nice velocity by leaving from the end, but if it's cheap to send propellants up then you can get the same deltaV without the risk.

Also, I disagree that it will be expensive. I think the cost is going to be a peso per trillion-quintillion stone, to an altitude of 8442.43 miles. Have you checked the exchange rate for pesos lately? Almost as horrible as the Turkish Lyra!

Re:Yeah...

[snarkth]

"Yeah - We will propel a highly explosive cargo ship to the moon carrying people." ... "and bring them back safely to earth"... which was the hardest part.

  snarkd