I love this guy. Re playing this gem https://neal.fun/stimulation-clicker/
Careful folks! This escalates quickly. Do not use xdotool on this.
Grateful it wasn't as long as Infinite Paperclips or Cookie Clicker, but still worth it. Great site!
Space Elevator
181–190 of 414 posts
Re: Space Elevator
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kim Stanley Robinson's description of a Martian space elevator falling and wrapping twice around the entire planet convinced me that they aren't a good idea. https://www.kimstanleyrobinson.info/content/clarke
A version of this also happens in the first season of Foundation, the Apple TV series based on Asimov's novels.
The Mars one is much more interesting and traumatic :)
Re: Space Elevator
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
In John Scalzi's Old Man's War, there is a discussion of how the more advanced society that they're interacting with deliberately put a space elevator on Earth, not because it was the easiest or cheapest solution, but as a sort of constant reminder of just how much more technologically sophisticated they were.
Really great book (and series). Though it's not "hard sci-fi" by any means, the technology feels real enough to keep my brain from focusing on the holes and enjoy the fun philosophical and ethical problems that Scalzi comes up with
IIRC, it started out as a reimagining of Space Cadet by Heinlein but instead of the young it was with the old.
After the first book, he then goes to explore all the questions that it brought up. The question of identity (to me) seems like the most reoccurring question.
Btw, there's a new book in the series. The Shattering Peace was released in September.
Re: Space Elevator
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
A version of this also happens in the first season of Foundation, the Apple TV series based on Asimov's novels.
Would you recommend that show to the HN crowd? The books are super well liked around here, for good reason. Apple's put out a staggering amount of content the last few years, I wasn't even aware this one debuted!
It's pretty and scratches that scifi itch. I've only read a little of the books but it's supposedly an entirely different story that coincidentally shares character names.
In terms of hardness, it probably on par with Expanse, so mostly technobabble with the magical tech only used when it's convenient for the plot. The abuse of "psychohistory" is particularly egregious. There's so many scenes where it's visualized a hologram of scribbles and they zoom in on more squiggles while divining the future.
But again it's pretty, so if you're okay with drama in space, it's maybe a 8/10.
Re: Space Elevator
#185Incomplete. Where's the LEO, GEO, the counterweight?
I think the idea behind this was less to showcase an actual space elevator and more to showcase what's going on at different altitudes. And above the Kármán line it would have become pretty boring, especially if you want to go up to GEO and beyond where the counterweight of a space elevator would be located - the Kármán line is at only 0.28% of the way to GEO. Using a logarithmic scale would have maybe helped, but no…
There are other presentations by this guy are long. I don't consider the space and the things we put between LEO and GEO to be boring.
Re: Space Elevator
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also the issue of the vehicle on the space elevator falling back to Earth if it detaches from the space elevator (accidentally or deliberately in case of malfunction that stops it from moving up). This means each vehicle will need rockets on it. At low altitude, the rockets are fired to keep the vehicle from reentering the atmosphere too fast at a steep angle, killing the passengers. At high altitude, the roc…
Why is the water bad?
In the stratosphere it both contributes to IR opacity, increasing global warming, and can provide ice surfaces on which ozone destruction is amplified. The stratosphere is normally extremely dry, so even small inputs can have an effect that would be invisible in the much moister troposphere.
Re: Space Elevator
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
A version of this also happens in the first season of Foundation, the Apple TV series based on Asimov's novels.
Would you recommend that show to the HN crowd? The books are super well liked around here, for good reason. Apple's put out a staggering amount of content the last few years, I wasn't even aware this one debuted!
Not the OP, but that show is a severely dumbed down adaptation of the books.
For example, each short story almost completely changes the cast (of course, with some descendants of characters appearing occasionally), as befits a saga that spans centuries. No producer was willing to run with that (as they didn't believe the audience smart enough to follow it would be big enough for the show to make a profit), so they introduced cryonics, clones, sorta-AIs (including robots out of their original context) to have some sort of continuing cast.
Also, the books have a quaint 1940s (NOT 1950s as people usually say it) atmosphere, with excitement about "atomic" energy (changed to "nuclear" in the 1950s publication), distant descendents of the slide rule, and generally weird-sounding math and science, that the show totally drops in favor of a "contemporary" feel.
And btw, the space elevator scene is lifted from Brin's Foundation's Triumph where it is described as a "future" event, part of Trantor's fall, predicted by Seldon's early team and trickled down to the general population.
Re: Space Elevator
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
A version of this also happens in the first season of Foundation, the Apple TV series based on Asimov's novels.
Would you recommend that show to the HN crowd? The books are super well liked around here, for good reason. Apple's put out a staggering amount of content the last few years, I wasn't even aware this one debuted!
My friends who wanted an adaption of the series hated it.
My friends who like sci-fi enjoyed it.
It is regardless very striking and high budget.
Re: Space Elevator
#189TIL it's estimated that over 48 tons of meteors hit the atmosphere every day. Regarding actual space elevators though, while they're not sci-fi to the extent of something like FTL travel - ie. they're technically not physically impossible - they're still pretty firmly in the realm of sci-fi. We don't have anything close to a cable that could sustain its own weight, let alone that of whatever is being elevated. Plus,…
Have you ever tried to balance a string on its end? It gets harder, the longer the string is. There aren’t any other physics than that.
Re: Space Elevator
#190>Above this altitude is known as the "death zone", because there isn't enough oxygen for human life.
Being pedantic, this should be "there isn't enough oxygen for sustained human life". An acclimatised climber can survive tens of hours.