[Setekh]

Originally posted by HotSnoJ
I read a book once called "Red Mars" (it's a trilogy) and in it they built the cable from an asteroid the put into orbit around mars.

Seemed pretty reasonable to me...but of course later, some terrorists blow up the cupplings that held the thing in on mars and the asteroid....well I suppose you can see what I'm getting to.

Red/Green/Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson? I loved those books.

I wonder how hard it would be to control how fast that spool of wire drops down, Bob. Supposing it unspools and accelerates due to gravity, it would inevitably end up burning up if you didn't control its descent and slow it down heaps.

[Stryke 9]

You wouldn't have to just drop it, Steak. That's not what "unspool" means.

[Rictor]

But can they control the rigidity at will? I mean, once you're dropping it down it would take a long while. In that time, you'de almost certainly get winds blowing it every which way. If it was too rigid it could rock the orbital platform. Too flexible and you have the world's largest whip. Or, so is my understanding.

[HotSnoJ]

Originally posted by Setekh


Red/Green/Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson? I loved those books.

I wonder how hard it would be to control how fast that spool of wire drops down, Bob. Supposing it unspools and accelerates due to gravity, it would inevitably end up burning up if you didn't control its descent and slow it down heaps.

Those are it.  Haven't ever finished the third (blue mars) it was getting boring. Seemed alls they talked about was politics, sex, and the politics was communism.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Forget about steel or any other common element, they're using carbon nanotubes, the reason is that a ribbon conisting of carbon nanotubes can theoretically take a force of 100 gigapascals steel isn't even remotely capable of dealing with that kind of force.

It's still conjecture though as they can only create nanotubes of a few centimeters long that can take this amount of force. Give it a few decades.
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