space elevator by 2050?

[Bateluer]

Maybe by 2150. A space elevator would be the biggest undertaking in the history of mankind. We're not accomplishing that in 40 years.

Heh, we landed on the moon in less than 10.

Love the armchair ATOT scientists and engineers in every space thread tho.

 

[GrumpyMan]

What's the point? You get up there and go wow cool, nice view. And then what? You go back down? Would there be a hotel or something to stay at? No probably not. Don't see the point unless it docks to something where you can stay at for some length of time.

 

[DrPizza]

For the 30 seconds other nations allow them to own the elevator. That thing might work in some fictional Star Trek utopia where it's all one planet working together for the good of all mankind. But in this space-time continuum? Not bloody likely, even if the tech is invented to make it work nobody has the tech to protect it. A space elevator is just a giant soft target screaming "come and get me!!"

A space elevator would be used to make more space elevators. The first thing I'd do if I had a space elevator is send another, rolled up elevator into geostationary orbit where I could send one end down and the counterweight up whenever I needed to.

 

[Raizinman]

I prefer to take the service elevator.

Isn't this just a new and more modern version of the Tower of Babel?

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Heh, we landed on the moon in less than 10.

Love the armchair ATOT scientists and engineers in every space thread tho.

Landing on the moon was a natural evolution of the technology available at that time.

Your sense of scale and engineering hurdles is lacking

 

[Crono]

What's the point? You get up there and go wow cool, nice view. And then what? You go back down? Would there be a hotel or something to stay at? No probably not. Don't see the point unless it docks to something where you can stay at for some length of time.

The real point of a space elevator is an easy, cost effective platform for launching satellites and conducting low gravity experiments.
The potential tourism aspect is what will help fund the idea in part or is of interest to the average person*.

A space elevator is a monumental task. I'd say 25 years just before the materials science is ready for us to start mass producing all that nanotube wire/cable, plus everything else needed to maintain it and protect it from the elements, impacts, and properly shield it. It's within the realm of possibility of even sooner than that if it got a lot of funding and support.


* well, average millionaire, at least at first

 

[Vic Vega]

...

 

[bfdd]

What's silly about a safe and cost-effective way to transport payloads into space?

say "space elevator". it makes me laugh every time and I adamantly support it!

Crono you're forgetting more effective solar farms as well. Energy can be transported back to the surface from solar farms.

 

[Vic Vega]

...

 

[Crono]

Crono you're forgetting more effective solar farms as well. Energy can be transported back to the surface from solar farms.

You're right, I did forget.

Initially, it would probably just address the energy cost of the elevator itself. But it would be cool to have solar farms in orbit.
It would be a mistake if the United States weren't the one to take the initiative on this. We benefited so much from developing technology during the golden age of space exploration.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

I have family members who were on the Saturn V design team and have heard their first hand stories my entire life. I don't think your statement could be further from the truth. Sure, previous knowledge and experience were used but the amount of technology invented and built for going to the moon is staggering.

Yes. But the program already was piggybacking on the Saturn rockets before it, the Saturn 5 specifically took as much tech from the previous projects as it could manage.

This is a completely different beast in terms of scale, money required, technologies that need to be invented, and stuff that needs to be built.

Space tech has the advantage that it has a ground to be built on and doesn't require scales that a space elevator does.

Constructing a space elevator requires insane materials that we don't even know can exist, carbon nanotubes might work, but we have no way of mass producing them, and again scale. Materials that can be mass produced, strong, tough, resist all environmental effects, strong up to an obscene length, can be repaired, doesnt fall apart at the first sign of stress.

The idea of scale is the biggest factor in this. We can develop a ton of technology and materials, all of that tends to be useless because we don't tend to develop to make 3,000 mile long elevators.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

OK - so, it might take a week for the elevator car to reach the full 25000 miles out to the geosynchronous orbit point. That's fine for inanimate cargo. But for people, couldn't there be a docking station at the 200-300 mile marker(lower earth orbit) where they could be retrieved by shuttles? Isn't it fairly efficient for chemically powered shuttles to operate there as long as they have reached lower earth orbit?

 

[purbeast0]

i mean with rod basically sticking out 22k miles into space from earth, how the hell would we ever know what kind of effect that would have on the earth and it's rotation? doesn't sound like a good idea on that alone.

 

[Fritzo]

Heh, we landed on the moon in less than 10.

Love the armchair ATOT scientists and engineers in every space thread tho.

He may be right though. We would have to construct the strongest (and longest) strand of carbon fiber....in space....that we've ever made. The safety implications alone are mind boggling. This isn't just a matter if making a tin can to shoot a few brave volunteers off the earth on top of a controlled explosion. A space elevator malfunction could cause severe damage across several countries not even involved in the project.

 

[Fritzo]

i mean with rod basically sticking out 22k miles into space from earth, how the hell would we ever know what kind of effect that would have on the earth and it's rotation? doesn't sound like a good idea on that alone.

It would have none. Say the counterweight weighs 10 tons. The earth weight about 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. It would be like saying a bacteria on your arm will throw off your balance.

 

[zephyrprime]

This is a completely different beast in terms of scale, money required, technologies that need to be invented, and stuff that needs to be built.

If anything, I think the building the space elevator is a simpler and cheaper task than the moonshot. I remember reading that the apollo program cost the equivalent of $500 billion dollars in today's money. I've read some things about the space elevator ideas and early versions of that don't seem like they would be that difficult to build or that costly. And the difficultly of working with carbon nanotubes is overstated in my opinion (even though the technology is primitive now).

 

[zephyrprime]

OK - so, it might take a week for the elevator car to reach the full 25000 miles out to the geosynchronous orbit point. That's fine for inanimate cargo. But for people, couldn't there be a docking station at the 200-300 mile marker(lower earth orbit) where they could be retrieved by shuttles? Isn't it fairly efficient for chemically powered shuttles to operate there as long as they have reached lower earth orbit?

No. The closer you are to the earth, the faster you need to go to maintain orbit. The space elevator needs to be at geosynchronous orbit which means that it's velocity is zero relative to the surface of the earth. Zero m/ph is way too slow to maintain orbit at low earth orbit levels.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Are carbon nanotubes "stiff"? I mean, they would be pulled taut by the counterweight, but the effect of the counterweight notwithstanding, if it broke and fell, unless it's "rigid", wouldn't the bulk of it fall straight down around it's anchor site on Earth? Also, wouldn't everything that's 100 miles and more out burn up on re-entry?