Now please somebody create this in the opposite direction :) Down the mariana trench and beyond.
Space Elevator
171–180 of 216 posts
Re: Space Elevator
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
That all assumes that it got loose at the base and not part way up within the atmosphere. If 9/11 can happen, this can happen. All that cable and kinetic energy has to go somewhere.
If your bad guys can get high enough to sever your cable, they can get high enough to do a kinetic or powered bombardment and cause magnitudes more damage.
A bomb on wheels that rides the cable before exploding.
Re: Space Elevator
#173Now please somebody create this in the opposite direction :) Down the mariana trench and beyond.
Oh, you'd be surprised!
https://neal.fun/deep-sea/
Re: Space Elevator
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. It's one thing to blow up during test firings, or when trying completely novel maneuvers like the belly flop. It's another thing entirely to do that during stage separation. Sure, historically separation has been risky, but it's nothing novel. They didn't seem to expect the vehicle to survive past that anyways. There would be a delay even if another vehicle was ready to go - the launch site is a wreck.
If you were thrown by the explosion (automated termination, not some catastrophic failure), then you weren't listening to any of the media around the launch. This was a successful mission, gathering data for future launches. Expectations were set appropriately, so I think it's really just your problem for not listening. In addition, this isn't publicly funded, so it would seem if some of the people get spooked by not…
> In addition, this isn't publicly funded, so it would seem if some of the people get spooked by not understanding the goals of a launch correctly, then it doesn't really matter that much.
It does matter that we are scattering debris over a large area for no reason. It does not matter if that was done by the flight termination system or other mechanism.
Re: Space Elevator
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
> * The Falcon 9, the first partially reusable spaceship that actually costs less than not re-using anything We don't really know that. This _appears_ to be the case but the accounting is strange. We would probably get better numbers if the company was publicly traded. I really like the RocketLab designs. Where's the funding for Skylon? Some US company with deeper pockets should license the design (the heat exchanger…
"Appears" or not, but their offered prices and especially the cadence of launching stuff to LEO are currently unmatched, AFAICT. They'd run out of money if they did not make profit on most launches
Question is, would they make more or less profit by making new rockets versus refurbishing the existing ones? By how much?
Re: Space Elevator
#176I don't usually complete these little "fun internet" experiments but I thoroughly enjoyed this journey from start to end, and learned a bit on the way. My mind was blown a few times checking on the scrollbar thinking it's always over only to see we've barely just begun. Excellent.
Re: Space Elevator
#177Re: Space Elevator
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
And so what about the downsides? The ultimate target for terrorists. If that comes down and it wraps itself around the Earth, it'll be devastating.
My understanding is that it would be under tension and orbiting at beyond escape velocity, such that if it got cut off, it would fly away from Earth. Still bad, but not catastrophically. Maybe we could even recover it.
But what happens to the tether it breaks away from? That won't stay up on its own.
I'm sure you could build it in a way that it would break apart into lots of smaller pieces, but even then it seems like it could be dangerous.
Re: Space Elevator
#179Couple 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 was shocked to see a butterfly above the cloud level
Yes, and the bumblebee was up there pretty high too. You gotta wonder, what were they doing up there? Did they just get... lost? Just taking a nap in a thermal updraft?
Re: Space Elevator
#180I used to think that the space elevator is a great and necessary concept for building a space-based civilization. How else can we get enough raw physical material into space? There's no way rockets can scale up to the enormous tonnages that will be required.
Now I think the solution is to build an industrial base on the moon. The lunar factories and mines (mostly run by robots) will harvest the necessary material, do some initial refining, and then fling the products into space using mechanical techniques (something like SpinLaunch, or a giant catapult). Lifting off from the moon is far easier than getting off the Earth (think of that tiny lander that the Apollo astronauts used).