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Space Elevator

(neal.fun)
1773 points kaonwarb | 7 comments | | HN request time: 0.775s | source | bottom
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tempestn ◴[] No.45640679[source]
TIL it's estimated that over 48 tons of meteors hit the atmosphere every day.

Regarding actual space elevators though, while they're not sci-fi to the extent of something like FTL travel - ie. they're technically not physically impossible - they're still pretty firmly in the realm of sci-fi. We don't have anything close to a cable that could sustain its own weight, let alone that of whatever is being elevated. Plus, how do you stabilize the cable and lifter in the atmosphere?

A space elevator on the moon is much more feasible: less gravity, slow rotation, no atmosphere, less dangerous debris. But it's also much less useful.

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tsimionescu ◴[] No.45641725[source]
While a space elevator doesn't contradict any fundamental limits of physics, that doesn't mean it's actually possible to build one. There is no reason to be certain that it's actually possible to create a material that has the required characteristics in terms of tensile strength to support it's own weight, plus the weight of the elevator, plus the weight of all the additional cabling. It also has to endure the huge temperature differences that it will experience along its length and from day to night and from season to season.

This is especially true considering that you don't need something that barely holds - you need something that you know will hold up to many times more weight than it needs to, so that it can be safe: the potential energy such a thing would store would be enough to dig into hundreds of meters of rock all around the world, if it ever crashed. So, you have to ensure there is no realistic chance of it ever crashing. It also has to be highly non-fragile in other ways, so that a madman with a bomb or a freak collision with an airplane or a meteor (especially likely in the thin upper layers of the atmosphere) won't bring it all down.

This combination of properties may well be completely impossible to actually achieve in a material. Even if there is no obvious basic law of physics that it would break, that doesn't mean that it wouldn't break other, harder to touch, derived laws.

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Jolter ◴[] No.45641944[source]
A terrorist attack on a space elevator happens to figure in the first episode of the TV series Foundation.

https://foundation.fandom.com/wiki/Bombing_of_the_Star_Bridg...

It’s about as devastating as you would expect.

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1. lproven ◴[] No.45642378[source]
That's odd. The first episode was the only one I watched and I don't remember that bit. It might have grabbed me.

A terrorist attack on a space elevator is a pivotal plot point in Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, which IMHO is a better work in basically every way than Asimov's magnum opus.

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2. Metacelsus ◴[] No.45642619[source]
Doesn't the space elevator attack happen in Red Mars not Blue Mars?
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3. CaptainOfCoit ◴[] No.45642686[source]
> That's odd. The first episode was the only one I watched and I don't remember that bit. It might have grabbed me.

I think it's the first episode of season 2 or 3, not the first season. I remember someone else mentioning it, but I've only seen season 1 and don't recall that either.

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4. p_l ◴[] No.45643241[source]
There's a terrorist attack, sorta, in latter book, but Red Mars was admittedly a legitimate military strike, as was destruction of Phobos.
5. mechanicum ◴[] No.45643484[source]
Definitely S01E01, @ ~55-58 minutes. I just watched it.
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6. lproven ◴[] No.45643651{3}[source]
Huh. OK then. I was not taken by it and don't really want to watch it again, or the whole thing, so I will take your word.
7. lproven ◴[] No.45643682[source]
I happily defer. I've reread the trilogy 6 times now and they do all blur together a bit.

You look to be right:

https://www.kimstanleyrobinson.info/content/space-elevator

And I'm not the only one to notice the cross-reference:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kimstanleyrobinson/comments/pv6zh9/...