The Elevator Revolution

Space Elevator

I think a lot of people dont relize how much a space elevator would change Everything.

Nasa is currently getting underway with thier Jupiter Icey Moon Orbitar (J.I.M.O.), It will be Nuclear powered with ion engines, It will be launched in under a decade, and will visit 3 of Jupiters moons. It will be the first craft ever to be able to go into an orbit and have enough power and thrust to leave the orbit and then to go to another one.

I really like the use of Nuclear power in space, but i'm not a big fan of it hear on earth. For several reasons but terrorism and what to do with the spent fuel is at the top of that list.

I would like to see more and more nuclear powered spacecraft, there expensive enough as is, but getting a big enough rocket for a good price is nearly impossible, which makes the cost much higher, and people dont like the idea of a fission reactor lauching over there heads, they think that if it exploded that it would be a radioactive mess. A space elevator could bring it up into space for a much better cost and many times safer.

I think Nasa is reluctant to makes the switch from thier rockets to a space elevator. They and other big companies like Boeing and Lockheed think that it will take away allot of businses and alot more jobs will be lost. But the truth I believe would be quit the opposite.

And we could have space mining companies, Space Tourism Companies, and any thing alse you can think of would amost spring up overnight.

Theres alot of people who would pay alot to visit space, but think about working in space, now that would be cool. The commercialization and tourism of space would make our economy sky rocket up and job unemployment would go down.

People with an untreatable cancer could move to space and it would help them live a longer life, possible giving the medical community enough time to be able to cure it.

I dont see any negative effects this would have on the entire world. Nasa and other organisations could still exist in much the way they do today, just with out unreliable expensive rockets, which could make them send a lot more probes to other worlds, as long as they keep there same annual income, it might go down a little but space knowledge would grow so fast that information on our solar system would grow exponentially.

A Satelites cost would come down alot because the ride to get there is cheaper and eiser.

The materials for the Space Elevator are all here, except for the cable which is made out of carbon nanatubes, they can build them but not yet on a mass scale. But they should be able to do that with in a few years. It will be a few feet wide and paper thin. It will have a climber on it powered by a laser from below, the climbers tracked wheels are on both sides of the cable (ribbon) and as more force is applied to the lifter, the harder the tracked wheels push together, making it not "slip".

They would probably build this thing on a "oil drilling looking" platform, out in the middle of the ocean. They would have a pretty big NO FLY ZONE, and security would be tight, so no Allah lovin' loser could just pull up in a boat and blow it all to hell. All the frieght/people, would either get there via ship or helicopter of plane, yep plane, there thinking of having a runway. It would be built in a area by the eqator and has good weather the majority of the time.

I'm just not sure what they would do about all the space debris allready floating around in space from us. and if some debris hit it, that it would make the cable snap.

As for our military:
We could build all sorts of things, like think of a Aircraft carrier in space. A spacecraft carrier could carry several other smaller spacecraft on it, the carrier could be powered by nuclear propulsion system also. It could use the same engine as the JIMO, since they have a long life expectincy, or some other means could be developed. The USSF (United States space force) could protect space from going bad, by some other nation or some other life form, our could save earth by means of deflecting astroids that are on a collision course with earth. Satelites could be replaced by better ones for a fraction or the price.

Elevator picture Concepts below
1
2 (my favorite)
3
4 (Mars) - After we have mastered it on earth, then we should build one one mars, to help in its exploration, and eventually its colonization.
4 (Base)
5
6 (Future Base) - After it becomes mainstream

A lot of space stuff WILL NOT HAPPEN, unless several of these are built.
But with President bush's new "Space Plan - Moon, Mars, and Beyond", I dont think Nasa will back this with the serious weight that it deserves, I think Bush's plan is very short sighted. Never the less, we will still at least learn alot more about our own moon, and Mars, and other technologies will emerge from this. But still, I will be rooting for this and hope every goes as smooth as glass, but Bush has to start thinking more long term.

Whats more important, Bush's plan - To use vitually all of Nasa budget on one thing, OR Build a Space Elevator and watch as space opens up to us.

They wont create a space elevator....

Just think about it. Yes ther could be an elevator reaching up all the way out of earths orbit and it could be stuck to an asteroid and kept perfectly straight in line. But have you ever thought about maybe terrorism, or if a war breaks out , or something happens, perhaps even another jet taken over by terrorists. Kaboom. Crash landingon the elevator at a height of 6000 meters up, severing the ground from the top.....
What's going to happen? The top is jsut going to come crashing down to earth. And thats a long long way to crash for a long long piece of equipment....

It's just not feasible.... And think of the amount of nanotube (metal), that would have to be used.... Dont oyu think that metal oculd be used for other things? of better use?

DaRAGE - Did you even read what I typed?

First of all there not made off metal.

Also I talked about terrorism. It would be a NO FLY ZONE - except for the one that have the payload for the elevator. and ship security would also be very tight.

The first one we build we could make it an International one, Pick all of the nations that are involved with us on the ISS.

An elevator connecting the Earth to the Moon seems plausible. I read about it in a space magazine. Your pics are deceiving as they are going to be using nano-fibers or something of the sort.

How they will acount for the moon receding from the earth I don't know.

Originally posted by websurfer
An elevator connecting the Earth to the Moon seems plausible. I read about it in a space magazine. Your pics are deceiving as they are going to be using nano-fibers or something of the sort.

How they will acount for the moon receding from the earth I don't know.

No there not, it will be carbon nanotubes. The pics are some of the best Artist Renderings of what it will look like.

Also the moon rotates around the earth, making that statement 100% pure stupidity.

i still dont see how such a long elevator is possible for:

1. Length
2. stength.. even with the nanotubes, it wouldnt be very.. stable, would it?
3. Cost. Why waste the money? Use it on something that would be more useful.. because im pretty sure it would be a long elevator ride.. for only such a SMALL amount of people.

Originally posted by Bongobob
i still dont see how such a long elevator is possible for:

1. Length
2. stength.. even with the nanotubes, it wouldnt be very.. stable, would it?
3. Cost. Why waste the money? Use it on something that would be more useful.. because im pretty sure it would be a long elevator ride.. for only such a SMALL amount of people.

Answers
1. 62,000 miles (100,000 km)
2. Nanotubes are 1/6 the weight of steel, and yet are flexible and hundreds times stronger.
3. 6-10 billion, is there projected build cost. Nasa's yearly budget is 15 billion.
It would take around 18 hours, but look on the bright side, you get 2 in flight meals.
The pic with the people wouln't be so. They would have larger ones so that several dozen could go.

Originally posted by Murcielago
3. 6-10 billion, is there projected build cost. Nasa's yearly budget is 15 billion.

You are joking, you must be thinking 600-1000 billion$.
Remember that the elevator needs to be constructed from the orbit, so you need lift ALL the material there first. Just look at the price of ISS.
Howewer once constructed it will change space exploration. It is the cheapest way how to lift materials from the earth.

[edit on 12-9-2004 by longbow]

I would laugh my ass off if the day after this elevator is built a drunken pilot/alien crashes into the elevator causing it all to come down and in the background you hear "Um Houston we have a problem"

Originally posted by websurfer
An elevator connecting the Earth to the Moon seems plausible. I read about it in a space magazine. Your pics are deceiving as they are going to be using nano-fibers or something of the sort.

How they will acount for the moon receding from the earth I don't know.

Is that even possible? I didn't even think that the same region of earth is constantly facing a same region of the moon.

The moon orbits the earth, making that "hooking them together idea" completly stupid.

And my prices are correct, although I personally would lean toward the 10 billion marker.

Everything would be pre-manufactured on earth, the most expensive part would be the rockets, which would cost around the same as the carbon nanotubes.

Interesting, i thought it was odd at first, but seems interesting nonetheless. Though, it would be one longgggg trip

Deep

If anyone is interested the entire NASA feasibility report can be read here

www.niac.usra.edu...

There are two studies Phase 1 and phase 2 both can be viewed in either HTML or as a PDF file

Originally posted by Murcielago

Also I talked about terrorism. It would be a NO FLY ZONE - except for the one that have the payload for the elevator. and ship security would also be very tight.

d00d.... The pentagon was a NO FLY ZONE. The Twin Towers were a NO FLY ZONE! Oh yeah. And have you even thought about what would happen if there was a war?

OH yeah, and terrorists dont need planes to destroy your elevator....

A laser guided missile would do the trick....

I've been following this research for years now; It will work. As far as the moon orbiting the earth and therefore unable to be teathered to it is ridiculous. It is possible because we are talking about a geo-synchronis orbit. Hundreds of sattelites already occupy this orbit. Communications sattelites anyone? Has no one heard of the Clarke Orbit?....anyway, with regard to the thing falling to earth if the teather snapped......Well, perhaps some of the lower cable would fall to earth,......BUT everything above the sever would RISE into space,....not fall to the earth. This is because the tension of the cable is allways taut, the sattelite on orbit is allways trying to pull away from the earth,....its the cable that keeps it from flying away.....the cable isn't "holding anything up". Have you ever tried to balance a pencil on the top of a string? It doesn't work. but you can HANG a pencil from a string quite easily. Think about it...

What would happen if we built a cocentric ring around the entire planet?
Gravity would pull it equally from all sides, so in theory it would never crash down. Think of a keystone in an arch...now imagine the same principle for a ring. What do you guys think?

Originally posted by Murcielago

Originally posted by websurfer
An elevator connecting the Earth to the Moon seems plausible. I read about it in a space magazine. Your pics are deceiving as they are going to be using nano-fibers or something of the sort.

How they will acount for the moon receding from the earth I don't know.

No there not, it will be carbon nanotubes. The pics are some of the best Artist Renderings of what it will look like.

Also the moon rotates around the earth, making that statement 100% pure stupidity.

I was just thinking that lol

What would happen if we built a concentric ring around the entire planet?

This seems a lot more feasible than a 'skyscraper'-type construction to me... while the construction would be considerably more complex, and therefore difficult, and while it would have to be an almost world-wide collaboration of resources and talent, it would have a much lower chance of simply breaking due to an attack, and crashing to the ground as a result. We could attach numerous 'elevators' to this ring, making it accessible from several places on Earth... this stepping stone to outer space would set our exploration of this solar system ahead by an (pardon the pun) astronomical amount.

Originally posted by DaRAGE
d00d.... The pentagon was a NO FLY ZONE. The Twin Towers were a NO FLY ZONE! Oh yeah. And have you even thought about what would happen if there was a war?

OH yeah, and terrorists dont need planes to destroy your elevator....

A laser guided missile would do the trick....

Pentagon and WTC NO FLY ZONES were only few miles in diameter. Space elevator could be constructed in Pacific and it's no fly zone could be 100 miles in diameter. And there would be absolutely NO air traffic allowed. Except this if elevator is attacked by plane the most of it will stay in space, because the centrifugal force is more powerfull than gravity there. Let's say the elevator has 100 000km, plane flies at 10 km so all you lost is 10 km of nanotubes not whole elevator.

I dont doubt the space elevator idea could work, but I am really wondering how they move a 60+ ribbon, cable whatever into space? I would imagine many many many trips.

Ok so lets say they can get it into space given enough trips, tim etc.... but then how do they plan on actually constructing/assembling it and loweing it down to earth?????