WARNING: This guy's site is a trap for people with ADHD/OCD -- the ease at which I was sucked into every link on his site made me nope the heck out.
Beautiful work though.
Space Elevator
91–100 of 414 posts
Re: Space Elevator
#92Oh no, I scrolled all that way and didn't even reach some destination! Where does this space elevator go? No one knows! Would have been bit more satisfying if it ended up at a space station or something, as I think that's the purpose of the space elevator idea in the first place :)
Re: Space Elevator
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
A terrorist attack on a space elevator happens to figure in the first episode of the TV series Foundation. https://foundation.fandom.com/wiki/Bombing_of_the_Star_Bridg... It’s about as devastating as you would expect.
That's odd. The first episode was the only one I watched and I don't remember that bit. It might have grabbed me. A terrorist attack on a space elevator is a pivotal plot point in Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, which IMHO is a better work in basically every way than Asimov's magnum opus.
> That's odd. The first episode was the only one I watched and I don't remember that bit. It might have grabbed me.
I think it's the first episode of season 2 or 3, not the first season. I remember someone else mentioning it, but I've only seen season 1 and don't recall that either.
Re: Space Elevator
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue of the line falling back to earth is solved by putting the base of the elevator on water. If the top part of the elevator was cut of you could even detonate charges along the line to make sure all pieces fall into water.
Are we to assume they would be falling straight down? Because I'm pretty sure that's wrong. I'm not a physicist, though, and am happy to be corrected because every time the Space Elevator comes up, I want to know what happens when catastrophic failure occurs and how we'd mitigate that.
It would become a giant whip falling faster and faster round the equator.
Re: Space Elevator
#95Congrats, first time I noticeably hear my MBP M4 Pro fans and can feel the temperature through the keyboard.
Amazing work, as always. I love neal.fun
Edit: also good to know that paper airplanes have officially beat the SR-71, F-104 or X-43B with altitude record.
Re: Space Elevator
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see it. Why worry about a weaponized space elevator when stealth bombers, cruise missiles and ICBMs exist? If the power building the space elevator wants to bomb you, you're going to get bombed.
And hypersonic weapons. If you can get one to fly at Mach 20 for at least 10 minutes, you could cover the entire surface of the planet with a dozen launchers.
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Re: Space Elevator
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with space elevator is not only the lack of material today, but also the fact that such elevator is an ultimate and very fragile weapons platform, you basically get stones up the well and then drop them on the enemy. Meaning that any authoritarian country would destroy it even before it is ever built. And sturdy enough space elevator after it's break at any high point would start falling down on the plane…
I don't see it. Why worry about a weaponized space elevator when stealth bombers, cruise missiles and ICBMs exist? If the power building the space elevator wants to bomb you, you're going to get bombed.
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.
Re: Space Elevator
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bigger problem I think is the elevator itself. Cutting it and letting it fall would be far more destructive than any weapon ever fired or even conceived.
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.
Re: Space Elevator
#99Oh no, I scrolled all that way and didn't even reach some destination! Where does this space elevator go? No one knows! Would have been bit more satisfying if it ended up at a space station or something, as I think that's the purpose of the space elevator idea in the first place :)
I think it could but does not necessarily have to reach a station. The elevator just has to clear the atmosphere, right? As they say: once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere.
Re: Space Elevator
#100Oh no, I scrolled all that way and didn't even reach some destination! Where does this space elevator go? No one knows! Would have been bit more satisfying if it ended up at a space station or something, as I think that's the purpose of the space elevator idea in the first place :)
I think it could but does not necessarily have to reach a station. The elevator just has to clear the atmosphere, right? As they say: once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere.
> just clear the atmosphere
But for what purpose? You just want to float around in a elevator carriage, aren't you going somewhere when you go with a space elevator?