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Space Elevator

neal.fun

61–70 of 216 posts

Re: Space Elevator

#62
Couple of things I learned from this:

1. Some birds go really high into the sky. Not sure how they evolved to tolerate such a hostile environment. But it seems that Duck-like birds are able to handle very high altitude.

2. There are lots of cool spaceships that man has made. But it seems most of these were made in the 1950-1990 era. It's a shame that we are no longer doing that.

Re: Space Elevator

#63

This is great. I just wish there was one way to switch all units. The temp. can be switched between F/C by tapping on it. The height is metric and seems fixed and then stuff in text bubbles is again imperial (e.g. mph instead of kph).

That is mostly because the international space community works with metric, so the Karman line is at 100km above earth, and converting to imperial units would be forced. Remember, there are only three countries that use imperial units; two third-world counties, and a global superpower.

it just detracts a bit from the "wow so high! 10 miles! factor" for the luddites among us

Re: Space Elevator

#64
post #62

Couple of things I learned from this: 1. Some birds go really high into the sky. Not sure how they evolved to tolerate such a hostile environment. But it seems that Duck-like birds are able to handle very high altitude. 2. There are lots of cool spaceships that man has made. But it seems most of these were made in the 1950-1990 era. It's a shame that we are no longer doing that.

I wonder how they estimated the flying altitude of pterodactyls.

Re: Space Elevator

#65
post #62

Couple of things I learned from this: 1. Some birds go really high into the sky. Not sure how they evolved to tolerate such a hostile environment. But it seems that Duck-like birds are able to handle very high altitude. 2. There are lots of cool spaceships that man has made. But it seems most of these were made in the 1950-1990 era. It's a shame that we are no longer doing that.

I wonder how they estimated the flying altitude of pterodactyls.

Altitude of current birds x wing size ratio /s

Re: Space Elevator

#66
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or more than slightly if you don't want to haul up a big counterweight but just use the cable itself as a counterweight. The Brad Edwards design proposes a total cable length of around 100,000 km. One very nice side effect of a long cable is that you can slingshot spacecraft from the far end up to ~Jupiter's orbit with zero propellant needed.

I would imagine rather than hauling up a big counterweight, you might be better served capturing a near-earth asteroid and hauling it in .

Yes. However, capturing a NEO might still be more difficult than just using a longer tether.

Re: Space Elevator

#67
post #62

Couple of things I learned from this: 1. Some birds go really high into the sky. Not sure how they evolved to tolerate such a hostile environment. But it seems that Duck-like birds are able to handle very high altitude. 2. There are lots of cool spaceships that man has made. But it seems most of these were made in the 1950-1990 era. It's a shame that we are no longer doing that.

I wonder how they estimated the flying altitude of pterodactyls.

https://www.npr.org/2010/11/16/131362653/peerless-pterosaur-...

Seems to be a good chunk of (educated) conjecture.

Re: Space Elevator

#68
post #15
post #6

Amazing visualization. The most interesting part to me is the weird fluctuation in temperature. You'd think it would trend in a single direction. What causes all the frequent ups and downs?

At 17446m mark: > Unlike the troposphere, the temperature in the stratosphere increases the higher you go.

There's a graph here: https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/physgeoglabmanual1/chapter/la...
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