[Snail]

Space elevators are uber cool and even if they are impossible we should still build them

[Unknown Target]

Can you imagine building it in this environment of total fear? "OMG THE TERRORISTS!".

[Luis Dias]

Space elevators are uber cool and even if they are impossible we should still build them

This is the mental byproduct of too much FREDding: treating real world barriers as code limits that should be fixable in the new Nightly release of the executable where the limits have been revamped to 64k.

[Polpolion]

Space elevators are uber cool and even if they are impossible we should still build them

This is the mental byproduct of too much FREDding: treating real world barriers as code limits that should be fixable in the new Nightly release of the executable where the limits have been revamped to 64k.

lol, that's what they said about goddard

[Mongoose]

Can you imagine building it in this environment of total fear? "OMG THE TERRORISTS!".

Hey, that was a legitimate plot point in Gundam 00.

[starbug]

I think we really need to focus on space exploration and retiring the shuttles is a mistake for the following reasons,  well ok these one prob need retiring but we need new vessels for space!

1 There will be a point when earth will be unable to support human life.
2 The sun will eventually burn itself out, and also will expand, so the earth will be engulfed.
3 We will eventually use up most of the resources on this planet.

Its only a matter of time

We need to be getting out there if the human race is to survive. i am amazed we have never actually tried to set up a moonbase to be honest, we got space stations but no moonbase?

[Unknown Target]

Space elevators are uber cool and even if they are impossible we should still build them

Design it. In thinking through the problems you may yet come up with a novel solution. Blimps along the lower length of the elevator to help support it?

[IceFire]

I think we really need to focus on space exploration and retiring the shuttles is a mistake for the following reasons,  well ok these one prob need retiring but we need new vessels for space!

1 There will be a point when earth will be unable to support human life.
2 The sun will eventually burn itself out, and also will expand, so the earth will be engulfed.
3 We will eventually use up most of the resources on this planet.

Its only a matter of time

We need to be getting out there if the human race is to survive. i am amazed we have never actually tried to set up a moonbase to be honest, we got space stations but no moonbase?

Moonbases are a whole other level of difficulty beyond maintaining a low orbit space station.

You should read up about Space X. There is some promising work being done there that may eventually surpass what we've seen from NASA. We'll see.

[rscaper1070]

Space elevator. We don't have materials that are strong enough to build it. A Space elevator requires materials that are at least 130 GPa. The hardest steel I find in a second is alloy 1090, with a tensile strength of .84 GPa.

Now you see the impossibilities.

My mom still tells me the story of how one of her grade school teachers told her class that it would be impossible to go to the moon. Granted I don't think I'll see it in my lifetime but a space elevator is not impossible. Cables made from man made spider silk would do the job. They aren't there yet but they are definitely on the path.

[Luis Dias]

Spider Silk is nowhere near the *Order of magnitude* required for such a job. Nice try though.

If you tried nanotubes u would be less wrong.

[Flipside]

The problem is inertia to a large degree, a rail-gun system would probably put stuff into space pretty economically, but I would have thought nothing organic would survive the launch. Oddly enough, the emerging system of piggy back as high as possible and then launching may be the best midway option for the forseeable future. Whilst it's still not cheap, taking the 'scenic route' of horizontal flight might prove to be far cheaper than getting out of the atmosphere as fast as possible, which is kind of ironic.

[rscaper1070]

Spider Silk is nowhere near the *Order of magnitude* required for such a job. Nice try though.

If you tried nanotubes u would be less wrong.

Spider silk is 3x stronger than kevlar which is 5x stronger than steel. I think the order of magnitude is covered, the problem is production. Making enough spider silk to produce a cable that could be used in such a project isn't feasible right now but in a few years who knows. My point was more about limiting peoples thinking by throwing the word "impossible" around.

[watsisname]

Can you imagine building it in this environment of total fear? "OMG THE TERRORISTS!".

Hey, that was a legitimate plot point in Gundam 00.

Also a legitimate plot point in the Red Mars trilogy, with super spectacular results.

[Pred the Penguin]

Currently rereading the series. Excellent stuff.

[Bobboau]

Space elevator. We don't have materials that are strong enough to build it. A Space elevator requires materials that are at least 130 GPa. The hardest steel I find in a second is alloy 1090, with a tensile strength of .84 GPa.

Now you see the impossibilities.

yeah, why you think "hardest steel" would give you best tensile strength I do not know. why don't we talk about CNTs which have been made with a strength of about 60GPa (up from about 4GPa in 2000) and are expected to get to be about 300 GPa. this is a RAPIDLY developing field of materials science that is just getting started, I think if we really put our minds to it we could get it done within 25 years.

[Mongoose]

A space elevator would be pretty damn awesome, but there's always this part of me that views it as something of a cop-out.  Give me a real sci-fi spaceship, dammit.

[Nuke]

I think we really need to focus on space exploration and retiring the shuttles is a mistake for the following reasons,  well ok these one prob need retiring but we need new vessels for space!

1 There will be a point when earth will be unable to support human life.
2 The sun will eventually burn itself out, and also will expand, so the earth will be engulfed.
3 We will eventually use up most of the resources on this planet.

Its only a matter of time

We need to be getting out there if the human race is to survive. i am amazed we have never actually tried to set up a moonbase to be honest, we got space stations but no moonbase?

1 & 2 are very long term concerns perhaps on the order of between thousands to billions of years, but #3 is the one that is gonna bite us in the balls some time within the next hundreds of years, that is unless we do something to curb our rate of population growth or slice quality of life across the board.

retiring the shuttle is actually a good thing. its an old ship, and its time to step away from it so that new technology can take its place. you got skylon, falcon/dragon, etc all gearing up to take over. with them costs go down and you have the competition between private space organizations which will further drive down the price of a space launch. new markets like space tourism. as for a moon base there isnt much reason to build it just to say we did. its going to take something like demand for helium 3 to validate a moon base, and if that mining cant be done remotely with robots then you have a viable reason for lunar habitation. of course this opens up a whole other slew of possibilities which i went into in my previous post.

A space elevator would be pretty damn awesome, but there's always this part of me that views it as something of a cop-out.  Give me a real sci-fi spaceship, dammit.

space elevator is not going to be a near term plan. we need to aquire a counter weight first, its gonna need to be pretty big and in a geosync orbit. merely catching this thing is going to be an effort, its going to require a lot of fuel. you might also need to do an aerobreak maneuver with the thing as well, and earths population will not approve of this at all. its a fun thing to think about but right now we need a successor to the space shuttle. the space elevator will likely require in space infrastructure that we dont have yet, new ships are essential to that so that is what needs to be worked on. skylon seems to have the best on paper design, its engine is an awesome concept, and will finally allow for true ssto operations. its gonna be badass.

[Luis Dias]

Space elevator. We don't have materials that are strong enough to build it. A Space elevator requires materials that are at least 130 GPa. The hardest steel I find in a second is alloy 1090, with a tensile strength of .84 GPa.

Now you see the impossibilities.

yeah, why you think "hardest steel" would give you best tensile strength I do not know. why don't we talk about CNTs which have been made with a strength of about 60GPa (up from about 4GPa in 2000) and are expected to get to be about 300 GPa. this is a RAPIDLY developing field of materials science that is just getting started, I think if we really put our minds to it we could get it done within 25 years.

I did speak of CN. Up here in this same page. Look it up.


EDIT: I mean the idea makes for an excellent sci fi. But come on people. Put some more neurons on this one than the ones you are apparently investing in, and you'll see that it's an utterly gigantic engineering effort with impossible to near-impossible materials required and astonishing luck that nothing gets wrong (I wouldn't like to see a "woops" followed by the falling of a 10 KM "string" of Material X going to the ground).

So ok, let's agree that it is at least "conceivable", and by no means I want to dismiss the excited communities that are trying to ramp up technologies and engineering solutions to this problem, but really nothing of this kind will be started to build in our lifetimes. And I still intend to live throughout this century.

[Turambar]

On one hand, I'd love to see us capture a metallic asteroid, put it in orbit, mine it and use the resources.  On the other hand, once we get an asteroid in orbit, it just takes one asshole nutjob to cause an extinction event.

[Luis Dias]

That aint so easy to do. The orbit in question can be relatively far away as well.

And there's good chance you'll find stuff in orbit anyway already, specially in the Langrangian points