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Here are few links I've come across about space elevators. It doesn't see that far away from reading these articles:
Thanks Shaun for explaining what I meant better than i could have. To reach that $10 per pound cost we have been talking about Bill, you'd need a counterweight to 'pull' your cargo up. Do we need it, not exactly, but it would save a lot of energy further reducing costs.
Often the reason for some of our more fanciful ideas not becoming a reality is that there simply isn't the market. When we are talking about a cost reduction in the order of 100 times cheaper, I don't think it's fair to say that there would be no market. Many universities and institutions would love to perform experiments in space, but when they find out how much it costs, they are scared away.
Perhaps most interesting is the velocity boost outgoing spacecraft could get from the far end of the cable. Not only could our imaginary space elevator make affordable shipments to LEO, but it could also speed existing technology to it's destination faster using a sling-shot effect.
And wouldn't it be nice to see the international community get behind a worthy project such as this? That 10 billion figure could be split nicely amongst the 5 leading space agencies.
Bill why would we not want to bring equal or greater loads down from the asteroid than what we are raising? If a mining operation were established on the asteroid we should be able to lift 5 tons by lowering 10 shouldn't we? Our cable would have tracks on both sides of it.
I see your points about initial funding and returns. What I see happening though is someone spends 1 billion to move the asteroid using ion-drive probably. Once the asteroid is in orbit, they start selling shares of stock in their company and the rest of the money is raised. If planned out well enough, and assuming nanotech is up to the task in 10 years, it shouldn't be that expensive. Less money can be spent by taking more time. Take years to locate and gently nudge an asteroid and you'll find you don't need powerful rockets.
Couldn't our elevator cable be hollow and lower peices of it to a non-nano-sized machine working at the end of the cable to lock the links into place? If the automated machine at the end fails or dies for some reason, let it fall and walk another down?
I do think we actually need to assemble the elevator atom-by-atom. And I thought we did have a material strong enough to support the weight, maybe I misread.
Ian how did you know I'm balding? :angry:
I have seen that damn memo several times damnit! Bring me something NEW!! (thanks)
Thanks Bill for the links and info. I know that payloads this size are not going to get people to Mars, but they do provide legitamacy to aspiring space-interest groups.
Clark, I know that complaining about our military doesn't get us any closer to Mars either, but I need to vent from time to time or I will literally explode. And don't worry buddy, I don't take offence to what any of you small minded drivel spouting pinheads have to say. Do as I say, not as I do damnit!
Here's a thought......bring back the indentured servant! Expanding on what Ian said, ordinary slobs with good work histories and a pedestrian understanding of Mars could travel there to do the work for the wealthy. Food has to be grown, waste has to be processed, air quality has to be monitered, etc. Your indentured servants sign waivers to release the company sending them of responcibility should an accident happen. Like Ian said, pay them a million a year till they work off their 20 year or so debt. In that amount of time you can creat a lot. America has over 100 billionaires and god knows how many millionaires. If even 1 percent of those people would like to live on Mars in luxury for the price of 50 million then you have dozens of customers.
Pools, gyms, internet access, the works! A resort for the wealthy. You could actually sell land on Mars to these millionaires and rent out the hired hands to creating projects paid for by people on Earth, be it industrial or scientific. Yep, I'm more sure than ever that colonization is the way to go.
Maybe my hopes a bit lofty, but I really think this just might be the answer to most of our progress problems. We say a lot here that no one is going to spend serious money on space till someone proves theres money to be made. Well a space elevator would make a lot of money. More importantly, it is a task that could be achieved by a large company or collection of smaller companies.
Imagine, if you will, this scenario. We use ion drive or sail technology to alter an asteroid's orbit till it orbits the Earth. Then we send up a small package to create atomic sized conveyor belts that move the carbon from the asteroid down the tether. Construction of the cable has begun. Meanwhile, construction of a space base, not station, takes place. This base has the advantage of being sheilded from the sun and its harmful solar activity by the body of the asteroid itself. It could even be an inflatable structure. The asteroid also sheilds the base from most, if not all, space debris in orbit. Now you have the cheapest means to transport material from the surface as well as a destination for tourists! An investors returns would start immediately.
At some point nations and the private sector is going to tire of paying so much to get materials to orbit. I think we will see at least an attempt at a space elevator like I have described in the next 15 years. Then getting to Mars becomes much more realistic. Infastructure, ladies and gentlemen, it's not just a fancy word, it's a requirement.
And another thing....I have yet to see a serious plan anywhere that takes us from where we are now, to a starting colony capable of growing. Everyone seems to be working on just a part of the problem, not to slight anyone's effort.
Bill- How small a payload are we talking for a converted russian missle? The $500 per pound price.
Well I can tell ya that snapping one-liners aren't going to get us anywhere closer to Mars either. If we try something and fail so what, at least we tried.
Anyone been keeping up with space elevator developments or work on a related subject?
Great points Bill. To make real progress in developing the infastructure needed for LEO and beyond we need to think in real per pound costs. I know most people here consider a space elevator a pipe-dream, but the technology is maturing incredibly fast. Anyone read the article about the atomic scale conveyor-belt that has recently been developed.
We have material stronger enough to build it out of.
We now have a means to quickly transport mulltiple atoms quickly.
We DON"T have skilled practice with deploying a tether.
There are many different estimates but the price range seems to be $10-100 per pound depending on efficency. The Planetary Society is launching a test solar sail soon. I figure, how hard can it be to pick out an asteroid of appropriate composition, hopeful with no spin, and send a sail to it robotically to alter its orbit enough to enter orbit rather than flyby. BAM! You got the resources in orbit to set your nano-friends to work. Ten years to build a cable, five years to move an asteroid. Think of the profit margin charging $500 per pound.
I for one, am not trying to convince anyone that isn't already a Mars enthusiast. Yes, 99% of people think a mission to Mars is stupid. So what. It's not as if NASA is capable of going to Mars in their current state anyway, so what's the point of trying to convince the public to support budget increases. More money thrown at NASA is more money wasted.
The only way to change public opinion enough to significantly support a series of Mars missions is to increase the number of educated people in this country. And for that to happen, we are talking about an effort extending across generations.
I am not willing to wait that long so I am going to concentrate on making myself a billionaire so that I can fund a Mars-Direct prospect or something similar. There really should just be a Mars fund shouldn't there? Perhaps I will create a website to take donations over 10 years and see if I can't get 15 billion that way. :bars2:
Clark- What are you doing in a forum called manned missions to mars if you don't have anything to add but the same small minded drivel that the majority of the undereducated american population shares?
Bill and Rob- With all due respect, this topic was started by myself and I choose to continue talking about military spending because I find it very relavent.
Ah yes, but the private sector just might. Say Hilton put up the money to get a small 3 person crew to Mars. Assuming no freak accidents, the crew could go about making the base bigger and better. With a nuclear powered return vehicle, the crew could even make fuel on Mars and send the empty vehicle back to LEO where it could meet with a simple Soyuz launch. A colozining effort could begin with a few billion easily if the chance of success is reduced to 75 percent, which I think is most acceptable considering the alternative is to not go at all.
Euler- Isn't the major difference that as of late, the Soyuz hasn't had tragedies and the shuttle has? Their space program didn't come to a grinding hault because of their accidents either. They dusted themselves off and said, 'what went wrong' and went about fixing it. So they are currently enjoying a manned space flight program and we are not. And this totally ignores how much more expensive the shuttle is vs Soyuz. Which is better? I think the answer is pretty clear.
About Kerry's stance:
I believe that he is only taking this postion because Bush is taking the other. As soon as Bush made his speech, many Democrats started poking fun at him and it. This doesn't mean they aren't pro-space just that its an election year.
Gore was very pro-space. I often wonder what speech he would have given had he won the race, oh wait he did, lol.
Dook- the military provides no freedom for me, zilch, zip, nada. If anything, it costs me freedom. As I have stated, I have had to defend myself from four seperate attacks because people can be rather fanatical when I question the benefits of spending trillions of dollars in wars that don't defend our country.
As you mention, correctly, we had to show the Arab world how to draw oil from the ground. This money has benefited a select few. Kuiwatt is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet most of its people live in poverty. The common Arab person would naturally resent us for showing intrest in their oil before the people. Yes, since then we have tried to aid these people in general but the humanitarian effort is small by comparison and comes much later than our intrest in their oil.
We are far from perfect or the ideal form of government. Our government ordered the extermination of Native Americans. Soilders shot them from passing trains as target practice. We gave disease ridden blankets to them intentionally to kill them off. Later we allowed people to be bought and sold as property. During WW2 we relocated thousands of Japanesse-Americans to concentration camps because of their skin color and appearance. Women have had the right to vote less than 100 years and as late as 1980, women in NYC couldn't file rape charges against their husband. Recently, the current administration proposed a constitutional amendment to keep homosexuals from getting married.
Before you continue singing the praises of this great freedom that everyone supposedly has, look and see who is free and who isn't. As white males we enjoy much more freedom than most in this country.
And for the record, I never said I support Saddam. I just can't justify this country spending so much on such a small threat. We still haven't found, and likely never will, find all those weapons that our leaders led us to believe existed. And so far we've lost over 750 of our soilders, not to mention our allies losses. We are getting pretty close to the number of lost lives from 9-11. How many of our bright young minds is it worth to get our revenge? And all this time Bin Laden is out there somewhere plotting another attack while we play house in Iraq.
Ahhh, okay ya got me, bad example. I guess he would be a foreign conqueror. And bravo, I was going to bring up Iran. Okay, question is, would Saddam support the SEI, if he were in power.....poll time.
:bars2:
Welcome Acidrain!
I agree that when we go to Mars it should be a colonizing effort. We've recently been citing the advantages of expansion vs exploration. Most of us agree that expansion is a more unifing effort than exploration. Why don't you flesh out your ideas a little more. i'd be intrested to hear what you have to add to the discussion.
Wow, so much anger in this one. What are you so angry about? You say you love freedom yet you don't love my freedom because I don't agree with you. This is exactly what I am talking about here. I make a perfectly valid statement and you try and go put words in my mouth. You keep saying that I hate people when I hate no one. If I hated someone, I would ruin their life or kill them, I don't use the word hate lightly like some.
I never laughed at the victims of the WTC. What I said is to terrorists, the WTC is a symbol of greed. It is a symbol of all that is corrupt and wrong with this country.
I suppose you think I hate America too? If I hated America, why would i be trying to draw attention to matters that i think need some work?
Now let's both take a deep breath and try to be more mature about this.
Now the most disturbing thing you have said, to me at least, is that dropping two nuclear weapons on civilians saved lives. I can't fathom how you reached this conclusion and I would like you to go into further detail.
Secondly, I disagree that the arab world has never had power. There was Alexander the Great who ruled, what was at the time, the whole world. The middle east has been home to many great and glorious empires.
Third, Israel isn't a democracy in the same vein that we are a democracy. And as far as humanitarian rights go, they have a lot of unfinished buisness.
Now to answer some of your questions. I believe, and so do many republicans, that going ahead with this war without UN santion sends a strong message to our would-be enemys. I believe that this administration is hoping that OPEC will think twice before raising the price of oil on us.
Oops, that was the only question. I hadn't read all the way through your responce and didn't realize the rest is personal attacks.
Well for starters, I make $10.50 an hour at my job, not minimum wage. I know it isn't much and you probably make more but I work hard for it. I also have an internet buisness, struggling to make profit, to be honest but I'm learning and getting better at it.
I wish you would realize that terrorists don't magically pop out of thin air. These people are made by situations similar to this prisoner abuse scandel. By the way, have you been keeping up with that? Seems some of our boys are acting more like Nazi than liberators. Now I know that it's probably no more than a dozen or so abusive soilders, but the point is things like this make people really mad at us. Mad enough to kill and to be killed.
And WW2 was a just war in my opinion. Hitler was an evil man that was conquering his neighbors. However, Saddam was no Hitler in the respect that he was a threat to the world. The one country he invaded used to be part of Iraq until the UN redrew the boundaries and made Kuiwatt. The point is that even subconciously supporters of our military and it's spending habits use WW2 as justification because it was the last just war in many eyes. You never hear people sing the praises of Korea or heaven forbid Vietnam.
I suggest we try and keep things civil on this forum. We have gone way off subject here. I appologize for some of the off color remarks I made. I respect your opinions even though we disagree and hope you will respect mine.
You could build a base underground or you could build it in the appropriate canyon to protect the colony from radiation.
And I don't hate your idea lol. I was being totally serious. I don't know what requirements your teacher put before you. I was assuming that you wanted the fastest reproduction rate possible for your colony. And as far as I know, though i'm not an expert, you can store sperm for years frozen. I seem to recall a story where a woman was fighting for custody of her child that she fathered with sperm from her dead husband.
Well with a mouth like that, its a shame you weren't in NYC on that fateful day lol. Civilian leadership starts wars, not the pentagon, hmmm, I thought Bush was spending over 200 million this year to stay in power, where did that money come from?
You probably also buy the propaganda about terrorist hating us because we are free. They hate us because we can't stay out of their business. Just because we conquered some Indains and have gotten fat using resources that they saved for generations doesn't give us the right to tell others what they can and can't do. Why can we have a nuclear arsenal and Iran can't? POP QUIZ: what is the only country to have dropped not one but two nuclear weapons on another country.
It makes sense to spend much more than 150 billion on a war to secure more oil because you see my small minded friend, they aren't spending their money. They are spending OUR money and our children's money.
And for your information I do have a desk job and an education. Do some people make more than me, well of coarse. I bet you aren't the richest man in the world yourself, and you are far from the smartest person I've meet. You are probably somewhere between 25-35 and had to get Uncle Sams money to pay for your education, so maybe you feel you owe Uncle Sam a reach around?
The only one not making sense is you. How is it infinitly harder to do today what we did in the 60's and early 70's? have our astronauts needs changed? No, only the mission. The still need air, water and food like they always have. Now they just need more of it. And as Dr Zubrin has stated, we need not take it all with us. Mars can provide the air and water all we need to bring is food. So the spacecraft will be a bit bigger, so what? To hear you talk, its an impossible task to go to Mars.
The X-prize is not nonsense. It is doing exactly what it set out to do, which is to open minds like yours. The X-prize is showing that reuseable spacecraft can and will be built. It is also going to create a broader market for space tourism. It is getting the private sector involved so we won't have to depend on failures like NASA.
And if the price we have to pay for safety means that we never leave LEO, then safety simply isn't worth the price. Haven't you been listening to anyone? There are a lot of people like myself and Dook and calmguy that would gladly take the risks involved and save billions. Risk is a part of space development, people are going to die, but it's a price that has to be paid. The alternative is to circle the Earth and go nowhere.
And again, you miss the bigger issue. Russia launches their cosmonauts with fewer casulties than we do. They take fewer safety precautions than we do. How is this possible? Because their Soyuz is a dependable, affordable workhorse. Why is it affordable? because it's not made by Boeing or Lockheed and doesn't come with all those fancy safty precautions that you seem to think are so important we can't leave Earth without them.
Screw NASA. The private sector doesn't have to spend all those extra millions on US made rockets. I'm sure they will soon be scrapping up enough cash to use Russia's fine resources and bypass this rotten pile of dung we call our space program.
BTW, how can you mock the X-prize? Its promise of 10 million has accomplished so much already. Tell me what 15 billion in reward money could accomplish.
Mad Grad Student- To further increase the rate of population growth, assuming you have the means to support unlimited growth, maybe the crew should be all women?
The advantage of an all woman crew are clear. Males are not needed at all because all they supply is sperm, where the woman is needed in the absence of an artificial womb. Send women only and bring some frooze sperm to get you through the first 10 years or so that young males won't be producing sperm.
This also has the advantage of avoiding lover-spats over who gets the few available males. Carry a larger supply of froozen sperm and 10 years or so after the colonists begin you can continue making females only.
rstones8- Just because Bush made one speech doesn't mean he does either...