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The Great Space Elevator - Is it possible?

Discussion in 'Alley of Dangerous Angles' started by Blades of Vanatar, Aug 18, 2009.

  1. Splunge

    Splunge Bhaal’s financial advisor Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    You've obviously never tried to eat my mother-in-law's macaroni and cheese...
     
  2. Aldeth the Foppish Idiot

    Aldeth the Foppish Idiot Armed with My Mallet O' Thinking Veteran

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    Patent it!
     
  3. Splunge

    Splunge Bhaal’s financial advisor Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    I would, but I believe her recipe includes the casting of some spells on it - maybe Stoneskin or Absolute Immunity; I'm not too sure.
     
  4. T2Bruno

    T2Bruno The only source of knowledge is experience Distinguished Member ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    I swear my ex's spagetti was made using the Evard's Black Tentacles spell.
     
  5. dmc

    dmc Speak softly and carry a big briefcase Staff Member Distinguished Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!)

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    OK - while we all appreciate a joke now and again in these threads, may I remind you that this thread is currently in the Alleys, not Whatnots. Keep it up and we'll move it to the joke bin.
     
  6. T2Bruno

    T2Bruno The only source of knowledge is experience Distinguished Member ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    I thought the "Great Space Elevator" was a joke. I really loved the quote in the article:

    The idea is at least a century old - and was most famously popularized by science-fiction guru Arthur C. Clarke, who once said the space elevator would succeed "50 years after everyone has stopped laughing."

    So I guess we're looking at 2059 for the earliest date....
     
  7. coineineagh

    coineineagh I wish for a horde to overrun my enemies Resourceful Adored Veteran

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    [​IMG] So stop laughing already!:D
     
  8. Ziad

    Ziad I speak in rebuses Veteran

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    Only if you've stopped laughing... personally I haven't. :shake:

    NOG,building the elevator itself is neither cheap nor practical (never mind that it's not even feasible with current technology, for reasons I stated above). Granted having it on there will make it cheaper to transport things into space, but we're talking on the very very (VERY) long-term here, which again brings me to the question: why would we need to transport things into space? Colonise the Moon? It's simply not going to happen. The "few technical problems" that you mention are so huge and insurmountable that no one even thinks about the Moon anymore, and that's the reason everyone started dreaming about terraforming Mars: it may be a couple hundred years before we have the technology to colonise Mars, but at least it's possible (though incredibly highly improbable). As far travelling to other planets (especially past Mars), the problem was never having a launch platform that's in space (another thing that won't happen in my grandchildren's lifetime) but the time it takes. Cassini-Huygens took seven years to get to Saturn. That is why space travel is impractical, not the lack of a space elevator.

    Let's face it, it's a great concept but it's just too expensive, too impractical and there is no real benefit to it. Getting stuff into space is not a benefit unless we have something do with it when it gets up there, and until now we have nothing to work with. Space is still something we're very, very far away from being able to colonise.
     
  9. Blackthorne TA

    Blackthorne TA Master in his Own Mind Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    There would be a benefit to it, though would the benefit be worth the cost? Current orbital launch costs are on the order of $3000 to $12000 per pound. With large satellites weighing a few tons, that's a hefty chunk of change.
     
  10. Deathmage

    Deathmage Arrr! Veteran

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    Kind of unrelated, but: the moon is like a new undiscovered land - what will happen when humans manage to jump on it? Will it be like the Age of Discovery all over again with powerful countries setting up colonies on it? Will we throw our criminals there? Or will we persecute the native moon bunnies until eventually we can coexist in peace?

    So back on the space elevator - I wonder who will be the first person to stick bubblegum on the number plates?

    Also, of course it's worth it. It halves your construction time for spaceships pieces, meaning you can get that Alpha Centauri victory that much faster! :p
     
  11. Ziad

    Ziad I speak in rebuses Veteran

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    True, but in order to have proper cost/benefit analysis we'd have to think about not only the initial cost of building the elevator (and the space platform) but also maintenance, which is probably going to be much more than building it anyway. If maintaining the elevator will cost yearly as much as what's spent for orbital launches, then it's just not worth the price.
     
  12. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    I've seen a documentary a couple of weeks ago about the moon having large deposits of Helium-3 that the future fusion power plants could get insane amounts of energy from; something in the ballpark of a year's powering of a big city from a few pounds of the stuff with no side effects like radiation. It's theoretical at this point, but all the small-scale tests that have been conducted seem to suggest that it really is as good as it sounds.

    Of course, we could be 50 or more years away from being able to build such fusion power plants, but even so, a crazy project like this just might be worth building a bridge to the moon for.

    Though my guess would be that just building a city on the moon and doing the ore processing there and shipping the end product home via cargo ships would still be a) several times cheaper and b) realistic and possible to do today, as opposed to being theoretically possible at some point in the future.
     
  13. Shoshino

    Shoshino Irritant Veteran

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    so lets say we could get the elevator into orbit, but to the moon? the Earth's rotation and the Moon's orbit would have to be perfectly aligned at all times. Thats without solar winds.
     
  14. NOG (No Other Gods)

    NOG (No Other Gods) Going to church doesn't make you a Christian

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    True, but extrapolation from the micro-scale tests shows very promising results. Of course, that has to be confirmed in the real-world (which means we need to grow carbon nano-tubes at more than 6 inches), but carbon nano-tubes are looking quite promising.

    Actually, contruction probably wouldn't be too much more expensive than the ISS, which we're already doing.


    Actually, you're wrong there. The Moon is looking quite feasible at the moment, and many of the problems have been solved. We know how to extract O2 from the regolith (though making it a simple device hasn't happened yet), we know where there's water near the surface, with a space elevator we could ship the food there, and the 'light' side is even protected from meteorites!

    Actually, terraforming Mars is pretty much out. It doesn't have the atmosphere any more, and it lacks a geo-magnetic field, meaning any atmosphere we added would be stripped off and the surface is constantly exposed to lethal radiation. Colonization isn't impossible, but you're talking about colonizing it as-is.

    Even getting to Mars would take about 9 months. The problem is that we can't practically build a ship large enough to really recycle air and food and lift it into space. If we could build it in space, we could build something the size of an air-craft carrier or larger, and man it with all of 5 people. That's a lot of space for equipment.

    As for something to do with it all once it gets up there, how about mining of rare minerals? How about building a radio telescope on the dark side of the Moon (only place in the solar system that never sees radiation from Earth)? The benefits are real. It's just a matter of whether we want to put the resources in at the get-go to achieve them (and whether we can develop the technology for it).

    As to maintenance, it depends on too many unknown factors. It may well be very cheap, but it also may be very expensive.

    Lol, no no no. No one's talking about building a space elevator to the Moon. We're talking about building a space elevator to an orbital construction yard that could build ships for the Moon and launch them at a fraction the cost of doing it all now (and no weather delays).
     
  15. Ziad

    Ziad I speak in rebuses Veteran

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    Now this is interesting. I didn't know they'd actually found water (it was only a likelihood last time I checked) and you're right, this particular point changes everything. I'm a bit less convinced with the problem of oxygen: we don't know how to extract it from regolith, NASA just has some concepts that they're testing (as of July). Considering how much of the element is there it should be relatively easy to to get good yields though.
     
  16. NOG (No Other Gods)

    NOG (No Other Gods) Going to church doesn't make you a Christian

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    Well, I may have more recent results (or possibly biassed ones) as a professor I know at my university was one of the guys working on the O2 problem. He said they know how to do it, it's just a matter of going up there and doing it. Of course, it could have just been confidence in his own work (not unheard of).
     
  17. joacqin

    joacqin Confused Jerk Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    That is what I have read and heard as well, they know they could build one of these things they just dont have the money or a reason.
     
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