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Space Elevator

neal.fun

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Re: Space Elevator

#121

Post by robocat »

hatmanstack wrote: post #34
trinari wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but every behaviour has a cost. In cast of flight altitude its energy and distance to food, water, mating zones.

Darwin started with survival of the "fit". It changed to "fittest" in later editions.

People focus on the wrong issue so most quotes about evolution are highly misleading: the keyword should be about reproducing. Survival is almost irrelevant. Darwin awards in particular should never be given to anyone with kids (unless they kill their kids too).

"Most grandkids" is good but not catchy.

Or Idiocracy "evolution began to favor those who reproduced the most".

Re: Space Elevator

#122

Post by avmich »

Space elevator is not something which stands on the ground and grows up. It is something which lives on geostationary orbit and grows down from it to the Earth. If you cut the lower 1 meter of it, the rest will hang...

...that is, until a satellite will hit the cable above. Space elevator is built in the equatorial plane, all satellites cross it, so eventually every satellite is going to collide with the cable. For this reason the space elevator is incompatible with existing spaceflight, that's why even with nanotubes it's unlikely to be built.

Re: Space Elevator

#123

Post by actionfromafar »

sixQuarks wrote: post #101
Yizahi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia, China, Iran etc. are throwing a hissy fit whenever even a small weapons are deployed in the neighboring countries. USA too if we are being fair. They won't even wait for that opportunity.

The US throws the biggest hissy fit AND is the biggest hypocrite about it as well.

When the stakes are that high, words such as hypocrite don’t fit very well. It’s all game theory. It bought us Pax Americana for a while. Not universally loved but a time may (God forbid) come when it will be universally missed.

Re: Space Elevator

#124

Post by yreg »

The sound mixing is so smooth. Is it a simple fade with the right choice of melodies or is there more to it?

Re: Space Elevator

#125

Post by flir »

Oreb wrote: post #104

How do we know how high pterodactyls were flying?

Came here to ask the same thing. Hoping you get a response from an expert. I was vaguely under the impression they were mostly gliders... maybe it's something to do with thermals?

Re: Space Elevator

#126

Post by hwillis »

dpq wrote: post #61

Amazing work! One minor correction: > As particles from the sun hit the atmosphere, they excite the atoms in the air. These excited atoms start to glow, creating brilliant displays of light called auroras. The process is a bit more nuanced than that. The modern mainstream understanding is that the growing pressure of the solar wind makes the tail of the magnetosphere "contract" (sort of pushing it inwards from the si…

Any discussion of aurora which do not mention space tornados: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tornado

Is inherently incomplete. Not necessarily because they're needed to explain it, but they do need to be brought up at any time possible because they're cool.

Re: Space Elevator

#127

Post by pbmonster »

Yizahi wrote: post #98
pbmonster wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably no easy task. Snipping off just the first few kilometers is not catastrophically destructive yet, and cutting it down further up would require multistage rocket designs, sophisticated steering/targeting and potentially significant yield (you'd need to cut unobtainium, after all...). If you can build a space elevator, you can defend against those. You better thoroughly inspect what cargo you put on the elevat…

One nuke will kill any realistic sci-fi material. And guidance for those is a cheap and tested.

Yeah, but then we're discussing opponents with nuclear arsenals and ICBM programs. Those opponents are generally reluctant to nuke stuff, or commit acts of war similar to nuking stuff.

But yes, a space elevator would be difficult to defend in World War III.

Re: Space Elevator

#128

Post by pbmonster »

iberator wrote: post #105
pbmonster wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably no easy task. Snipping off just the first few kilometers is not catastrophically destructive yet, and cutting it down further up would require multistage rocket designs, sophisticated steering/targeting and potentially significant yield (you'd need to cut unobtainium, after all...). If you can build a space elevator, you can defend against those. You better thoroughly inspect what cargo you put on the elevat…

Easy. You just blow the elevator FROM INSIDE. Plant some bomb into the elevator itself and while in half way BOOM!

That's what the entire point about INSPECTING CARGO was about.

Re: Space Elevator

#130

Post by asimovDev »

TheDong wrote: post #117
asimovDev wrote: post #112

I didn't take a look cause I didn't see "reject all cookies" button in the cookie popup

Did you know if you open a page in a private browser window, once you close that page all the cookies vanish? It's even better than a button which might not even work.

It's purely out of principle because in a proper cookie popup rejecting everything should take the same amount of clicks that accepting everything does

I do understand that this is one those generic ones (I saw it many times) which the original creator of the website just slapped on.

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