Engineering...amazing...

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@Li3n

@Li3n

Yes, i too hate grass and all that "natural" stuff... soulless city-planet it is...


@Shego

Pfft... planes... try colony drop... Sieg Zeon!
 
Shegokigo

Shegokigo

Seriously, the first thought I had was "What if it broke off/detached, imagine the carnage from all that falling debris....." after that I had the Bin Laden thought.
 
@Li3n

@Li3n

Shegokigo said:
Seriously, the first thought I had was "What if it broke off/detached, imagine the carnage from all that falling debris....." after that I had the Bin Laden thought.
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gundam daburo already did it... copied it off the simpsons of course...
 
C

Chazwozel

fade said:
Could you imagine riding that thing?
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They would have to gradually increase the speed keeping it under like 1.6 g's, and then slow it down as it reached the top. I wonder how long it would take to reach the top of a 22km tower like that? Physics nerds hop to it!

---------- Post added at 01:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:06 PM ----------
@Li3n;291198][quote=Shegokigo said:
Seriously, the first thought I had was "What if it broke off/detached, imagine the carnage from all that falling debris....." after that I had the Bin Laden thought.
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gundam daburo already did it... copied it off the simpsons of course...[/QUOTE]

I think you need to take a nap.
 
C

Chibibar

That is pretty awesome. I am not sure we'll see it in our lifetime. It would take some serious engineering feat to actually go from here to actual space (i.e. space station to load/unload cargo)
 
I

Iaculus

Yeah, Gundam 00 provides a clear, concise explanation of what will happen when this is brought in. It seems that every male under thirty years of age will become stunningly handsome, the entire global military will get curbstomped by seven smallish walking tanks, the elevators' inventor will pull a borderline-genocidal Hari Seldon without anyone who matters calling him out on his shit, and we'll all be taken over by a shadowy cabal of androgynes with really, really bad dress sense.

Personally, I can't wait.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
fade said:
Could you imagine riding that thing?
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Yeah, if you thought a flight across the Pacific was long...

I'm pretty sure some of the SciFi novels that have space elevators have dealt with the trip length. In fact, I'm pretty sure that one had a hotel at the midway point in order to allow people a break from the days of travelling.

Which brings us to an engineering feat that article didn't mention, powering the elevator. I don't remember why running electrical cables is impractical (maybe the weight) but there are currently engineering challenges to create robots that climb cables while weighing under a certain amount and climbing at a certain speed. One plan is microwave/laser power, removing the need for fuel onboard.

And I didn't like the way the article phrased our lack of materials to build the elevator. Some scientists say that we already do have them, namely carbon nanotubes, but we can't make them in sufficient quantities and length. Other scientists say that it's physically impossible to make carbon nanotubes of that length with enough purity.


Other novels that feature space elevators: Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy (mostly a "meh" work, but some fantastic concepts for applied tech), and David Brin's "Sundiver" (awesome novel, but only mentions the space elevators in passing). I'm sure there are many others, but those are the first that come to my mind.
 
C

Chibibar

It would have to be massive and strong. I mean you know that someone will try to "blow it up" or a plane accidentally ram into it during "looking at the laptop" moment. (see previous articles about pilot miss the landing due to all members are working on a laptop)

Also the ability to repair (or remote repair) would need to be in place. I can barely imagine the maintenance on that thing. We can barely fix the Hubble's Telescope can you imagine how exponentially complex a space elevator will be?
 
K

Kitty Sinatra

There's a sci-fi book that has one of these things topple down by a terrorist attack. I think it was called "Mars" but it might have been "Mercury" or "Jupiter." It was by Ben Bova, who wrote a series of books titled after each planet.
 
Jake

Jake

Gruebeard said:
There's a sci-fi book that has one of these things topple down by a terrorist attack. I think it was called "Mars" but it might have been "Mercury" or "Jupiter." It was by Ben Bova, who wrote a series of books titled after each planet.
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You're probably thinking of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books, where such a thing did happen.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
Jake said:
You're probably thinking of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books, where such a thing did happen.
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In David Brin's "Sundiver" the main character is famous for having averted a terrorist attack on the Vanilla Space Needle (a space elevator, and I can't read it's name without thinking of Super Mario World's Vanilla Dome).
 
K

Kitty Sinatra

Chazwozel;291213][quote=fade said:
Could you imagine riding that thing?
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They would have to gradually increase the speed keeping it under like 1.6 g's, and then slow it down as it reached the top. I wonder how long it would take to reach the top of a 22km tower like that? Physics nerds hop to it![/QUOTE]
Given acceleration of 1 g is 9.81 metres per second per second, if we just ignore the acceleration since that acceleration would give us 2 g's and use a speed of 9.81 metres per second we get 35,316 metres per hour. That's 35 km/h, with no acceleration.

Mind you, this is a blasted guesswork with lousy understanding of the underlying math on my part, but it seems like this would be a pretty damn quick trip. I can offer up another question that would better illustrate the trip length. How quickly does a passenger jet take to reach cruising altitude? Multiply that by about 3 since they fly around 6 miles above ground. If the elevator can travel at nearly the same speed as a jet liner ascending, that's how long it will take.

And that's not very long at all.

---------- Post added at 10:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:32 PM ----------
Jake;291702][quote=Gruebeard said:
There's a sci-fi book that has one of these things topple down by a terrorist attack. I think it was called \"Mars\" but it might have been \"Mercury\" or \"Jupiter.\" It was by Ben Bova, who wrote a series of books titled after each planet.
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You're probably thinking of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books, where such a thing did happen.[/QUOTE]

No. I'm not thinking of that.

I know it's Ben Bova. And I know it's one of the books I mentioned - Mars, Mercury or Jupiter - I just can't recall which of those books involved that plot (The elevator was on Earth, along the equator . . . it was Mercury. And I'm about to google up the confirmation.

---------- Post added at 10:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:36 PM ----------

And confirmed:
Plot summary

Mance was the chief visionary and engineer behind the skytower, a super space elevator which ran from Ecuador all the way into low Earth orbit. When religious fundamentalists and agents of the scheming Yamagata Corporation sabotage the skytower, however, millions are killed; Mance is faced with his own guilt for the tragedy and sees himself as ostensibly responsible.
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Jake

Jake

Gruebeard;291717][quote=Jake;291702][quote=Gruebeard said:
There's a sci-fi book that has one of these things topple down by a terrorist attack. I think it was called "Mars" but it might have been "Mercury" or "Jupiter." It was by Ben Bova, who wrote a series of books titled after each planet.
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You're probably thinking of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books, where such a thing did happen.[/quote]

No. I'm not thinking of that.

[/QUOTE]
No, I'll tell you what to think, boy
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
Gruebeard said:
Given acceleration of 1 g is 9.81 metres per second per second, if we just ignore the acceleration since that acceleration would give us 2 g's and use a speed of 9.81 metres per second we get 35,316 metres per hour. That's 35 km/h, with no acceleration.

Mind you, this is a blasted guesswork with lousy understanding of the underlying math on my part, but it seems like this would be a pretty damn quick trip. I can offer up another question that would better illustrate the trip length. How quickly does a passenger jet take to reach cruising altitude? Multiply that by about 3 since they fly around 6 miles above ground. If the elevator can travel at nearly the same speed as a jet liner ascending, that's how long it will take.

And that's not very long at all.
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A space elevator would be "22,000 miles long" according to the article. That converts to well over 35,000km, or 1,000 hours at 35km/h. Nearly 42 days of travel. According to this site, even "using an average speed of Mach 1 for the elevators, a trip from the ground to the geosynchronous point would take about two days."
 
tegid

tegid

With a constant acceleration for the first half and equal constant deceleration for the second half of about 0.1g, I calculate about 3 hours...

Of course, even though that acceleration shouldn't be so hard to get, I guess... If it weren't for friction which has a component directly proportional to velocity, and since 1 hour of a .1g acceleration gives a mach 10 speed, it's pretty relevant.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
tegid said:
With a constant acceleration for the first half and equal constant deceleration for the second half of about 0.1g, I calculate about 3 hours...
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3 hours to travell 22,000 miles? How are you planning on achieving an average speed of of over 7,000mph relative to the cable?
 
tegid

tegid

I meant to say in the next paragraph that it made no sense due to friction issues and others.

In a perfect world with vacuum, without friction and anything that would destabilize the thingy it shouldn't be a problem. I guess. I mean, I described it in terms of acceleration, not speed. In such a world you could get that speed without problems, couldn't you?
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
tegid said:
I meant to say in the next paragraph that it made no sense due to friction issues and others.

In a perfect world with vacuum, without friction and anything that would destabilize the thingy it shouldn't be a problem. I guess. I mean, I described it in terms of acceleration, not speed. In such a world you could get that speed without problems, couldn't you?
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It's not friction or balance or anything I was thinking of, it's power source. One of the main reasons for a space elevator is to avoid having to use rocket propulsion. I suppose in your theoretical world we could assume infinite battery capacity and super powerful motors and what-not that could efficiently use the cable without resorting to strapping rockets outside the vehicle, but in the real world we don't know how to power a cable-crawling vehicle, at low cost per-trip, let alone at high speed.
 
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