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Elevator to the stars...

Kess

Thinker
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Aug 23, 2002
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There's a nice little BBC article about exotic future engineering projects at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3691711.stm. However, there's a lovely journalistic gaffe near the start:
There is even talk of a space elevator - which will carry people from Earth to the stars without the need for cumbersome spaceships.
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An elevator all the way to the stars - most impressive. How long would it take to travel 4+ light-years by elevator? ;)
 
Kess said:
There's a nice little BBC article about exotic future engineering projects at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3691711.stm However, there's a lovely journalistic gaffe near the start:

An elevator all the way to the stars - most impressive. How long would it take to travel 4+ light-years by elevator? ;)
Click to expand...

Adding in what appears further down the page, appearently a couple of months.:D

By the way, try editing your link to get the period after the .stm out of the link so that it will work simply by clicking it.

Or people can use the link in my quote... it is fixed.
 
Re: Re: Elevator to the stars...

scotth said:

Adding in what appears further down the page, appearently a couple of months.:D
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Ah, but that figure is only the time needed to get from the ground to an orbital station (further down the page the article correctly states that the elevator only goes as far as an orbital station; a spaceship is still needed to reach the stars). Their earlier sentence implied the elevator could go all the way.... :o
 
At least operation in a vacuum would prevent elevator music. Imagine, several years listening to bad renditions of '60s classics as you speed through the cosmos
 
What type of propulsion will be used to make the "Elevator" go up the cable? Some kind of friction against the cable itself, I suppose.
 
Actually this was a concept that Arthur Clarke came up with in one of his novels. He proposed diamond fiber as the "Rail" and had way stations on the track for maintenance and ingress/egress at various geostationary points.
 
How would you initially get the space tether into place? I can understand the forces that would keep it in place, but how would you get the cable up in the first place? Rockets?
 
All the plans I've read about start by sending the cabling up first (or manufacturing it in geo sync orbit) and dropping it back down through the atmosphere.
 
Uh_Clem said:
All the plans I've read about start by sending the cabling up first (or manufacturing it in geo sync orbit) and dropping it back down through the atmosphere.
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From Hilario Spacepipe's ship?
 
Actually this was a concept that Arthur Clarke came up with in one of his novels.
Click to expand...

The Fountains of Paradise. Doesn't seem to be available from Amazon in the US though.

He proposed diamond fiber as the "Rail" and had way stations on the track for maintenance and ingress/egress at various geostationary points.
Click to expand...

There's only one geostationary point along a vertical line. IIRC there was a station at 2/3 geostationary height, or something, the idea being that if the cable snapped, it could still fall into a stable orbit.

David
 
davidhorman said:


The Fountains of Paradise. Doesn't seem to be available from Amazon in the US though.



There's only one geostationary point along a vertical line. IIRC there was a station at 2/3 geostationary height, or something, the idea being that if the cable snapped, it could still fall into a stable orbit.

David
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Wouldn't the mass of the cable and way-stations be significant - so that the top station would have to be in a higher (than the usual geostationary) orbit to keep the whole thing stable? Then if the cable snapped everything above the break would tend to move away from the Earth - I think.

Edited to add -
Unless, I suppose, the top and 2/3 station were very massive compared to the cable ...
 
The point is that the stations center of gravity should be at the height of a geostationary orbit.
 
The "space elevator" has also been called a "Heavenly Fununcular". I thought it was a much older concept than Arthur C. Clarke's rendition.
 
A space elevator is a crucial element of the Japanese manga "Battle Angel Alita" (or "Gunmm" in Japan).

It dominates (literally) everything around it, and is a focal point of alot of the story. The bottom of the space elevator is a city that floats a mile above the ground, known as "Tiphares." All the trash and refuse that gets dropped out of it falls into a town known as "the Scrapyard" which is filled with cyborgs, life is cheap, and flying devices are illegal. Raw materials are sent up to Tiphares, trash falls from it, and it is illegal for the surface dwellers to climb up the cables to the floating city.

I'm sure any analogy by Yukito Kishiro is completely incidental ;)

http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/1569310033/wwwhometalkec-20/701-5754243-8433966
 
to.by said:
The point is that the stations center of gravity should be at the height of a geostationary orbit.
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Is it that simple with a structure this large? Won't the reduction in the gravitational pull of the Earth (inverse square law) from bottom to top of the cable matter?
 
TillEulenspiegel said:
Actually this was a concept that Arthur Clarke came up with in one of his novels. He proposed diamond fiber as the "Rail" and had way stations on the track for maintenance and ingress/egress at various geostationary points.
Click to expand...

I read this novel a long time ago and I don't have the book anymore, but if I remember well, Clarke proposed the use of a supercrystal and not diamond fiber.
 
Dragon said:
Is it that simple with a structure this large? Won't the reduction in the gravitational pull of the Earth (inverse square law) from bottom to top of the cable matter?
Click to expand...

The idea is that the endpoint would be a very large mass and it would be further from earth than a geosynch orbit. This would support the weight of the cable and keep it under positive tension.
 
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