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Space Elevator

(neal.fun)
1773 points kaonwarb | 4 comments | 20 Oct 25 04:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.615s | source
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isgb ◴[20 Oct 25 12:46 UTC] No.45643283[source]▶
> Space elevators are actually a possible idea being considered by scientists. > The hard part is making a strong enough cable. And finding enough elevator music...

Most engineers would bring up a lot more issues than just finding a strong cable. Also, most attempts with e.g. carbon nanotubes have been abandoned ages ago https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093356-carbon-nanotube....

- We don't have a good ascent mechanism other than rockets - and then we might just use rockets without building an elevator. - We don't have a good (and safe) descent mechanism. - Maintenance? Protection from space debris? Protection from oscillations? Ground-protection if the elevator collapses?

This is dyson-sphere level of fiction. We can do back-of-the-napkin calcualtions on how things would work, but the practicalities make it completely impossible or impractical.

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bombcar ◴[20 Oct 25 13:09 UTC] No.45643478[source]▶
All we have to do is make the global religion require bringing a rock to a specific location; after long enough we’ll have a mountain so high it extends out of the atmosphere!
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1. kubanczyk ◴[20 Oct 25 13:13 UTC] No.45643511[source]▶
This presents a considerable risk of splitting English into several languages, none of them intelligible with the others.
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2. SSLy ◴[20 Oct 25 13:25 UTC] No.45643632[source]▶
have you ever been to Newcastle?
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3. notahacker ◴[20 Oct 25 15:56 UTC] No.45645362[source]▶
The deity in question would also have to smite purveyors of LLM translation. This might of course not be considered a drawback...
4. ben_w ◴[20 Oct 25 16:25 UTC] No.45645720[source]▶
Aye man, wey aye, went doon there worra bairn, didn’t ah? Cannae remember much like, was only a wee nipper at the time, knaa what ah mean? Me mam an’ da took us doon the Toon when ah was nowt but a little’un, like. Divvent really remember owt aboot it proper, but aye, been the once when ah was just a littl’ bairn, me. Proper yonks ago that was, pet!

(Translation: yes, once as a kid).