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Space Elevator

neal.fun

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Re: Space Elevator

#411

Post by BizarroLand »

hinkley wrote: post #327
blueflow wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most important feature of a launch site is having no populated areas downrange. Kilimanjaro would have Mombasa downrange. This was part of the Plot of Halo: ODST, where fragments of the space elevator collapsed onto New Mombasa.

The description of a space elevator falling is rendered in horrific detail in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. Twice. Because the only known material strong enough at the time was diamond, and diamond doesn’t ablate much when falling through atmosphere. One of the early space elevator research companies specifically designed a cable that was made by stacking successive layers of material both to slowly increase c…

I've often wondered if we could decrease the difficulty of a space elevator by a good bit by integrating magnetic levitation.

The base would need to be enormous and I'm sure the power draw would be insane, but being able to break the elevator cable into smaller lines and take the weight off of any individual strand might make it a touch more plausible without currently non-existent technologies.

Re: Space Elevator

#412

Post by seg_lol »

hinkley wrote: post #400
LorenPechtel wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Look at the launch trajectory of the Webb telescope. The upper stage engine was too weak for the orbital insertion and the booster had to waste energy putting it higher than need be so the upper stage engine had altitude to trade for time to keep the telescope from hitting the atmosphere. But it was the optimum solution because that engine had a long burn to take it to L2. Hauling less engine to L2 was worth mor…

God bless the Webb team but if a manager came to me to pitch a software project with as many sequential events that had to go perfect I would have told him to fuck right off. After I stopped laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. I made a pikachu face when they returned the first image.

It is unbelievable really. That team should do some things on earth, like fix healthcare or implement a national rail system.

Re: Space Elevator

#413

Post by rkomorn »

seg_lol wrote: post #412
hinkley wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God bless the Webb team but if a manager came to me to pitch a software project with as many sequential events that had to go perfect I would have told him to fuck right off. After I stopped laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. I made a pikachu face when they returned the first image.

It is unbelievable really. That team should do some things on earth, like fix healthcare or implement a national rail system.

It's probably a lot simpler to get something to a Lagrange point, unfortunately.

Way fewer variables.

Re: Space Elevator

#414

Post by officehero »

lproven wrote: post #152
officehero wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a lost opportunity, was hoping for another "space is massive" experience like already done in similar interactive maps.

The thing is, the same author has already done that. https://neal.fun/size-of-space/

Yes (it's great) but it doesn't show distances. What I'm talking about is when you scroll on the phone and it never ends.
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