Atheist Ireland Forum

Japan hopes to turn sci-fi into reality with elevator to the stars
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 799369.ece

I heard about this on Skeptic's guide to the universe.

Very exciting, although still some way off in reality. Carbon nanotubes (for the cable) are very promising, but not quite there yet. Also, the power required would pretty large.

Way cool though!

Ah the space elevator, I remember reading the Arthur C Clarke stories about space elevators and thinking what a great idea they were...

here's some interesting information about the space elevator project in case anyone wants to take a look

http://www.spaceward.org/elevator

I don't know what this obcession is with going to the stars. At this stage you could fill a stadium with people who have been in outer space yet only two humans have spent 15 mins in the deepest part of our oceans on earth. Already lower echleon millionaires are booking space tourist flights but only in the last few weeks did someone discover why leather back turtles dive to a depth of 1250mtrs as they migrate across the oceans.

Is this some sort of manifestation of centuries of conditioning?

Cool yes, but we probably won't see this in our lifetimes. Power is not the only issue. O3, or ozone, weakens carbon nanotubes. A big problem indeed. Plus a way to manufacture carbon nanotubes on a large, cost effective scale has yet to be devised.

I read somewhere that given the rate of progress already on the nanotubes; they expect to have many of the problems sorted in the next 4 years. (I'll check my sources on that)

But yes, no-one, not even the Japanese are giving an estimated date yet.

The survival of the species, maybe? Since the largest known threats to our continued survival come from such things as overpopulation, global warming and major impacts, it is absolutely certain that, if we don't begin to sriously look at populating other planets, we are doomed.

...and the solution to overpopulation and stripping the planet of its resources is to build lifeboat spaceships (and all the infrastucture around that) designed to sustain ten or twelve billion people for an indeterminate period of time while headed for an unknown destination? That's frankly laughable.

We're already on the lifeboat - it's called Earth.

regards
DL

The space elevator is about lifting heavy payloads into space at a fraction of the current cost of doing so. You don't have to have any kind of vision or a sense of adventure to understand the practical benefits of a space elevator.

http://www.liftport.com/

Check this web page out, it’s for a group of companies in the planning and design stage of building a space elevator. Their proposed date for completion is 2031. since 03 these companies have been making a concerted effort to both develop effective long carbon nanotubes (at the moment they are two short and frayed when made by current methods) for the elevator its self. In addition they are also designing power solutions for lifting payloads (possibly using the superconducting properties of nanotubes) and also raising capital for the project. if they succeed they will open up the NEO's (near earth objects or close to earth asteroids) for commercial mining as these objects are extremely rich in a range of rare raw materials plus many have organic molecules in them which can be used for plastic manufacture something that will be vital in a future of no earth bound oil. In fact space elevators may be our only hope of maintaining a western level of living standards in a future of depleted resources.

JSEA is hosting a conference on the nanotubes on November 14th, and a more general conference over the following days.

It will be interesting to see if any significant progress has been made on the tubes.

Also the concept of space elevators means there is no "Cost" in escaping our atmosphere so long as things are coming down.

This means they can be self sustaining as space tourists can pay to go up, financing the elevator, and their passage is almost 100% profit for the elevator as the materials coming down “pay” for their ascent.

It also has impacts on our waste management problems. If we are lifting up huge mining teams and equipment to mine ore on near earth objects and then sending them and ore back down we can also send up waste and leave them on said near earth objects.

Nice to know that old useless copies of playboy and banana peels will be distributed all over the universe by asteroids and other objects

The concept of the elevator has many other benefits other than the ones I rather facetiously portray here of course. Quite a lot of scientists have explored what these are. It even showed up as a central discussion in the book about science “The Science of Discword” by Terry Pratchett.

That sounds an awefull lot like flying by lifting yourself up by your boot laces. It can't possibly be free. The concepts Ive seen so far use robot climbers to ascend the ribbon. You seem to be assuming there would be some kind of pully system but that would effectively double the length and therefore weight of the ribbon.

It would also increase the work work required since the weight of the ribbon itself would have to be taken into account.

Perhaps a better way of putting it is, once the elevator was up and running, it should in theory be very cost effective to run, not requiring huge additional resources for each round trip.

The construction costs that will have to be borne initially will be HUGE. It would have to be another multi-country collaboration, in the same vein as the LHC.

Regardless it is an oft talked about aspect of the elevator and one of the problems they need to work out. How to recapture the energy from downward traveling object. Energy is clearly spent when an object up high moves to a point lower. Potential energy is spent and has to become something. Whether we reclaim that energy somehow and transfer it into the energy required for "up" or whether that energy is channeled and dispersed somehow is one of the problems of the elevator.

From liftport:



and:



A pulley system is by no means the assumption here.