[Janos]

Originally posted by Osiri
they stated in the pacific ocean

Read the article.

A launch from the counterweight would actually have the momentum to get you to Mars, Venus or the Asteroids.

I didn't see anything about Jupiter so I guess that is a bit beyond this momentum.

All at $250 a lb.  

That is amazingly cheap to get to Mars.

Getting back would be more difficult I assume.
 
The US would certainly oversight it.

Hmmmm.
The moore I dig through the endless archives of space elevator talk, the prominent it comes that
A) it is possible to build nanotubes that reach the required GPa. They almost do, but it's not enough,not by a long shot. You need to be 1000% certain, because this thing can never fail. Never.
Also, said nanotubes are very small and short, several millimeters. Not 50 000 kilometers. Ok fixable we'll produce them in no time (no time meaning years or even decades before large-scale construction can even theoreticall begin)? Of course you have to actually PRODUCE said ultra-high quality in large numbers AND in sufficiently low cost.
B) the lightning problem could be solved with moving the platform (costs like ****), coating the cable with some kind of coating (could create nasty water/particle problems), using lasers to kill the clouds (very unfeasible right now and they don't even work as intended) or use chemicals to break down the clouds (seems like the most useful one, yet cost++++. And even they don't work always).

So I back down from my "physically impossible" stance, because it seems it is possible. Theoretically possible, but practically it borders on impossible for quite some time (read: certainly not 5 or 10 or 20 years).

The technology is far from mature. We don't have the nanotubes or required magnitudes. We don't have protection for counterweight, or the counterweight, or methods to move it in case something goes wrong (these are pretty minor problems in the scale if SE).

  We don't have even limited weather control. If the best solution is "let's not get struck by lightning", then yes there are problems. We don't have protection against debris or meteorites or ****ed-up airplanes or UFOs flying against the rope. Actually, we don't have any feasible protection against electronic charges and discharges in the cable.
 
  We don't have  the anchor - we don't have enough steel in the planet to make it out of it, nor has anyone come up with any feasible plans to make some kind of anchor that can flex in all directions, because that's what the rope requires.

  Oh, this one is cool: This would require some groundbreaking maths, namely orbital maths and an analytical solution to an n-body problem (I am not a mathematician). That's apparently really damn hard.
  Hey ho, some more. This is actually pretty fun. The cable must be kept straight. That seems to be a pretty big problem and involves A LOT of fuel because the climber will cause some problems. Pretty funky problems..
Also, there are problems using the the GEO station as launchpad - changing orbit eats up a lot of energy, sometimes even more than just packing and sending a rocket straight from the surface.
And someone just mentioned something about 2,4km/s and it has something to do with the station and the counterweighth and construction... ugh.

The guys on the SE project rely on magical breakthroughs. If you count on incremental breakthroughs, then their timeline is pretty optimistic.

And then comes the entire government vs. private corporation and economic issues. Let's see something
1. It should be located on equator. If it's being built on the ground, well, urrr, where? If on sea (seems like a wise plan), would it be on international waters or some country's waters. Someone pointed out that a potential place would be somewhere near Galapagos islands..
2. It costs. A lot. Research + development + building + getting the resources + fixing mistakes + manpower + protection... That's a nice sum.
3. It must be protected, and it costs.
4. It must pay itself back, ESPECIALLY if it's a private venture.
5. Why would a government protect it unless they had a substantial say on how it is run + nice portion of profits?
6. urgh my head

[Osiri]

As to your question. Corporate law of US would put it on the auction block.

Now, the vast expenditure to build it was $10 billion. That is a figure with a 30% contingency basis.(ie it will really cost 6.9 billlion but 3.1 is given for insurance)

As to your statment of what we should put money in I simply see from a different POV.  Wasting money on a return to the moon will get us nowhere.  We do not need to go there again.  At least not right now.

The dangers to this thing have been accounted for.  The point of having a mobile base station is to be able to avoid debris.  Every piece of orbital debris down to a 1 cm width is supposedly known and tracked, I think that is amazing in itself.  I am not sure of the reality of this but supposedly.

They can move the base station to avoid impacts of sufficient size to damage the ribbon.  

US would just simply exercise imminent domain if the corporation was a US corp if necessary.

It has the power to do it and will if it pays money to the owner.  

It would do this if the corp were to commit treason, or essentially do something that the government did not like.  I would need to look at my Consititutional Law stuff but I am almost sure it could. I would also do this of the Corp tried  to shift its incorporation away from the US.

[Osiri]

The ribbons do not need to be one tubule.  

Read Liftports FAQ

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Osiri
As to your question. Corporate law of US would put it on the auction block.

EDIT: whoops, missed this

Can any company (i.e. foreign) buy an auctioned company?  What happens if no-one is willing to take the risk?

Originally posted by Osiri
Now, the vast expenditure to build it was $10 billion. That is a figure with a 30% contingency basis.(ie it will really cost 6.9 billlion but 3.1 is given for insurance)

I seriously doubt that, myself, given the simple price of carbon nanofibre alone, let alone if they have to build fabrication.

Originally posted by Osiri
As to your statment of what we should put money in I simply see from a different POV.  Wasting money on a return to the moon will get us nowhere.  We do not need to go there again.  At least not right now.

I don't believe returning to the moon is a good use of money either.  Certainly not with their current plan, which is basically a bigger version of the 60-70s programme.  But I don't think an orbital elevator should be a primary funding project with the current general apathy to space travel; I think we need something more conceptually visible and plausible in the medium term in order to even be sure of having any form of funded space programme in 10,20 years time. (in US/NASA terms; EU programme will always, I think, be lower key, but the Chinese will probably continue to push)

Originally posted by Osiri
The dangers to this thing have been accounted for.  The point of having a mobile base station is to be able to avoid debris.  Every piece of orbital debris down to a 1 cm width is supposedly known and tracked, I think that is amazing in itself.  I am not sure of the reality of this but supposedly.

They can move the base station to avoid impacts of sufficient size to damage the ribbon.  

http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/faqs.html
Based on this, only objects >10cm are tracked.  Objects under that (to 3cm) can be detected on radar, but the sheer volume means that they can't be continuosly tracked.

I don't know what the time concern/movement flexibility required is to dodge debris.  Or what the financial/political requirement would be for arranging tracking for that debris.

Again, I'm not saying this an insurmountable obstacle but one which means I don't believe this is currently technologically possible (if it was, then I'd say it is worthy of primary funding).

EDIT; actually, I'd say it was a serious issue more for a private than publicly owned space elevator.  I guess the odds on an actual impact could/would be pretty low, but you'd still need to be 100% certain to find and detect them.

Originally posted by Osiri
US would just simply exercise imminent domain if the corporation was a US corp if necessary.

It has the power to do it and will if it pays money to the owner.  

It would do this if the corp were to commit treason, or essentially do something that the government did not like.  I would need to look at my Consititutional Law stuff but I am almost sure it could. I would also do this of the Corp tried  to shift its incorporation away from the US.

Can the US legally block a company moving its incorporation or transferring it's assets outside the US, and particularly if those assets are not within US territory (if, say, we have a base in international or non-Us waters)?

[Black Wolf]

What they ought to be focussing on (and I know I never give up on this one) is the SkyRamp. Relatively cheap, technologically within our boundaries, reliable, and best of all, it makes space launching a hell of a lot cheaper, and that's always the most expensive part, no?

[Mongoose]

The whole idea of an orbital elevator always seems like such a cop-out to me.  Call me a dreamer, but screw a giant elevator; I want an X-wing.  I want a craft that's completely capable of taking off from a planetary surface, achieving escape velocity, and landing on another planetary surface, all in one self-contained unit.  An orbital elevator, if one could even be built, might be great for getting cargo into orbit, but it doesn't do jack **** for physically landing on another solar system body or for getting back from said body.  Let's put some money toward real space planes.  I've watched too much Star Trek and played too much FreeSpace to want to dick around with a big carbon string sticking into space like so much lint. I don't know if anti-gravity repulsors or space-time bending warp drives will ever be a real possibility, but the way I see it, there's way too much sci-fi out there with so many explanations for how to achieve these types of travel for all of it to be complete rubbish.  One of those descriptions of how to skirt with faster-than-light travel or antigravity has to have at least a little merit.  Our understanding of physics isn't yet advanced enough to tell us if things like hyperspace or warp drives are even a theoretical possibility or just so much sci-fi BS, but we need to get to a point where we're able to answer that question.  My great hope is that, over the course of my lifetime, someone is able to do just that.  My even greater hope is getting to make a subspace jump in a Valkyrie look-alike, but I think that's even more impossible than half of the points I just made.

For those of you who may think I'm an idiot, you might possibly be right, but I'm also a physics major.  I'm well aware of what our current limits are, but I'd also like to see those limits pushed forward.  This year, the World Year of Physics, celebrates Einstein's four great papers and their driving forward of our understanding of the universe.  Just think about how far we've come since then; more importantly, think about how much further we can go.  Imagine the day when an orbital elevator would be seen as a laughable, useless piece of technology. Maybe, just maybe, people in 2105 will be able to look back and do just that.

[aldo_14]

Well, in short/medium term the only feasible way of a manned exploration vessel will probably involve an in-orbit construction and launch (because odds are it'd be pretty damn big and need to store a lot of food, water, fuel and oxygen aside from, for example, big engines ala Orion), so it's not like the space elevator is useless in that regard.  At some point we will need a frequent earth-space lift capacity, probably an orbital construction facility, and the main question is when we should sink money into that.  Me, I think not quite yet.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

i think we just build a big slingshot, i know that it didn't work out so well for the coyote in roadrunner...but hey, we don't have buy it at acme.

[Sesquipedalian]

I say we sprinkle pixie dust on Turkish carpets.  Physics has far less to say against pixie dust based propulsion than against the space elevator.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

or....we could sprinkle the pixie dust on the slingshot......then we could buy those cheap assed acme slingshots

[Osiri]

Okay.  I think the only thing I was going to respond to was the question of US eminent domain.  

Yes, from what I know if it is the property of a US entity and that entity tried to essentially change the sovereignty control over it to say UK.  The US government would exercise eminent domain to take over the property.

Again, I could be wrong but AFAIK the government can do this to ANY property.  

I am sorry I meant to say 10 cm to begin with I just forgot the zero or it didn't type or I forgot the number.

Again read the Space.com or Liftport FAQs.


As to the price aldo... I am not making it up.  There are real scientist making that estimate.

Both NASA and LIFTPORT groups came up with roughly the same figures.

Someone must be giving major cash influx to LIFTPORT for the to be making climbers already.  That someone would not be funding it for fun.  He/she is funding it after making serious checks on how much it will cost.

[pyro-manic]

The American government could easily pay for this, I suspect. But they want bunker-buster nukes instead.

But then I think there are plenty of things here on Earth that need billions of dollars throwing at them before we worry about space exploration. Get those under control first, then we can think about space...

[Taristin]

Originally posted by pyro-manic
The American government could easily pay for this, I suspect. But they want bunker-buster nukes instead.

Do you realize how much debt the gov't is in right now? Maybe Clinton could have afforded it, but der fuhrer bush cannot.

[Osiri]

Well the reality is if we would simply not have done the Iraqi war we would have 100s of billions of dollars that we no longer have.

With the hundreds of billions of dollars we could have gotten every homeless person off the street or paid every college students entire tuition and still have had the money left over to build a space elevator.

We would probably also been able to put the rest of the money toward scientific research we could  actually prosper from.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Osiri
Well the reality is if we would simply not have done the Iraqi war we would have 100s of billions of dollars that we no longer have.

With the hundreds of billions of dollars we could have gotten every homeless person off the street or paid every college students entire tuition and still have had the money left over to build a space elevator.

We would probably also been able to put the rest of the money toward scientific research we could  actually prosper from.

Given that the Federal Defecit has risen a trillion dollars in just 2 years (from 7 to 8), it's probably not just Iraq (that's about a 5th of it, though....), but nice fat tax cuts for the biggest earners and soforth.  In context, that makes spending $100bn upon a not-particularly-new-tech moon mission seem even more unecessary, of course.  

The reason I remain skeptical of the $10bn figure is simply the pure cost of carbon nanotubes.  At present it'd be maybe about tenfold that just for the ribbons alone, and that's presuming they don't have to build dedicated factories, which they will surely have to.  

I can understand perhaps $10bn to place it, but to actually research and build it seems a little optimistic to say the least, especially if you're having to develop technology from scratch or near-scratch.  I did note that the LiftGroup FAQ doesn't actually give a predicted cost estimate.  The Space article... it uses that 'under $10bn' within the context of occuring directly after describing how the already-manufactured cables would be raised.

To be fair, I've not been factoring the commercial benefits if they did build their own mass-manufacturing for nanotubes.  I guess being able to produce tonnes of the things could provide an income source and reduce the actual cost of the technology.  How that'd relate to the cost of actually building 40,000 feet or so long ribbon cables, I don't know.  But I'd still imagine fabrication/R&D costs to be outside that cost estimate.

[Osiri]

Liftgroup does have it somewhere.

Yes, they are factoring in that the are already going to sell nanotubes they manufacture to car manufacturers and the like.

There is a much more detailed presentation at

spaceelevator.com

[aldo_14]

I can't find the costings, natch.

Would say though (have I wrote this already?), that I'd rather see that money into an S.Ev than the current moon plan.  It's just that I think it shouldn't be, of all possible things, the top funding priority.  Above pissing away billions on a moon mission using old tech, yeah.  Behind more robot probes and research on their propulsion; not IMO.

That's kind of OT, though.

summary... I'm sure about the ability of a startup to raise the required money on venture capital.  Other than potential legal issues over how you'd 'control' a private business of that nature, I'd think that'd be the main barrier.

[Osiri]

I am not questioning your belief of where the money should go.  

I just keep trying to say that the costs were done by someone else who knew what they were doing.  NASA would not have BSed a cost to the extent you believe they are BSing it.  

I agree that money should go to probes and such.  Money should also go to this as the research and implementation of this would be less expensive than the probes you want up.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Osiri
I am not questioning your belief of where the money should go.  

I just keep trying to say that the costs were done by someone else who knew what they were doing.  NASA would not have BSed a cost to the extent you believe they are BSing it.  

I agree that money should go to probes and such.  Money should also go to this as the research and implementation of this would be less expensive than the probes you want up.

I didn't say they were 'BS-ing' it, I said it seemed an oddly low figure based on a number of factors such as the sheer current cost of carbon nanofibres.  Later I changed that a bit because I managed to read a bit more into it, and at the moment I'm simply not sure the costs would be as 'low' as $10bn.  But I didn't accuse anyone of 'BS'-ing anything.

I honestly do not know the basis of that particular $10bn estimate from the space article. Like I said, I can't find the exact whole-project cost, because I think the $10bn refers to the cost of actually building the thing rather than large scale R&D and whatnot.

I don't object to funding going on this, though.  Think I said that earlier.  Just that, I think, it'd be hard to politically sustain even a $10bn sustained funding whilst the public seemed apathetic to the space program.

My only difference of opinion with you is, I think, that we'd both put the space elevator ahead of that moon mission, but maybe not at the same place.  I'd want them launching a lot of probes, for example, in the 20-30 years they predict this taking, and also developing those probes capacity further.

[Grey Wolf]

To build an orbital tether or elevator, it needs to be on the equator.

Will it be theoretically possible? Yes. I'd rather work on getting the possibility of a diaspora going though. And for that, we need a colony on the moon. At least a few hundred people.