New Mars Forums
You are not logged in.
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
Announcement
#26 2005-10-12 15:40:56
- noosfractal
- Member
- From: Biosphere 1
- Registered: 2005-10-04
- Posts: 824
- Website
Re: cost of space elevator
So, its mean that the space elevator isn't geostationnary, such as the SE earth station should be mobile
and abble to fly over mountains
I think you're joking, but just in case - no, it means that geostationary orbit for point masses is different from geostationary orbit for 35000km long cables. The strength of gravity varies over the length of the orbiting cable - this is something weird and new that you have to take into account.
A nuclear reactor ? That isn't simple nuke powered batteries.
Do you know how heavy is a "nuclear reactor" ? Is it included in the costs prevision ?
If it is necessary, I can't imagine it would be a show stopper. Maybe it could be something along these lines ...
Fan of [url=http://www.red-oasis.com/]Red Oasis[/url]
Offline
#27 2005-10-12 16:27:37
Re: cost of space elevator
LO
So, its mean that the space elevator isn't geostationnary, such as the SE earth station should be mobile
I think you're joking, but just in case - no, it means that geostationary orbit for point masses is different from geostationary orbit for 35000km long cables. The strength of gravity varies over the length of the orbiting cable - this is something weird and new that you have to take into account.
Kepler's orbital laws are neither weird nor quite new.
That's the reason why I take all illustrations and videos showing straight lined Space Elevator ribbons as a fake, even with strong tension, they should be spiral line shaped. Even on NASA page about SE, illustrations are wrong. That's a reason why I have great doubts on Space Elevator promotors being else than people trying to make money on fake studies on this concept.
Mass of SE payloads should be negligible compared with the SE mass, not to destabilise it, then if SE should be massive, its cost will blow up over all previsions.
A magnficient concept very poorly defended up to now, IMHO...
Offline
#28 2005-10-13 21:07:53
- noosfractal
- Member
- From: Biosphere 1
- Registered: 2005-10-04
- Posts: 824
- Website
Re: cost of space elevator
A magnficient concept very poorly defended up to now, IMHO...
There is certainly lots of opportunity for invention before launch day 
.
Fan of [url=http://www.red-oasis.com/]Red Oasis[/url]
Offline
#29 2005-10-21 07:56:02
- SpaceNut
- Administrator
- From: New Hampshire
- Registered: 2004-07-22
- Posts: 29,431
Re: cost of space elevator
Stronger Than Steel, Harder Than Diamonds
Working with a material 10 times lighter than steel - but 250 times stronger - would be a dream come true for any engineer. If this material also had amazing properties that made it highly conductive of heat and electricity, it would start to sound like something out of a science fiction novel.
You guessed it, we are talking about carbon 60 or what makes a nanotube possible.
Fullerenes are one of only four types of naturally occurring forms of carbon (the other three being diamond, graphite and ceraphite). They are molecules composed entirely of carbon, taking the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube. Spherical fullerenes are sometimes called buckyballs, while cylindrical fullerenes are called buckytubes or nanotubes.
We have talked a little bit about the draw backs of an elevator going though the atmosphere having degradation issues but her are som others.
Solvents that dissolve fullerenes are listed below in order of high solubility. The value in parentheses is the approximate saturated concentration.
1,2,4-trichlorobenzene (20mg/ml)
carbon disulfide (12mg/ml)
toluene (3.2mg/ml)
benzene (1.8mg/ml)
chloroform (0.5mg/ml)
carbon tetrachloride (0.4mg/ml)
cyclohexane (0.054mg/ml)
n-hexane (0.046mg/ml)
THF (0.037mg/ml)
acetonitrile (0.02mg/ml)
methanol (0.0009mg/ml)
Offline
#30 2005-10-30 03:54:12
Re: cost of space elevator
LO
Thanks SpaceNut.
In the links you set,
If this material also had amazing properties that made it highly conductive of heat and electricity, it would start to sound like something out of a science fiction novel.
This turns the space elevator laser beam power supply to a day dreamer fantasm.
Offline