Dude! Joe&#39;s Jottings, Mostly Junk

"structure failed"

how about "structure was attacked"? the tallest thing in the world became target #1. we make something taller (much less *miles* taller) and, well...

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the main thing is that people really have no idea just how high up "Space" is. getting an airplane up 35000 feet is nothing, and the plane goes through 4 *different* atmospheric levels to get there, each with their own wind patterns, stressing the hell out of it.

now imagine how many different wind patterns there are to go up 4 miles (you're still not in space), or 40 (you're still not in space), or 400 (ok, now you're getting close...).

but if you want to get up to a stable orbit, you have to go geosync, and THAT is 24,000 miles. think about that.

think about going around the earth once and how long that would take and how much energy that takes. now fight gravity for the entire time.

now think about the more practical problems that could be dealt with instead of all of this wasted research on an idea that's never ever going to be technically possible, and even if it is, merely results in creating the worlds biggest terrorist target ever (and trust me, terrorism isn't going to end just 'cause BushCo says it might).

speculative fiction is fun, but there are better things we can try to do with our time and money then try to make every aspect of "Star Trek" real (not that ST predicted the elevator - actually, Buckminster Fuller was one of the early proponents).

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scaleslea.livejournal.com

Proponents of the space elevator concept aren't thinking about fighting gravity, they're trying to cheat gravity. The examples I've seen of the concept have all described the system as being built from space down, so the structure hangs toward the planet from an orbital site. They always seem to fail to recognize that as the structure gets larger, the increasing mass also increases the gravitational attraction between the structure and the planet, causing the orbit to destabilize.

And then where would you have the structure touch down? You've got MILES of structure subject to stresses from weather that is cracking like a whip through the atmosphere and you're going to nail the small end of the whip to a spot on the ground?

In order to make this sort of plan halfway feasable it requires super light, super strong materials, weather control, and anti-grav as pre-requisites. And if you've got those things, the benefit of a space elevator is what? Anti-grav alone will get you quickly and safely into or from orbit.

You'd be better off with a mass-driver system with a series of independent orbiting accelerators that can be positioned from the upper atmosphere to the receiving space station. Cargo would be flown up to the driver then launched from the upper atmosphere into space.

Doc

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I find it a rather elegant solution to the 'getting stuff to space, cheaply' problem. I'm biased, of course, but I thought that even before I started working at Liftport.

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Stuff below the break comes down. Stuff above goes up and out.

Consider that the stuff is kgs light per kilometer - we think that when (we try to be realistic about it) it breaks it will be messy on the ground but not a catastrophe.

Of course if it would be we're not likely to build it or to be allowed to build it.

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We've thought about that.

* The preferred location is miles and miles from anywhere, no air routes go near it.

* You've got to find it first - the ribbon will be a meter wide and thin.

* The proposed anchor is moveable - a kamikaze only has to miss by a little.

* We don't just stop building stuff becasue a few hundred maniacs announce they want to blow it up.

* The way to make it a low-value target is to make more _of_ them.

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Depends on the propenents. Guys who just like the idea tend to gloss over the problems. The closer you get to the project the more pessimistic you beceome. Our director of research (Tom Nugent - and he is a rocket scientist) is the most pessimistic and knowledgable guy I'm aware of about a space elevator.

But this doesn't always make it into the news. We _tell_ the reporters that, it just doesn't always get reported.

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...and i'd just like to ask: "what new markets?".

"trade" with space requires that space actually have something we can't get (or can't get easily) down here, and all the science of the last 400 years of looking up has shown us that what's up there is exactly what's down here. there's nothing that the moon has that we can't get here; there's nothing mars has that we would even want to bring back here.

there is no TRADE to happen.

and as a result, all the speculation in the world isn't going to change the fact that we have no reason to go into space until we can bypass relativity and cross longer distances and return - nobody wants a one-way trip - to where there might actually be something worth bringing back.

comparing space to "the new world" is a faulty comparison. there were resources in the new world that were cheaper to bring back (i.e., *exploitation*, either of the land or the people) than to keep trying to dig out of europe or the middle east. local space, on the other hand, has nothing we need that we can't get cheaper here, and that's not going to change in our lifetime or even the next generation or two.

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scaleslea.livejournal.com

Actually, near Earth orbit has several desirable things: cheap solar energy, vacuum, heat, cold, and weightlessness.

It makes a really ideal laboratory environment. Unfortunately the costs of building and operating the laboratory haven't fallen enough to make it fiscally feasable, even when projecting the expected rate of discovery based on previous scientific experements in space. The initial costs of investment pretty much kill the project. Unless you're a government and can deficit spend in perpetuity.

Doc

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Actually, near Earth orbit has several desirable things: cheap solar energy, vacuum, heat, cold, and weightlessness.

the latter being the only thing unique to space, and we can simulate it for limited amounts of time without going much higher than 5 miles up.

and "cheap solar energy" is nice except it ain't easy to get it back down to us where it might do some good.

It makes a really ideal laboratory environment.

but it makes for a really crappy manufacturing center to actually mass-produce stuff for a market of our size.

you're not talking "trade" or "markets" at this - you're talking a remote manufacturing facility for people who technically will never feel like they're not still "Americans" or whatever. its not a colony, its a lab and a factory with a hell of a commute.

you're not trading food for product in a "market", you're keeping workers supplied with food and water (entertainment can be transmitted) while they produce the product to ship back down. that's not a market, that's a corporate expense.

I remain skeptical.

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cyberkender.livejournal.com

They're currently working on a linear accelerator system as a 'first stage' launch device.

While I like the idea of a space elevator, I don't think it's going to happen until someone makes Niven's Sinclair Molecule Chain a reality...

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One problem with the space-elevator is that -- unlike rockets, mass-drivers, and laser-propulsion -- we won't be able to realistically test any part of it until the whole thing is built.

Also, if the cable breaks -- or is broken -- we'll have serious problems rescuing whoever is on a car at the time. (Either they'll fall to earth or they'll go off into deep space, depending on where they were and where the break occured.)

There's also a bottleneck problem: how many cars can operate on one cable, and how much can the cars carry?

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Of course we have reason to go into space: to get more living-space and resources without destroying the Earth's ecosystem.

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yeah, by terraforming the rest of the world to be like ours.

i'd rather wait until we as a society learn not to strip-mine the world for our own benefit.

see my post about the destruction of 25 square miles of trees all for the sake of "property values".

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One problem with the space-elevator is that -- unlike rockets, mass-drivers, and laser-propulsion -- we won't be able to realistically test any part of it until the whole thing is built.

Stay tuned - we're releasing a roadmap next week that contains steps we'll be doing to test the system.

Note that you can test rockets but you can only test 'a' rocket once. The next time you launch it's a new rocket.

Cable breaks are a problem (so are exloding Shuttles). We might never put people on one - but you can work around the problem. Parachutes on the passenger compartment if you're low enough. Granted if you're heading out and up on a ribbon you are in serious trouble.

We think 4-7 lifters on the ribbon at a time, 20 tons GVW, 14 tons of cargo. But we've barely began to rough out the system parameters.

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* The preferred location is miles and miles from anywhere, no air routes go near it.

So it's all the more inconvenient for legitimate users, but a hijacker can still find it.

* You've got to find it first - the ribbon will be a meter wide and thin.

You think a SAudi terrorist is too dumb to find something smaller than the WTC?! Why can't he just look for the base and all of the structures that would be built around it? And speaking of "thin," how strong would this "thin" "ribbon" be? And if it shows signs of wear, what sort of effort would be required to replace it?

* The proposed anchor is moveable - a kamikaze only has to miss by a little.

So what good is a movable "anchor?"

You're really bending over backwards to address the "terrorism" angle. Why am I guessing you were spooked by Kim Stanley Robinson's scenario of an attack on a Mars elevator?

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You make terraforming sound like a bad thing. (Not that every planet in our reach will be terraformable.)

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How do 4 - 7 lifters get past each other on a one-meter-wide ribbon?

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i see the number of trees slaughtered outside my window, or the trees slaughtered in north carolina, for no good reason and i know damn well that its not the forming, its the forming EVERYTHING instead of keeping something of the real world around and developing around it.

they'll pave paradise for a parking lot and there won't even be any cars to park on it.

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I just had a look at the Liftport website. Did anyone tell you your artwork was TOTALLY RETRO? (When it wasn't all squiggly abstractions, that is.) Even the stewardess-babes were out of the early '60s.

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