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The experiment sounds great. But should this work and a real cable to orbit is built, what happens when the cable snaps!? Can such a structure be made failsafe?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the link. I'm personally very conflicted about patents. In this specific case I classify it as a "speculative" patent => I'm totally against this it. Patents should be allowed only for something that exists / can be demonstrated (which would ensure that patents are something somebody invested in, and therefore at least believed in).
Yeah, I wonder if anyone has patented human teleportation...
Will the station at the end of the tether still need a rocket to deal with the additional mass? Is the fact that this rocket only has to go up once the core advantage?
Wouldn't the load going up the elevator pull the tether to one side?
I don't understand how a space elevator would be advantageous in terms of the energy required to get something to space. The load still has to reach orbital velocity. Will the station at the end of the tether still need a rocket to deal with the additional mass? Is the fact that this rocket only has to go up once the core advantage? Wouldn't the load going up the elevator pull the tether to one side?
I don't understand how a space elevator would be advantageous in terms of the energy required to get something to space. The load still has to reach orbital velocity. Will the station at the end of the tether still need a rocket to deal with the additional mass? Is the fact that this rocket only has to go up once the core advantage? Wouldn't the load going up the elevator pull the tether to one side?
There are more reasons to build a space elevator, but that's a big one. It really would be far more energetically efficient.
Someone patented space elevators in 2015. http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=90858... No comments...
I think in this case there's so much "prior art" that the patent would be invalidated at the first challenge.
Hmmm...is that 30 people/car or 30 people/6 cars? You will be enclosed with them on 18m x 7.2m, that's 120m², for 8 days!
The former case would sound like torture, in the latter case it could be done comfortably, though, but it would still require some good nerves by the travellers...
I don't understand how a space elevator would be advantageous in terms of the energy required to get something to space. The load still has to reach orbital velocity. Will the station at the end of the tether still need a rocket to deal with the additional mass? Is the fact that this rocket only has to go up once the core advantage? Wouldn't the load going up the elevator pull the tether to one side?
Maybe the required energy would be sucked out of the earth's rotation, but that seams insane.
At what point does the 20 year amortized cost of a system involving a space fountain or launch loop acting as the 1st stage of a vastly simplified and downscaled rocket break-even with some small multiple of the 20 year amortized cost of a space elevator? I suspect that this multiple might be small enough that economies of scale and optimizations of other systems could keep space elevators out of the picture forever.
It’s cool that any kind of space elevator experiment is happening at all, but temper your expectations with the numbers: this is a 10m cable. It is literally a 1:9,600,000 scale model of a real space elevator.
From the article: Shizuoka University and contractor Obayashi aim to launch two small (10 sq cm) satellites connected by a 10m steel cable from the International Space Station.
I don't see any ways in which this is a space elevator related experiment.