The economics of space elevators - Are they financially feasible?

tim_perdue · 2003-04-23 14:18:51

My first demo application of choice for CNT would be to build a suspension bridge across the straits of Gibraltar. Steel is not strong enough to hold up the 19+ mile suspension bridge, but CNT would be.

soph · 2003-04-23 16:31:21

I haven't seen anything that shows that CNT can be built in sheets, that is, you may have wires of CNT, but could you ever have blocks or walls of it? Thick cables could be made by stringing many CNT strands together, but how could a solid layer be made?

Power reactors could benefit from high-conducting, extremely small, and very strong CNT cables. Does CNT have any radiation absorption properties?

tim_perdue · 2003-04-23 18:58:41

I haven't seen anything that shows that CNT can be built in sheets, that is, you may have wires of CNT, but could you ever have blocks or walls of it? Thick cables could be made by stringing many CNT strands together, but how could a solid layer be made?
Power reactors could benefit from high-conducting, extremely small, and very strong CNT cables. Does CNT have any radiation absorption properties?

As far as sheets, it's no different than any other composite. Fiberglass is millions of fibers oriented in an expoxy. Graphite composites, again fibers in an expoxy.

Radiation shielding I doubt, but there is another nanotech breakthrough on this front: http://www.radshield.com/

soph · 2003-04-23 19:11:23

As far as sheets, it's no different than any other composite. Fiberglass is millions of fibers oriented in an expoxy. Graphite composites, again fibers in an expoxy.

I should've thought of that, but I didn't know that CNT's properties (it's irregularities in clumping and adhesion) lent themselves to epoxy treatment.

flashgordon · 2003-04-24 09:12:05

Why would the U.S. government fund or allow the building of space elevators? Because the likes of China, Canada, and who knows who else are not going to stand for the U.S. monopoly idea of space.

tim_perdue · 2003-04-24 09:50:24

Why would the U.S. government fund or allow the building of space elevators?

So they can control it. What if the Chinese/Russians/whatever built one first? Then they'd own space. You get the idea.

Because the likes of China, Canada, and who knows who else are not going to stand for the U.S. monopoly idea of space.

"Canada... stand for". That's silly.

Josh Cryer · 2003-04-24 10:15:22

Fortunately the equator is, well, big, so you could have several elevators. The key isn't controlling elevators (anyone could potentially find a place to put an elevator), the key is controlling the technology to create elevators. CNTs. If that technology gets out, anyone with the capital could build an elevator. The design by Highlift Systems is extremely practical, so, and I'm not kidding here, X-Prize type guys could launch the thing if they had the CNTs.

All of this crap about it not being practical because it would mean ?abundant space access? aren't really thoughtful, in my humble opinion. It's just the chicken in the egg scenario all over again, and I'm not even going to go there, because we've been there a billion times before.

clark · 2003-04-24 10:21:21

All of this crap about it not being practical because it would mean ?abundant space access? aren't really thoughtful, in my humble opinion.

How so?

Do you disagree that a working elevator would undermine the launch industries ability to exsist? With a working elevator, why would anyone use anything other than that to access space?

Aside from national security concerns for specific devices among various countries, there is no reason not to use this system.

soph · 2003-04-24 11:27:44

clark, I think he's advocating the SE.

clark · 2003-04-24 11:39:48

I know Soph.

There are reasons *against* the space elevator. There are trade offs, as with anything, especially with technology.

As an example: durg resistant disease.

Our growing reliance on antibiotics has ended up creating ever more powerful bacteria. The end result is a greater reliance on antibiotics to combat the ever more powerful bacteria.

The Space elevator may be a bad thing becuase it lowers the cost of access to space. his seems counter-intutitive, but you need to think it through.

A space elevator will out compete any other form of access to space in terms of cost (if we accept the numbers). This will have the net effect of reducing the different types of access to space- people will not invest in rocket technology if it can't beat the cost of the elevator (for getting things to space). Exsisiting rocket companies will find all of their business gobbled up by the elevator.

This means that access to space becomes consolidated in one place, or a few places, and with one SINGLE technology.

After 10 years of operation, the rocket industry will be dead. No further advancement will be neccessary really. In 20 years, the science and production of rockets will be gone- no one will be left who remembers how to build them- the factories will be gone. Case in point: The Shuttle.

Now, if these things came down, after 20 years, what do you think would happen to the world? (aside from the immediate damage of the elevator coming down)

flashgordon · 2003-04-24 12:12:33

tim purdue "So they can control it. What if the Chinese/Russians/whatever built one first? Then they'd own space. You get the idea."

Thanks for quoting me jerk off.

Bill White · 2003-04-24 12:14:24

Another possible concern is whether the "mere possibility" of space elevators deters investment in other technologies.

Here is the HighLift quote on kilometer long CNT :

We have also heard of some progress that indicates CNT composites are moving along more quickly than we had hoped. Quantitative news will be a few months in coming but I just thought I would wet everyone's appetite. Now, two independent groups have reported kilometer-length CNT composite fibers with good interfacial adhesion in different matrices.

. . . composite fibers with good interfacial adhesion. . .

Can this also mean some preliminary research suggests millimeter length CNT fibers "play well with other children" when fashioned into composite fibers including Kevlar, Spectra, polyester and the like? An important step to be sure but hardly a revolutionary breakthrough.

This can be important because of the need to splice CNT to other materials in order to do useful things. Can you "tie knots" with CNT? How is CNT anchored to the GEO counterweight or the base station on Earth?

Why invest in any other low cost launch system when HighLift is 15 years from deployment? But if HighLift remains "15 years from deployment" for the next 50 years "humans in space" is parked in neutral.

tim_perdue · 2003-04-24 12:25:10

Do you disagree that a working elevator would undermine the launch industries ability to exsist? With a working elevator, why would anyone use anything other than that to access space?

Exactly. Let's think - to get the initial ribbon up into space, you've got to launch on a rocket. Now what rocket company is going to do that? They'll be putting themselves out of business.

What's more, this thing has to be assembled in LEO from several launches and then floated up to GEO. Is NASA going to support that assembly effort? Hard to say for sure, as it will make them obsolete, and as Clark says there are national security questions.

This is the "conspiracy theory" view, which is often more right than we ever care to admit.

The other view is, if this thing is inevitable - ie the Chinese "threaten" to build one, then the government will be all over this thing so they can "compete" and/or "control" our elevator.

The best situation would be if Bill Gates went down to Ecuador and offered $6 bln to do this thing. He wouldn't have to actually lay down a dollar - the US Gov't would come in and take over.

The gov't could then "control" what is going up there - eg nothing that can threaten our GPS or Spy satellites. They can also make the cost/pound so cheap that no one else could compete. I mean no other business could be made setting this up. Other governments could set up competing elevators, but again they would want to control what's going up there.

Control. All you have to do is look at the GPS constellation. We give that away for FREE so we can control it in times of war. The Euros are "threatening" to put up a GPS competitor and the pentagon is none too happy.

clark · 2003-04-24 13:28:23

. Let's think - to get the initial ribbon up into space, you've got to launch on a rocket. Now what rocket company is going to do that? They'll be putting themselves out of business.

I'm less inclined to believe that nobody will want their business. Besides, Highlift is only considering the Shuttle as the main delivery vehicle. I think most people will approach it as "You're crazy, but i'll take your money."

Who said this: "Capitalists will sell us the rope to hang them with."

. Is NASA going to support that assembly effort? Hard to say for sure, as it will make them obsolete, and as Clark says there are national security questions.

I had the impression that most of the assembly would take place automatically, but I could be wrong.

NASA will not be made obsolete by this if anything, it allows them to get out of the LEO business. As much as people bitch, NASA is about science. A space elevator dosen't change their mandate.

As for national security conerns, those are real, but there are steps that can be taken to mitigate isses. Highlift states that military protection of the elevator is a given- they assume as much. Now, which ever military (prob the US) is in charge of security, they will probably want a say in who can and cannot go up the elevator. No direct flights to Cuba from the US comes to mind as an example. Secondly, Highlift has a direct interest in making sure 'dangerous' people or things don't go up their elevator- otherwise they will be taken over (security issues) or the bad people/things that go up, will threaten Highlifts *other* customers. If anything, the people who own the space elevator are going to want a nice, *peaceful* destination in space to greet their customers.

This is the "conspiracy theory" view, which is often more right than we ever care to admit.

Like the earth being flat or us not landing on the moon?

tim_perdue · 2003-04-24 13:48:19

Like the earth being flat or us not landing on the moon?

Well, more like businesses are always going to protect their profits at all costs.

Or... some people think the air force probably has a space plane, but they aren't sharing it for nat'l security reasons:

http://www.geocities.com/yoda448/area51/pdwe.html

Any search on "Doughnut on a rope contrail" or Pulse Detonation Wave Engine brings up quite a bit of Area-51 type conspiracy material.

Josh Cryer · 2003-04-24 14:04:57

Do you disagree that a working elevator would undermine the launch industries ability to exsist?

Not at all, I wasn't disagreeing with that assessment, at all. But you missed the point. First, I question how ?big? the launch industry is at the momment. As far as I know most major launches are done by government, there is no real industry (outside of small satellite launches, etc). Secondly, even if the so called industry boycotted the idea, there would certainly be other people or governments who would do it or have the capablity. That is, if CNT technology is common knowledge and not proprietary.

You guys are missing the place where an industry would control innovation (to keep itself alive). It's not in the launch ablity, it's in the production ablity. Now, how do we keep China or Canada from putting up a Space Elevator? It's not going to happen at the launch level, it's going to happen at the technology level. Just don't tell them how the best CNTs are made.

So what, it'll put a lot of people out of business. But who the heck cares? Screw the ?private industry,? in this context. A Space Elevator is a public resource, maybe the first ones wouldn't be, but once you have a few dozen, there is little or no competition and that's the end of that. This is why I didn't want to get into this discussion, because it gets back to that whole socialist thing.

Guess what? You know all those neat highways in the US? They're public highways, just as I expect Space Elevators to become. Everyone here is arguing for privitizing the highways and making them all toll. And furthermore, they're arguing that you can't build a lot of public highways because they would wind up making travel so easy that no one could profit (a fine argument, but again, not very thoughtful). Well, I think that's the point. It's called efficiency. You build a lot of space elevators and the cost of getting into space becomes pennies; then we can move civilization out into space and get off this Pale Blue Dot of ours. Yay for Space Empires.

There are very very few downsides to space elevators. The economic argument is very very weak my friends. CNTs change everything.

tim_perdue · 2003-04-24 14:13:03

Guess what? You know all those neat highways in the US? They're public highways, just as I expect Space Elevators to become. Everyone here is arguing for privitizing the highways and making them all toll. And furthermore, they're arguing that you can't build a lot of public highways because they would wind up making travel so easy that no one could profit (a fine argument, but again, not very thoughtful).

The public highway analogy is interesting, but highways are not free. You pay a gas tax to maintain them.

Is riding an airplane free because there are so many airports that no one can make money? Shipping cargo on trains is not free either.

There will be a toll to ship stuff up the elevators one way or another.

clark · 2003-04-24 14:25:32

Any search on "Doughnut on a rope contrail" or Pulse Detonation Wave Engine brings up quite a bit of Area-51 type conspiracy material.

And an equal amount of verifiable scientific reports detailing the level of technology we are at with PDE or PDWE or hybrid-combination cycle engine. NASA has a bunch of stuff related to PDE, and even some SBIR info.

Here is but one link to a non-geocity website:

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/AERO/base/pdet.htm

Anyway, I don't want to get offtopic, so I will refrain from making any more comments on this. So if any others want some last say, feel free.

Josh Cryer · 2003-04-24 14:25:38

The public highway analogy is interesting, but highways are not free. You pay a gas tax to maintain them.

Um, I didn't suggest that it was free. But it's certainly cheaper than some private highway where profits are necessary. Case in point, the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado (sure, it's a theme park there, too, but the point is profit needs to be made and some people need to get rich, so they exploit people who need a service, that is, crossing the gorge).

It's a break even scenario.

Is riding an airplane free because there are so many airports that no one can make money? Shipping cargo on trains is not free either.

Um, roads aren't comparable to airplanes, but they are comparable to space elevators. Until we have airplanes which can be maintained easily, that is (and they fly themselves and so on and other ridiculous stuff).

Space elevators, at least Highlift Systems' version, maintain themselves with robots. You'd just have a bunch of guys sit around guiding robots to areas that needed to be patched and so on, it'd be just like patching holes in a highway, but without all the wacky manual labor.

The train scenario is much more fair, and I would say that space elevators would be a mix between trains and public highways. But when we talk about cost, it would be about the same as truckers paying more (they have to pay licensing fees and taxes and so on) than the regular driver.

There will be a toll to ship stuff up the elevators one way or another.

I never said anything was free here. The point was that the economic argument only works if we're talking about some magical fairey land where things only get done in a capitalist market.

tim_perdue · 2003-04-24 14:39:11

Um, I didn't suggest that it was free. But it's certainly cheaper than some private highway where profits are necessary. Case in point, the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado (sure, it's a theme park there, too, but the point is profit needs to be made and some people need to get rich, so they exploit people who need a service, that is, crossing the gorge).

Um, by your own admission, you are talking about a large number of elevators competing. There is no competition on this road, or any other.

Roads are a flawed analogy - by their very nature there's no good way to have "competition". A more accurate comparison is the airlines or shipping lines that move cargo around the world today.

I'm not aware of any case where a government can run things more efficiently than a private sector.

In fact, in your analogy you would have so many elevators that chances are none of them would run at capacity, so the cars that do ride up would have to pay a larger chunk of the maintenance bill.

In other words, your "publicly run" scenario is inefficient and more expensive, like all other non-monopoly public works.

Josh Cryer · 2003-04-24 15:12:46

Um, by your own admission, you are talking about a large number of elevators competing.

I thought I said little or no competition... but yeah. I guess you could say that.

Roads are a flawed analogy - by their very nature there's no good way to have "competition". A more accurate comparison is the airlines or shipping lines that move cargo around the world today.

They're a very good analogy. Shipping lines require you to include all the people involved in shipping to come up with a cost, however, roads just require you to take into account the maintenence factor.

The elevator is the road, your competition occurs at the level where people pay the elevator tax or fee or whatever and ship whatever they want out. The elevator is publicly owned, the shipping lines are not. Just like the roads are publicly owned.

I'm just explaining how elevators are quite economically feasible. They're like public highways. When the US built all her public highways, we didn't do it beacuse we wanted to profit, we needed to get a job done and we just did it. No whining about which system is better or whatever.

I'm not aware of any case where a government can run things more efficiently than a private sector.

This isn't about the government running things more efficiently, this is about saying, hey, we have a situation where competition is going to suck (cheap space access), so we need to organize ourselves so that we're not screwing everyone.

Do you really think that the US would be better off with all the roads were owned by individuals and companies? They could set the price any way they saw fit, they could do all sorts of stupid damage (ie, to profit, they would let the roads go to hell).

In fact, in your analogy you would have so many elevators that chances are none of them would run at capacity, so the cars that do ride up would have to pay a larger chunk of the maintenance bill.

That's very debatable. And if that's the case, we've obviously built too many roads and I wouldn't think that was good. But as far as I've seen, the government doesn't do enough. How often is public works making a road wider so it can hold more traffic? I'd be willing to wager that we'd be queued up more than we'd be at or below capacity!

Which is a case for privatization, but then what's the point? People would still want to use the elevators at cost, so you would have people owning the elevators profiting very little, and then, they might curb the maintence stuff to make more money.

Elevators are natural monopolies in their own right, an elevator that charges at cost is unbeatable by an elevator that attempts to profit.

tim_perdue · 2003-04-24 15:21:30

Elevators are natural monopolies in their own right, an elevator that charges at cost is unbeatable by an elevator that attempts to profit.

OK, either way I hope *somebody* builds it. In the event that there is only one elevator initially, that will be a monopoly and you're right, they will maximize profits by charging whatever the market will bear, perhaps only slightly less than the current price of launching rockets (like $10,000/kg). Even at the same price as a rocket, they have an advantage in terms of safety, lack of vibration for delicate satellites, and probably reliability.

So the first elevator should indeed be gov't owned. I'm buying into this now.

As soon as you have 2-3+ elevators, though, private competition is best. They aren't going to sacrifice safety as you mentioned, as the loss of their ribbon puts them out of business.

After reading the last part of the Space Elevator book a couple nites ago, I'm pretty convinced that this is feasible. And after reading those "Going Up" newsletters, I'm convinced these guys are plugging into some poweful connections in the gov't and if you believe the newsletter, they are not being obstructed.

clark · 2003-04-24 15:25:01

So the first elevator should indeed be gov't owned. I'm buying into this now.
As soon as you have 2-3+ elevators, though, private competition is best.

If the first one is government owned, won't the rest be too?

tim_perdue · 2003-04-24 15:29:21

If the first one is government owned, won't the rest be too?

I think anyone with some cash could haul up their own ribbon, unless we're into the "control" issue. Is that what you mean?

soph · 2003-04-24 17:58:16

If the first one is government owned, won't the rest be too?

No. It's contracting. You can make a computer, and just because you sell the first one to the government, doesn't mean you can't contract to other parties as well.

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