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Space Elevator

(neal.fun)
1773 points kaonwarb | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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jvanderbot ◴[] No.45643427[source]
Very cool. One thing I wish was better shown: space is close, it's just hard to go up. Our liveable breathable atmosphere is razor thin compared to the size of earth.

In most cases, 100km is less than the distance between sizeable metropolitan areas. It's a day long bike ride. Air runs out less than a bus ride across town. A 15k jog/hike would put you in the stratosphere. Those jet aircraft that seem so high are closer than that. Closer than your friends house or the local stadium probably.

Look at a map or globe with that in mind and everything feels so thin!

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messe ◴[] No.45643658[source]
> it's just hard to go up

Going up is the comparatively easy part, it's not exactly rocket science. Going fast enough sideways so you stay up there is the tricky bit.

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Pxtl ◴[] No.45644286[source]
Which is another part of why a space elevator is nifty - by definition it extends out to a distance where you are going fast-enough-sideways.

Now, I have no idea how practical it is to build one (Angela Collier has a video saying it's kinda ridiculous), but it's a cool idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5aHMB4Tje4

Also since rockets have moved away from hydrolox, it would be nice to have a greener launching system.

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1. raducu ◴[] No.45644652[source]
> Angela Collier has a video saying it's kinda ridiculous.

There are other concepts like space fountains, orbital rings and sky hooks that seem more doable -- especially the sky hook seems close to do-able, especially on the Moon.

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2. BobaFloutist ◴[] No.45646839[source]
What if we just made a huge mountain? Space ramp? Is that anything?
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3. estimator7292 ◴[] No.45647158[source]
IIRC there is no material we're aware of that has anywhere near enough compressive strength to build that high, regardless of how wide the base is.

Space elevators only (theoretically) work because the entire structure is in tension. And the only material we currently know of that can handle the tensile forces is carbon fiber.

4. LorenPechtel ◴[] No.45652596[source]
Fountain--while it could be done in a perfect world I do not believe it would be feasible and the whole thing is so vulnerable to disruption. Dragon's Egg got it very wrong, if one of your fountain bits misbehaves it misbehaves very badly. They're moving way above orbital velocity if they hit something that energy is promptly liberated. The Cheela couldn't catch those rings, they had to be moving at high relativistic speeds and would have hit with something akin to antimatter level force.

Orbital rings--only if you have elevators. Remember, the Ringworld is unstable. So is every other planetary ring.

I do not recall numbers on hooks so I will not address them.

The Moon has a whole different set of problems. There is no synchronous orbit, elevators must go above synchronous orbit, so the normal version can't exist. Nor can anything stand up to be yanked around by the Earth.

But there are two cases that avoid the yanking problem: pointed towards and pointed away from Earth. Current cables are good enough for a useful Earth-pointing cable. The free end dips below synchronous orbit, but it's moving very slowly. You do what people think rockets do--go up. It takes a lot less energy to catch the cable than it does to even reach orbit.

How to have such a cable in an environment with geosynchronous satellites is another matter...

There's also another interesting cable situation. Cable on Mars? Iffy--and those two moons would be a major problem. But flip the problem over--put the cables on the moons. The low end dips into the atmosphere at aircraft-type speeds. The cables can toss to each other. The high end can capture/eject to Earth or the asteroid belt.