I admit to not knowing what is going on with this whole space elevator thing, but could someone please explain to me what the purpose of said ‘space elevator’ is:
The space elevator would be anchored to an offshore sea platform near the equator in the Pacific Ocean. At the other end in space, the ribbon would be attached to a small counterweight. Mechanical “lifters” — robotic elevator cars — would move up and down the ribbon, carrying such items as satellites, solar power systems and eventually people into space.
Where are we going to go? To ‘space?’ To what end?
(h/t Glenn)
srv
Because it’s there.
Read some Arthur C. Clarke.
Marcus Wellby
From what I’ve read its a gimme to the Muzak lobby.
Defense Guy
I think it’s supposed to be a cheap alternative to using the space shuttle and rockets to get things in orbit. It sounds far fetched to me, but what do I know?
Doctor Gonzo
A space elevator is a method of getting satellites into orbit without rockets. If built, it would reduce the cost of getting something into orbit by at least a hundredfold, and probably more.
stickler
And it will be hurricane-proof?
Earthquake-proof?
Tsunami-proof?
Unsinkable, like the Titanic?
cax6ton
A space elevator would allow the transportation of material and passengers into earth orbit at a minimal energy cost. The concept is exactly what it sounds like – an elevator that stretches between a station on the earth’s surface up to a space station in geosynchronous orbit. The elevator ‘shaft’ would then be a 36,000 KM passageway that the aforementioned robot climbers traverse, shuttling people and materials back and forth. The advantages of a space elevator are that rocket-propelled craft would no longer be necessary, and thus space travel would be cheaper and accessible to anyone. The disadvantage is that it’s big and expensive (it’s basically building a 36,000 kilometer highway/tube out of material that’s as hard as diamond), and requires equipment and materiel that have not been invented yet
TM Lutas
It’s very simple. Today’s cheapest rockets cost $10,000 to lift 1kg into space. A space elevator would lift that same 1kg for $100. If you lop off two zeros off the price of anything, you change a great deal. There are all sorts of neat, practical things that you could do in space but it’s just too expensive to lift the required mass to get the projects to the point of profitability.
Let’s take solar power. Solar panels on the ground are stupid because you have this awful filtering atmosphere in the way that cuts down the energy received to a very small fraction of what is beamed at us by the Sun. If the panels were in orbit, you get cheap power and a great deal of it. Convert the solar to microwaves and beam down to a nice empty desert for conversion into something useful, like hydrogen for use in fuel cells, and you just stopped having to kowtow to the ME potentates. At $10,000/kg of lifted mass, this is a pipe dream, an engineers’ fantasy. At $100/kg of lifted mass, it already borders on practicality (we’ve got to figure out a lot more about large scale microwave transmission though).
Metalic crystaline growth in microgravity means very strong metal fabrication but at $20k/kg (round trip) the resulting pieces are all too expensive. At $200/kg and cheap energy in orbit, all of a sudden, certain fantastically strong items become commercially viable.
Asteroid mining becomes practical once getting up to orbit becomes cheap enough. Are we running out of nickel, platinum, whatever? put rocket packs on the elevator, ship them out to the asteroid belt, strap them on to asteroids that are mostly made up of what you’re missing, and bring them back home.
The list can really go on and on. Rockets will likely never entirely die. If you want something up in a hurry, sometimes it’s not tolerable to wait the week it’ll take to get it in orbit via elevator. For bulk goods, non-urgent trips, stuff that isn’t worth lofting or bringing down expensively, the space elevator is the way to go.
TM Lutas
Stickler – The material used is incredibly light and will likely be pretty cheap. It’ll have a relatively low terminal velocity and most of the high stuff will burn up on reentry (it’s mostly just carbon). The hard part of a space elevator is in making the first one. Once you’ve done that, your first job is hauling up a spare cable. If it breaks after that, it’s an insurable event and you just lower down a new cable in a month or two. Natural disasters and terrorism are never going to be entirely eliminated but the failure modes of a space elevator just aren’t that scary.
Walker
To further what Doctor Gonzo said, the vast majority of money and energy getting satellites (a key component to our economic infastructure) into orbit is getting them out of the gravity well. Once we get one “up”, we can maneuver it with smaller propulsion systems pretty easily and cheaply. The space elevator is an inovative way to get the expensive part done cheaply.
Yes, it sounds ridiculous. But if it can be built, it would be a major economic win. The space shuttle is cool, but the things are so old now that they cost more than the one-shot Saturn V’s (think Apollo) to use. This is not a show-off boondoggle like the space station.
As for it’s resistence to disasters, to that I have no idea. Storms in the northern hemisphere move east-to-west, so eastern Pacific won’t have as many bad storms. But there still will be some. If they have competent people on this project (they better), this will be figured into the final cost-benefit analysis.
Clever
Wired had a good article a couple years back:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,57536,00.html
No need for microwaves…constructed correctly [some nanotube types are conductive, others not] the cable itself could be the conductor.
For those interested, the nanotube wiki entry. Nanotubes are poised to be the next revolution in science.
Doctor Gonzo
A rocket like the Space Shuttle isn’t really a device for getting payload into space; it’s a device for burning fuel, which happens to put a tiny fraction of its weight into orbit as a result. Take away the fuel, and all of a sudden you can devote more to the actual payload. Anything put into space using a space elevator wouldn’t have to carry it’s own fuel; 100% of the weight would be devoted to payload.
As for natural disasters, if the Earth end of the elevator were on a mobile ocean platform like a ship, it could be maneuvered in a limited degree to avoid obstacles. If cut, imagine twirling a rock tied to a rope around your head; part will fly off, and part will fall back to Earth, so not a huge deal. The biggest problem will be avoiding debris at the other end, in orbit. Some kind of self-healing structure will be needed to deal with the junk that will be hitting the ribbon at high velocity.
TallDave
It goes into orbit.
The reason you build it is that it lowers the total cost of moving things to orbit by a factor of at least ten and probably closer to a hundred.
TallDave
Here’s way too much info (from my Slashdot post).
There are still technical problems, some of which we probably don’t even know about yet. But there is a design for a cable of 40 – 60% CN that should be strong enough. CN mass production facilities are being built. NASA is taking the concept seriously enough that their guys are writing white papers.
Detailed info and links below. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1 .htm [nasa.gov]
“The desired strength for the space elevator is about 62 GPa. Carbon nanotubes… appear to have a theoretical strength far above the desired range for space elevator structures.”
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology /space_elevator_020327-2.html [space.com]
“The hurdle to date, Edwards said, has been the commercial fabrication of carbon nanotubes. Both U.S. and Japanese firms, among others, are ramping up production of carbon nanotubes, with tons of this now exotic matter soon to be available. “That quantity of material is going to be around well before five years time. It’s not going to take long,” he said.”
http://www.liftport.com/faq.php [liftport.com]
Frequently Asked Questions regarding the SE endeavour, from LiftPort Group
(a LOT of very good info here, here’s a couple regarding points I’ve seen here)
What are some frequent Space Elevator misconceptions?
“Nothing is strong enough to make a Space Elevator.”
Carbon nanotubes (CNT), discovered in 1991, are almost certainly strong enough. Theory says that they are 3-5 times as strong as we need them to be, and laboratory measurements of their strength, though very difficult to do and not yet definitive, have shown more than half the strength we need.
The longest nanotubes thus far are measured in centimeters, not kilometers, and certainly not 100,000 km.
We don’t need and are not counting on individual carbon nanotube molecules running the entire length of the space elevator or any significant fraction thereof. The individual fibers in a string or rope are only a few millimeters long, yet the rope has a large fraction of the theoretical strength of the fibers. This is even more the case with MOLECULES, several orders of magnitude smaller than a fiber. A diamond is said to be the “hardest substance in the world” because of the strength of the carbon bonds that make it up, but a diamond is not a single molecule. Likewise an SE could be made with CNTs just a few centimeters or millimeters long. (In fact, a CNT several centimeters long is a wonder; they’re single molecules!)
“The elevator would be susceptible to a terrorist attack. ”
First of all, it’s important to point out that there will be more than one Space Elevator. We plan to build a second one immediately (using the first to make it much cheaper) and expect that the second will immediately be used to build a third, fourth, etc. An attack on any one ribbon is unlikely because of the anchor stations’ isolation and the relatively small number of casualties that would result. Terrorists are unlikely to be able to break the elevator anywhere higher than 15 km or so; it can then be simply flown back down to the anchor by moving some of the counterweight mass a bit further out and will be back in operation in a couple of days.
The first anchor will be located in the equatorial Pacific 650 kilometers from any air or shipping lanes. The ribbon would also have restricted airspace around it. The ribbon and anchor would be protected like any other valuable piece of property, in this case probably by the U.S. military
http://www.isr.us/Downloads/niac_pdf/contents.html [www.isr.us]
Phase I NIAC Paper
Chapter 10: Challenges
Subsection 10.1: Lightning
Subsection 10.2: Meteors
Subsection 10.3: Low-Earth-Orbit Objects
Subsection 10.4: Wind
Subsection 10.5: Atomic Oxygen
Subsection 10.6: Electromagnetic Fields
Subsection 10.7: Radiation Damage
Subsection 10.8: Induced Oscillations
Subsection 10.9: Environmental Impact
Chapter 11: Budget Estimates
Estimating the cost of building and operating a space elevator at this stage of development is challenging, but we feel for at least large segments of the program we can get cost estimates that can guide future decisions. We feel we have good cost estimates for much of the program with the cable production being the largest uncertainty. We have also tried to make conservative cost estimates. The bottom line is that the space elevator could be built at a cost comparable to many U.S. endeavors
Power Beaming Facility
For our cost estimates we will use a laser beaming system. The beaming system will consist of the facility infrastructure, high-power lasers and a large deformable mirror. We will want both the power beaming facility located at the anchor and a separate beaming facility on a second platform on land to improve the transmission duty cycle. The facility costs for the separate beaming station will be the cost of the platform ($300M) if an ocean station is selected and possibly $10M per land site. The facility costs at the anchor platform could be an additional $100M for modifications. The Compower power beaming system is well along in its development and has accurate cost estimates for that system20. The lasers are $100M each (fixed price from Berkeley for a 1 MW system) and the deformable mirrors are $125M each including infrastructure. We will need 4 MW of output laser power for the initial cable so each beaming station can be assumed to have 4 laser systems and between one and four mirrors depending on how well the beam paths can be combined. If we assume the beam paths can not be combined we will need four completely independent systems. Each laser beaming station will then be $900M ($525M for single mirror system) if no savings are assumed because all the systems are identical. This would mean we should conservatively budget $2.2B ($1.45B for single mirror systems) for the two beaming stations with each on an ocean platform.
Table 11.2: Cost of Producing the Second Cable
Component First Cable Second Cable
Launch cost to GEO $3.7B 0
Cable production $5B $3B
Spacecraft $1B 0
Climber $4.2B $3B
Power beaming station $2.2B $1.6B
Power gen. station $400M $400M
Anchor station $300M $300M
Tracking facility $1B 0
10-year operation $1.56B $1B
Misc. and contingency $20B $5B
TOTAL ~40B ~14.3B
Tim F
If our future lies in space then we’ll eventually build an elevator. Not doing so makes as much sense as commuting by donkey. Sure you save money relative to buying a car, but over the long run the cost/benefit works against you.
docG
Private companies are actively pursuing the technologies and the plans for this possible idea. Private companies are also funding the research and new technology for space tourism. Much like a beloved pet that is incontinent, arthritic to the point of being immobile, and suffering intensely, can we please euthanize dear old NASA?
jg
The OTHER end obviously?
Doug
What’s the other end attached to? And will the pull from the stuff being lifted up tend to drag down whatever’s at the other end?
My knowledge of physics is rusty and was never that great to start with, so maybe I’m missing something easy.
demimondian
That’s the beauty of it.
An orject in orbit behaves as if it were located at its center of gravity. If the elevator reaches far enough out into space for the center of gravity of the tether to be in geosynchronous orbit, then the thing orbits, with one end on the ground and the other end out about 2.5 times out past the geosynchronous point. It looks like a really long communications satellite.
As to the climbers…their mass would be negligible. The tether is a strand tens of toushands of miles long — it would weigh a significant fraction of what the American Interstate highway system weights.
I’m still kind of skeptical about its possiblity, but, if it is possible, it will happen. There are too many things that would become economically feasible for it to not happen.
DougJ
Why don’t we just pray real hard and let GOD lift us into space?
Slartibartfast
I’m thinking that once we get two-way traffic going on these things, the energy used to power the climbers going up can be mostly recovered from that generated by the climbers going down. I think some notional designers have put the power-generation into the tethers themselves, which keeps the climbers from having to store energy.
Off Colfax
If a site is located directly on, or within roughly 3 degrees lattitude of, the equator, coriolis force prevents hurricanes from approaching it. For that matter, a majority of weather systems get pulled either north or south due to planetary rotation. Read up on the voyages of discovery and pay attention to the effects of the Doldrums.
Without details on how it is being attached to the ocean floor, there’s no way to determine whether or not it will be earthquake-proof. However, looking at the region in which they have chosen to install this, combined with the USGS data, the area is pretty much as tectonically stable as Florida.
The majority of tsunami effects are felt within the shoreline of a land mass. And as the elevator will be in the middle of the ocean, the deep-water tsunami will not have even 1% as much energy as it would when approaching land.
And there’s little to no chance to sink something when it is already installed on the ocean floor.
Next questions?
David Rossie
Mr Cole have you not read Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator?
DougJJr
That is retarded. If God would have wanted us in space we wouldn’t have had to fake the Moon landing. This is just another attempt by the left to bypass God to get to Heaven.
kdaug
I cringe a bit when people use the “swinging a ball on the end of a string” analogy. It may be useful to help people visualize what the space elevator is, but everyone knows that if the string breaks the ball goes flying off. This won’t happen with the SE – the counterweight (the part in space) is just a satellite in geosynchronous orbit (stationary in orbit in relation to the earth), exactly like our current GPS and telecommunication satellites. Only this one will have a carbon-nanotube ribbon connected to it and the ground. The ribbon’s not holding the counterweight/satellite in place, though – if it breaks, we can just lower a spare ribbon from the counterweight.
demimondian
Sometimes, when I look at the current design plans for the “space elevator”, that’s what I think these guys are actually doing.
tzs
I’ve been working on and off with space development groups for years and can add the following:
We’re really close to having the material. Frankly, I think at present the legal/financial/political issues are going to be more of a problem than the technological ones.
He who builds a space elevator…owns space development.
Problems with the bloody thing: micrometeorites (which is why you have to continuously build/replace at least in the beginning), radiation belt (which is why space tourism will be a wee bit delayed, at least if it means getting people out to geosynch.) Failure modes (actually not that much of a problem).
Best place to put: 200 miles west off the coast of Ecuador. No storms, not a well-traveled airspace.
Lines
Faith-based space exploration!
Jack Roy
Look, dude, if you want to take the stairs, fine, but don’t stand in the way of progress.
TallDave
Why don’t we just pray real hard and let GOD lift us into space?
Better yet, let’s pass a law making it illegal to pray or celebrate Christmas in space. That’s public property!
ppGaz
That was the question. Apparently, nobody knows to what end.
Space exploration has been reduced to a very expensive version of Everest-climbing: It’s a really cool challenge. Uber-Geek.
I’m all for space exploration that is entirely paid for by private funding. If people want to waste their money on it, good for them, but don’t waste mine.
Steve
Can we use this to shoot toxic waste off into the Sun or something rather than burying it? I’m asking seriously.
Frank
ppGaz- Try to live without Com and Weather sat information for a while.
jaime
“If people want to waste their money on it, good for them, but don’t waste mine.”
Screw American technological superiority. We didn’t need PC’s and Tang and calculators and velcro to begin with. When our country finds a way to profit from this kind of space exploration, as California is doing with stem cell research, should we actively prevent you from profiting? Will you refuse all benefits ,ppGaz, for your ideological purity?
docG
Jaime says:
Jaime: Computers and modern calculators were in the works before space exploration and I will GLADLY do without Tang and a multibillion dollar button substitute. The benefits of space exploration have been and continue to be overexaggerated. If real benefits are to be had from a space elevator, let private enterprise develop it and benefit from it. Sounds too much like cold fusion to me.
Ferris Valyn
To answer the ‘to what end’ –
1 – the space elevator isn’t about exploration – its about space colonization. Yes, thats what we need to focus on, and thats the important thing. I am willing to bet many people will think what I am saying is somewhat out in left field, but the thing is, it the colonization that is what and why we need cheap access to space (the elevator being the holy grail)
Now, why is space colonization important?
1 – Basic survival – asteriods can hit the planet, some form of biologic or nuclear war could whipe the planet out, and at somepoint the sun will go nova. The short version is, at somepoint, we are gonna lose this planet – it may not be for quite a while, but I would like to believe that the human race can continue on even after the earth is dead. In addition, we are gonna run out of room on the planet at somepoint unless we setup major birth control systems – I am not saying this will happen in 10 or 20 years, maybe not even in 50 years, but at somepoint, it will happen.
2. Money making – the industry of space has the potential to drive the economy well past what the internet has done. Just for a little clarification, I am a fairly strong democrat, but there is a certain amount of truth in trickle down economics (only some though). In essence, it follows the old saying a rising tide raises all ships. As for how the money will be made, to a certain degree, we don’t entirely yet, but we can make some resonable guess. As was stated before, there is solar power, which in addition to being cheap enough to take on gas and oil, will make it so that we aren’t dependent on foriegn oil. This will bring down energy costs. Another area is space tourism – a recent poll that was done by Zogbey found that at a price of $100,000 that would just take a tourist into space, not into orbit but just into space, (thats 100km) of people who could actually afford this, 19% out of 450 said they would be willing to pay for it. Thats real signficant money. details of the study can be found here – http://www.futron.com/press/zogbypoll.htm
That works out to be some real money, and all they are doing is what Rutan did.
Next we have research parks – we all know that big money can be made from research – Universities, major corporations, the mad inventor in his home – all of these things help drive techonology forward.
And once you have resea4rch parks, you are gonna find stuff that is great, but can only be manufactured in space. That m4eans manufacturing is going up there.
All of these things are \very similiar to how and why Britian in paticular and Europe in general went to the Americas. All of these things will help the economy grow, because behind each person in space is a nmumber of them who have to support that one person. And the economy growing is definatly a good thing.
Perhaps the best comparison the why to invest in space can be demonstrated in funding the creation of the internet and of the interstate highway system. The interstate allowed business to grow and reach more people. And the internet wasn’t just about giving everyone an email address – it has become a whole new seperate world, to a degree. Space is the same thing, but on a much greater scale
But for this to happen, we need cheap access. That is why its important for the government to spend money on space – not because of exploring it to find out what is out there, but so that we can colonize and use it. And, all these things need is just cheap access. And thats why its not a waste . Of course, there is the issue of doing it intellegently, but thats a different discussion.
Ferris Valyn
BTW, to answer franks question – yes. That would definatly be something we could do, and would be worthwhile
Ferris Valyn
A question for all those who think that private enterprise should do it on its own -would private enterprize have built either the interstate highway system or the arpanet (and subsequently the internet)? Did private enterprize benefit from them? Do the positives of those things outweigh the costs?
ppGaz
Task-specific hardware in space is not “exploration” of space.
Tasks have practical value, maybe even saleable value. No problemo.
But stop sending machinery and people out there to “learn” more about space at my expense. I don’t need to know how rat sperm behaves in zero gravity, or need to know how many times a worn out and obsolete shuttle can be thrown out there and caught back before more people get killed. I don’t care what’s on Mars, and I cannot see anything that can be “learned” by sending men to the moon which cannot be ascertained by sending hardware instead. I am not interested in setting up colonies in space. I never want to see another “look mom, there’s Turkey” photograph from space. Ever.
I am against any space activity that does not have immediate and practical value to me. I am not interested in funding a spacetoy program for geeks to get all giggly over. The’ve wasted quite enough of my money, thank you.
ppGaz
List the “positives” and the costs to me of the entire space shuttle program, please, and then explain to me which portions of it could have been had by sending just hardware without people.
I’d be especially interested in the ROI on the most recent shuttle mission.
ppGaz
You can’t be frigging serious. Tang? If going into space would have prevented Tang, I’d be more supportive.
PC’s? Those would have happened without the grotesque and overly expensive manned space program.
Please don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining. I suppose that you don’t think we’d have had cars unless there had been a Henry Ford, or airplanes without the Wright Brothers?
Cut the crap, please.
TallDave
That was the question. Apparently, nobody knows to what end.
Sheesh, read the thread. The purpose is to make putting things in space much cheaper.
There are lots of commercially practical reasons to put things in space now, even at the current extremely high costs. Besides the obvious value-added proposition of a system that does something you’re already doing but at a tenth to a hundredth of the cost, if putting things in space becomes 90% to 99% cheaper that will also make more things commercially practical to put in space.
ppGaz
I rest my case. Thanks to a goofy space program, we have people out there who believe stuff like this.
ppGaz
Well, if you will go out there, I’ll gladly pay.
TallDave
Feb 3, 1903 New York Times “It would take teams of mathematicians and engineers millions of years to design a machine that can actually fly.”
Feb 3, 1903 Wilbur Wright’s log “Began assembly today.”
Ferris Valyn
As I said before, there is an issue of doing it intellegently, and unfortantly, the shuttle program is a demonstration on how to do it unitellegently. The shuttle was a failure quite early on, and frankly, we have seen the results. So if you want me to claim that there were great positives from the shuttle, the only one I can give is that we now know how not to run a program (of course, I am curious as to why we didn’t know it before, but thats not part of this discussion) What happened with the shuttle is the classic, penny wise pound foolish. For example, let me give you a basic – we all know that the Challenger accident happened because the O-rings failed. But the thing is, it could have been designed and built so that it didn’t need O-rings. Why did it then have them? Because congress wouldn’t fund the development of liquid boosters, or the building of a plant in Florida to refurbish them.
At the end of the day, unfortantly, the truth is the Shuttle program was a complete bondogal, and the sad thing is, it didn’t have to be – it was the demand to save money in the short term that has cost us trillions of dollars and the crews of challenger and columbia
ppGaz
Yeah, that has nothing to do with my assertion, which was that we’d have airplanes even if there had been no Wright Brothers.
Ferris Valyn
ppGaz, are you honestly telling me that you think we have never been hit by an asteriod and never will?
Bob Munck
You’ve got the wrong idea about the mechanism; the swinging ball analogy is correct.
Every bit of the mass of the SE is acted on by two (main) forces: Earth’s gravity and centripetal acceleration caused by the rotation of the Earth and SE. Near Earth, gravity is the stronger. For example, at the surface gravity is 1.0 g and centripetal acceleration (CA) is -0.0034 g. (Note that they’re in different directions.) At 100,000 km up, gravity has gotten much weaker and CA, because we’re out at the end of a long string, is much stronger: 0.0036 g and -0.057 g respectively. At that point, mass is being pulled outward, away from Earth.
At GEO — guess what — gravity and CA are equal and in opposite directions (both 0.023 g). That’s why geosynchronous satellites just sit there.
However, what holds the SE up is that the total force of CA acting on its entire mass is equal to or slightly greater than the force of gravity. This can be accomplished by having the SE be very long — about 150,000 km — or by having a fairly massive counterweight on the far end only 30,000 to 50,000 km beyond GEO. The latter approach is pretty exactly “swinging a ball on the end of a string.”
If the numbers seem wrong to you, remember that gravity drops off very quickly and CA increases very slowly. That’s why there needs to be a lot more of the SE above GEO than below.
TallDave
LOL Nothing to do with it? It’s the guy’s log.
They said the Wrights were wasting money. Would someone else eventually have invented ian airplane? Sure. Were the Wrights therefore wasting money?
Ferris Valyn
ppGaz – concerning asteriods and the like – yes, I know the possiblities, but the thing is, 200,000 people died during the asian Tsunami, and many of those people could have been saved if there had been a warning system in place. That level of disater doesnt’ happen often, but I’d rather spend extra money now, then have to start all over again later
Bob Munck
TallDave didn’t say this really clearly, but it’s important to note that the estimated cost of building the first Space Elevator is $6-10 billion dollars. This is in contrast to the $150 billion we’ve spent on the Shuttle and puts it in the range that a small country, a big corporation, or a rich individual could afford. My favorite candidates for each of these categories are Singapore and Qatar, LockMart and Mitsubishi, and Paul Allen and Richard Branson. We don’t need, probably don’t want, the US Government and NASA.
Better, cheaper transportation always gives immense returns on investment. Europeans discovered the Americas because they developed ships capable of sailing the Atlantic; Americans developed the entire continent because we build the trans-continental railroad. In 1919, Dwight Eisenhower led a convoy of army trucks from Washington DC to San Francisco; it took 62 days and more than half the trip was on dirt roads. That’s one of the main reasons he built the Interstate system and that now we in DC can get fresh San Francisco sourdough bread. The Space Elevator will be another step along that development path. Energy, raw materials, tourism, waste disposal, exotic manufacture, communications, low-stress retirement, exploration — all are likely areas of return. For example, to send a manned expedition to Mars, just send the pieces up the SE to GEO, assemble them, and then carry them further out on the SE to about 100,000 km. Let go of the SE at just the right minute and you’ll be thrown to Mars. No rockets needed to get there.
ppGaz
Can’t say, don’t care. I said that the Wrights are not responsible for the fact that we have airplanes. We’d have them whether they were involved or not.
I’ll keep saying this all night if you want, asshole.
Because it’s true.
demimondian
That’s a nonsensical number. To give you a sense of scale, $10G is less than Microsoft spends in a year on R&D — and the software challenges of building the tools to build the space elevator dwarf the difficulties in building an operating system.
You must discount the initial capital costs to buid the assemly devices to get to that number — and then, of course, you’re left with a cost of zero for the Shuttle.
ppGaz
What I think is that the idea that space colonization is an answer to asteroids is goofy. Nuts.
I defy you to run for office on a platform that says we should spend $zillions on colonizing space, in case we get hit by an asteroid. I double dog dare you to do this.
demimondian
I should have read this first.
No. The SE orbits the earth in geosynchronous orbit. It’s not a “ball on the end of a string”, but a system which looks like a ball from the point of view of the Earth’s gravity.
Ferris Valyn
ppGaz, I’ve already accepted that, after a fashion – I am working on a policy paper that I intend to take all the way up the chain to howard dean explaining how space can be used to get elected. One point – the big sell isn’t the asteriod thing – its the money thing.
ppGaz
Of course, it’s the money thing. That’s the whole point.
The money thing, and then, whose money.
Tax money wasted on space boondoggles is an insult to the taxpayer … me. I’m agin it. Unalterably opposed.
Ferris Valyn
And has been said, Eisenhower built the interstate to defend against invasion. but that wasn’t what sold it. Same thing
Ferris Valyn
you still haven’t answered my question – would private enterprize have built either the interstate highway system or the arpanet (and subsequently the internet)? Did private enterprize benefit from them? Do the positives of those things outweigh the costs?
Also, it wasn’t private enterprize that built GPS, and yet that is largely applauded
Ferris Valyn
And I ment money in the sense of this is something that can make the economy grow all over. And that is a good thing
ppGaz
There is no basis for comparing the highway system to space boondoggles. You can drive your car on the highway. You cannot drive your car into space. The comparison is beyond inapt; not sure what the right word is. Probably “absurd.”
Inapt comparison for the same reason. Also, billions of your tax dollars were not wasted to create the Internets. If the Internets had the same level of service to you that space boondoggles have, you’d be asking for your money back right now instead of trying to pimp it as an argument here.
GPS is an example of the task-oriented space intitiative. It serves a practical and ongoing purpose, serving many. Good investment. Manned space travel contributed nothing to the feasability of this technology whatever. GPS is not an example of “exploring space” any more than CNN is an example of “exploring Atlanta”.
Bob Munck
The SE isn’t quite in orbit. There has to be a few tens of tons of tension pulling up on the anchor, or the climbers would just sit there on the deck and pull the whole thing down. For a 800-ton SE, that tension will be about 25 tons (and climbers will mass about 20 tons). This means that the SE is being held down below the altitude it would orbit at. It’s also being pulled along by the Earth at a somewhat higher velocity than it would have in a real, free-falling orbit.
The difference is pretty small; put a 25-ton climber on the ribbon and cut it free from the anchor just below the climber, and the whole 825-ton, 100,00 km long assembly will just hang there. Now it’s in geosynchronous orbit. However, that will never happen during the normal operation of the SE, and it will never be in orbit.
TallDave gave a link to my first attempt to put the Edwards paper into HTML; Here’s a better one on my server, my second attempt at readable HTML. Note that there have been several years of analysis since that paper, by a bunch of pretty smart people. The cost estimates have become much less uncertain and have converged in the $6B area. demimondian, your opinion of the cost estimate is completely unfounded.
David Rossie
Ferris Valyn, you can’t objectively measure many of the costs associated with eminent domain. How much does it cost per family homestead that is bulldozed? How much does it cost to members of communities that are cut in half and wither away after freeways are built? What systems of transportation might have developed without the advent of freeways?
There have been huge dividends from interstate highways, but it just isn’t possible to weigh those benefits against unforeseen and immeasurable costs.
Ferris Valyn
Do you demeand that a Return on investment in 2 months? because I can’t think of any thing that can do that, except maybe the status quo.
If, however, you’ll allow a Return on Investment for say, 5-10 years, easily. And furthermore, it is entirely applicable. Because that is what I am talking about for space colonization – the ability of someone of, say, moderate means, midle class, and possibly even the lower class, moving off the planet earth and living on Mars or the moon, making a better life for themselves – Just the the early people from Europe, and the early pioneers west. And I say it again – 5-10 years. Not for my grand-children, not for my children, for me.
Ferris Valyn
David Rossie, thats what those who view space want to do. If you can do it to space, I can do it to the highway system
demimondian
Sorry, but it isn’t. There are huge gaping holes in the Edwards paper’s numbers: he talks a great game about carbon nanotubes but he doesn’t talk about a couple of the engineering challenges they pose. How do you manufacture them? Pyroreduction of hydrocarbons works fine on Earth — but doesn’t work terribly well without hydrocarbons and oxygen. How do you get those up to the construction sites at the ends of the ribbon?
How do you control the knitting machines as they autonomously construct the tether? Magic? No, you use software — and costing and scoping software projects is something I’ve spent a significant portion of the last decade doing. What you want requires significant advances in autonomous control, unheard of reliability, and novel computational infrastructure. Could we build all those? Yes. For much $6 to 10 billion dollars? In my expert opinion, your honor, no, that is a basically fraudulent number.
Ferris Valyn
The other thing is David, that is what policy decision are about – doing cost vs benefit analysis, both current and future. So to say you can’t weigh against unforseen and immesurable costs is much a bullshit argument as the argument that you can’t legislate morality – We don’t have laws outlawing murder to give politicians something to do
ppGaz
That’s a totally dishonest assertion.
Since the costs are “immeasurable” it is not okay to not only weigh against them, but prevent them?
How in the world someone like you could ever think that anyone would trust you with their tax money, is beyond me.
Ferris Valyn
demimondian – I admit I haven’t read the paper that you are refering to, but I am assuming you are say you’d manufacture the ribbions in space – why? the plans I’ve seen basically manufacture them on the earth and then “roll it down”
Or am I missing something
Ferris Valyn
ppGaz – huh?? You totally lost me
Ferris Valyn
My point is this – in policy decisions, you look at the benefits and all the known costs, and you make your descision. Unkown costs will of course hurt you, but unknown benefits help you. But the point is, if you have to know everything before you can do anything, your never gonna do anything except die. So doing a cost benefit comparison is enterly legit
David Rossie
It’s certainly not bullshit, it’s based on a subjective economic theory of value, which is more reasonable than trying to quantify the value people derive from their property when it is taken from them outside of the market.
Pointing to the success of freeways is predicated on ignoring what could have been and what was. Those costs are not taken into account in CBA… CBA is thus incomplete.
As for legislating morality, why should a government do such a thing? Legislating agaisnt murder, theft, and fraud is nearly universally accepted… its a tool for order, not morality.
demimondian
Actually, you need to extend it in both directions simultaneously, so that you keep the center of mass of the tether in geosynchronous orbit. (Yes, in principle, you can tow the system upwards as it grows, but the masses involved get impractical very fast.)
You can’t just “unroll” it, either — the tether is not uniform. It’s much, much thicker at the ground than it is out in orbit, because it’s under much more tension near the ground due to the stronger gravitational field at the surface.
You could, in principle, manufacture the carbon fabric at the surface and ship it up premanufactured. Depending on the circumstances, that might be a feasible alternative. That gets you into other problems, though — you still have to ship the fabric up to both ends of the growing tether as it is constructed. You could, in principle, ship it to the lower end and use the elevator to pull it the rest of the way, but that only saves energy after you’ve built most of the elevator.
Ferris Valyn
K, then what do you propose we do if we don’t do some form of a CBA to make decisions? I admit that there are aspect of it that weren’t done fairly or correctly, and still aren’t, but it is the best tool I know of – Have you got an alternitive? And as I said before, do you view, on balance, that the interstate highway and the internet as a good thing or a bad thing?
ppGaz
Okay, let’s back up a couple of exits.
What did you mean by this?
TallDave
Just ignore ppGaz, he’s a DU troll.
David Rossie
From my standpoint, the interstate system is tremendously awesome. I wasn’t around for most of the construction, so there were no costs suffered on my part that I haven’t voluntarily accepted (like gas taxes). But that’s me only. Most of the immeasurable costs were suffered in previous decades.
I don’t know enough specifics, but the large swaths cut out of American cities did a bit of harm. Here in Columbus, Oh, we have examples of historic neighborhoods that have declined. Not to mention the collapse of inner cities when spoke-like freeways encourage flight and sprawl that might not have happened without transportation subsidation.
I’m not down on freeways inherently, but the gov’t construction of them does bother me, even if there are practical advantages for the majority of people who do not lose out on eminent domain. Perhaps such a system could not be avoided; perhaps the country needed freeways desperately… I doubt it though. Looking back, we can’t imagine life without freeways, but that still is no proof of how much they were needed in the 1950’s. With that question, most confuse desirability (from a “society point of view”) with necessity. And that’s because they ignore the problem of subjective valuation and what is unseen.
CBA would improve if the idea of “market-value” for things that are not on the market were rehauled. Of course, the problem can never be solved, but an improvement might be offering, say, 200% of a comparable market value for property seized by the gov’t. I have heard the arguments against this: efficieny, speculation, etc… but I think these problems are not problems at all. If they give community leaders more pause before tearing down and rebuilding cities, they can only be beneficial.
ppGaz
This is you, when as usual you can’t carry on a conversation.
Fuck off, asshole.
Ferris Valyn
ppGaz, That comment was in response to David Rosse comment
David Rossie Says:
And I say that is a crap argument. Yes, I admit you can’t know all and predict all, but at somepoint, you have to make a desicion and go forward – otherwise, you just die. Case in point – when I was voting last year, I could’ve voted for Bush, because he has publicly backed the space program, whereas I don’t trust him when it comes to maters pertaining to the Judicary. By the same token, I could’ve voted for Kerry because I do trust him on Judicary, but not on space. But I had no intention of not voting because I don’t know 100% about both canadates – I went with what I thought was best, and voted for Kerry. At somepoint, you have to make a decision and go forward, so the arguement that you can’t engage in some form of a cost/benefit analysis for the interstates is stupid. And if you don’t like the scale, fine, suggest an alternative. But to say you can’t do some form of a Cost/Benfit analysis means that nothing will ever get done
TallDave
Thanks for sharing Bob Munck, that’s interesting.
Are they still talking about asteroid capture for the counterweight? I wonder how difficult that is.
Ferris Valyn
David, I have no problem if you think the scale needs adjusting. In fact, I do think that the 200% has some merits. But to say that there is no scale means paralysis.
Bob Munck
demimondian, it doesn’t seem likely that you’ve even read Edwards’ paper. “Construction sites at the ends of the ribbon”? No such things; you may have gotten that from Red Mars or some other science fiction. Most of your opinions on the SE seem to be based on old SF. Read one or more of Edwards’ papers, or better still the later and much more complete book. You’re making pronouncements from a position of ignorance, and some of them are completely, irrefutably wrong. For example, the ribbon is thickest at or near GEO, thinest at the ground.
“Costing and scoping software projects is something I’ve spent a significant portion of the last decade doing.” I’ve spent nearly 40 years doing software, for such entities as NASA, ESA, NRL, Unisys, MITRE. On-orbit, ground-based, avionics, manufacturing control, projects as large as a few hundred million dollars. I’ve also spent several years immersed in the engineering of the SE, and I know the amount and complexity of the software that will be needed. It’s a remarkably small amount, one or two orders of magnitude less than, say, the avionics suite of a supersonic fighter. Know what the s/w for the F-22 cost?
TallDave
My point is this – in policy decisions, you look at the benefits and all the known costs, and you make your descision. Unkown costs will of course hurt you, but unknown benefits help you. But the point is, if you have to know everything before you can do anything, your never gonna do anything except die. So doing a cost benefit comparison is enterly legit
Good point.
Fortunately, in this case, the project more than pays for itself in the first couple years of operation, iirc. Think of it as a rocket that launches every day for a hundredth the usual cost.
It’s expensive, but less expensive than other projects, say for instance the Panana Canal. That linked the Pacific to the Atlantic more cheaply. This links Earth to orbit.
TallDave
he talks a great game about carbon nanotubes but he doesn’t talk about a couple of the engineering challenges they pose. How do you manufacture them?
That’s being addressed now. Mass production facilities are being constructed as we speak.
You’ve actually hit on the primary reason that the elevator is suddenly considered feasible, while it was a pipe dream only a few years ago. Industry has just in the last few years figured out ways to mass produce carbon nanotubes.
David Rossie
I do assert that there is no true scale. We can only approximate what is really an arbitrary notion. The only thing we can be sure of is that the “market rate” compensated for something that is taken by eminent domain is too low. Otherwise, it wouldn’t need to be taken!
Your decision-making analogy doesn’t fit exactly with gov’t decision-making. Often they make decisions that dont need to be made. Real people face tradeoffs when they plan their activities, but gov’ts do not. Their decisions are largely arbitrary and not made on a need-to-do basis but on a political basis. Just because the gov’t wants to decide between, say, a subway or a freeway doesn’t mean that the decision is a necessary one… CBAs by the public sector often present false dichotomies.
ppGaz
Well, you guys are talking apples and oranges. The highway system is not analagous to the space program. Just because they are both large publicy-funded projects does not make them similar in other and more significant ways.
The highway system was not built to “explore” some esoteric realm of unknowns. It was not built to go forth and pioneer some new domain. It was built for very practical and down to earth (no pun intended) reasons. It also happened that it became useful as a means of transporting goods, and then people, all over the country, and at a time when the need and opportunity for using this resource were becoming profound at the same time.
Nothing similar is true about the space program. The space program has always been for the benefit of the few, and especially for the participation of the few. It has hidden behind a facade of “science” and wasted God knows how much money doing “science” at a greatly inflated rate of cost, and at an even more greatly inflated level of risk.
Lost without a compass, the space program has flopped around for years trying to make itself look relevant. It is now reduced to operating the creaky Shuttles apparently as an experiment to see how many times it can get away with launching creaky shuttles without killing more people. Now that’s important research, isn’t it?
If anything about the space program were actually analgous to what the Wright Brothers did, which it is not, then aviation today would consist of flying the Wright Flyer over and over again on the same absurd missions until the fucking thing fell apart from age and its design flaws. Airplanes would still be oddities and their short useless flights would cost a fortune.
Ferris Valyn
So what your saying is that often bad decision get made because they aren’t using an honest scale? You mean there is corruption in politics? While I am not as pesimistic as you, at least the way your coming off, I know that quite often what makes better sense for the whole is ignored for certain groups or individuals. But the point is, any decision made has a basis, whether it be political, economical, social, philosophical, whatever. Even in governmental policies – a senator, representative, whatever, will back or won’t back a bill because he has reasons – exactly what and how the scale is placed and setup is arbitary – but its exestance is not
demimondian
No, TD, I haven’t just hit on the primary reason it’s considered feasible. I’ve mentioned the core, unbreakable reason that it’s complete and utter nonsense.
Nanotubes are cool — and they’re about one and a half orders of magnitude stronger under tension, per unit weight, than any other material we have ever made. *Unfortunately*, they’re still about a tenth as strong as they need to be to take the more optimistic engineering estimate of the tension on the tether.
If may be possible, under optimal conditions, to manufacture samples of the tubes which have sufficient tensile strength. Those conditions, however, will not include irradiation by charged particles…something that the ribbone would constantly need to survive. You could coat the ribbon with a conductor to slow down the deterioration — but that weighs a lot, and increases the load on the tether beyond the tensile strength of the nanotubes which make it up.
It’s the web bubble all over again — people see something cool, and imagine that they can do anything with it. It is not physically possible with any material we currently know.
David Rossie
I wasn’t talking about the space program. I was referring to Ferris Valyn’s costs and benefits remark =p.
…which is why I actually scrolled to the top to see what brought on that comment. Ferris wants gov’t spending to help the development of said elevators, and uses interstates as an example of gov’t financing success.
My argument still applies. Not only is a private group moving along just fine in this endeavor, but anything the gov’t would spend on the project distorts the market for private space exploration and politicizes innovation. Unless our lives all depend on the gov’t getting involved, I say “hands off!” to the feds.
Bob Munck
No, no, that’s the old science fiction idea; Edwards’ design is very different. It’s a thin ribbon, the initial deployment (taken up by a rocket or two) massing only about 20 tons, 10 cm (4 inches) wide by 1 micron (1/25400 inch) thick. Once that’s in place, small vehicles called “climbers” would start at the bottom and pull themselves up while fusing a tiny additional strip of carbon nanotube material to the entire length of the ribbon. The first climber would be very small — about a ton — but the next one could be slightly larger, and the next larger than that. After about 200 climbers, the ribbon will mass 800 tons and be a meter wide by 10 microns thick. It will have its greatest cross-section at GEO where tension is highest, and taper to 40% of max at the ground. The used-up climbers will cluster at the far end to provide the needed counterweight. They’ll mass about 400 tons.
Now climbers with a total mass of about 8 tons and a payload of 5 tons can go up at one-day intervals, or a 20-ton/13-ton payload climber can go up every four days. That’s a lot of payload-to-GEO capacity.
This is very, very different from the billion-ton, sequoia-diameter monsters of science fiction.
ppGaz
We may not agree on the reasons, but if we agree on keeping my tax dollars away from the sticky mitts in Houston and the Cape, I’m happy with that.
Ferris Valyn
Pray tell what were the down to earth reasons for building the interstate if not for the transportation of goods?
I agree that it has been for the few up until now, a) that doesn’t have to be the case and is beginning to change b) the whole science thing is also somewhat bogus (not entirely, but there is some truth to it)
As I said, this is about making space accessable to the average person, so the average person can go and make money. Because there is money to be found in space
David Rossie
Of course all decisions have a basis. My point is that government officials don’t follow the same rules that normal people do. They aren’t restricted by things like property rights and limited resources, and they don’t take into consideration market information as do normal people. While it may be rational for bureaucrats and democracies to act in such a way given the power they hold, their actions have many unreported consequences because they disrupt normal commerce.
Bob Munck
demimondian, you’re wrong about the strength of carbon nanotubes, you’re wrong about their vulnerability to radiation. To build an SE out of carbon nanotubes (at 1300 kg/m³), we need a strength of 63 GPa; their theoretical strength is 300 GPa (some say 500 GPa) and strengths approaching 50 GPa have been measured. There’s no question that we do not yet have a proven large-scale cable of sufficient strength, but there’s a great deal of evidence that we will in the near future. When that demonstration takes place, the rush will be on.
demimondian
Nonsense. Strengths exceeding 15 GPa have only been measured in microscopic samples. The maximum strengths measured in bulk material are significantly smaller. More than that, there’s no practical mechanism for making stable arrays of collated fibers.
And, no, I’m not wrong about alpha particle irradiation. It’s merely one of those inconvenient physical realities of a vacuum that the elevator advocates have ignored.
And I’m not wrong if I point out that thunderstorms are a dreaful threat to the bottom 10 to 20 km of the ribbon. That the ocean water in which it is immersed is corrosive to the nanotubes. And any of the other problems people have pointed out.
And you have not explained how the little climbers (by the way, how are you going to power them? plutonium thermoelectric generators?)…how the little climbers do the welding. You can’t use adhesive remember — you have to bind the nanotube ribbons directly to one another…for 50 km.
Ferris Valyn
The reason I want government involvement is 3 reasons
1) the issue of laws and land titles has to be addressed – If someone wants to claim part of the moon, legally he can’t. And until recently, it was illegal to fly private manned spacecraft (well, actually its a little more complicated, but that is the gist)
2) The current corporate envirmoent, espicially in the big aerospace players, is so focused on short term returns that it has crippled space development. They have become so focused on improving last quarters numbers that they haven’t really looked at where they might be in 5 to 10 years.
3) I dont’ necassarily want the government to take it over – I do want the government to help with it, in the sense I would like to see encourage the growth of the industry.
Case in point – everyone talks about how important it is to finish the station – to what end? What is it suppose to do? I actually have a good idea – set it up as a business park, the station that is – allow corporations to add modules, and the government will provide power and basical life support, at a cost, and allow anyone who wants to add there own modulae to it to do so. If Ford wants to built a lab in space, let them add it on. If GE wants to build some sort of production line and will supply the module, let them. If Bigelow wants to add a hotel to it, let him. If some billoinare wants his own private module, fine. We could then see a direct return on investment from the station program.
The point is its a bit like basic research – Industry as a rule, doesn’t spent money on basic research, becase the return on investment doesn’t happen in 2-4 months.
Bob Munck
demimondian, now you’re just spouting nonsense at random — and proving that you haven’t even glanced at the literature. I count six obvious, elementary-school-level mistakes in your last post. Begone with you; I won’t waste my time trying to fight your willful ignorance.
ppGaz
Well, that’s my point. It was for the transportation of goods, and when the highways were built, lo and behold, you could transport goods on them.
John Glenn circled the globe in 1962, and I listened to the thing in my high school library over the PA system.
Forty three years later, I’m still wondering what the great benefit was. Meantime we’ve been flinging iron and people into space over and over again all that time … as John Cole would say, to what end? So that a few spectators can gather in Florida to watch the thing take off and then land, and tell us how beautiful it was to see? That’s a mighty expensive and dangerous fireworks show.
Ferris Valyn
Well, unsurprizing, the reason we haven’t seen any great benefits (although your wrong about spinoffs, but I am not going to go into that) is because of politics. If you’ve looked at the literature, the Shuttle was suppose to open up space to everyone. There were litterly people predicting that the shuttle would cost under 100 dollars per pound – compared to the $10,000 per pound that it actually cost. Now, why didn’t it deliever? Simple – upfront costs to make a shuttle cheaper to operate broke Nasa’s purse strings – and its not like they had a whole lot of money to be fair, and congress kept demanding that the price be brought down, the building cost. I’ve stated the O-ring thing, and there are countless other instances of that happening throughout the shuttle. There is a similiar situation with the turbopumps, and the foam on the ET – its the difference between buying a quality product and a cheap product – quality cost more initially, but most of the time long term quality actually ends up being cheaper. And then to compound this problem, you have certain laws which were passed that made privatization in space harder to achieve, legalisticaly speaking. And then you have politicains who more often than not throw good money after bad money, which happened here, and finally, at this point, you have the big aerospace firms who have so much wrapped up in the current expensive system that they are doing things to kill the smaller upstarts, and thus keeping launch costs aretificially high
Had they spent the kind of money to develop and build a low cost vehicle, which could have been done, you would have seen a lot more
demimondian
You do? Please, give me the citations.
I had hoped you were merely a self-deluded fool. It’s clear that you’re a fraud.
Bob Munck
You’re just questioning the value of manned spaceflight, right? I mean, how could you question the value of unmanned flight, what with comsats, television and radio broadcasting, weather satellites, GPS, resource monitoring and exploration, spy satellites, Hubble and the many other observation satellites, etc. etc. Our world and our understanding of the universe would be very different and very much less than they are now if we’d never launched satellites.
The.oopla
I think this would be important from a defense of national interests point of view. By providing subsidised transport to space, we make American companies much more competitive to foriegn companies. It would give us a tremendous advantage against China and India who are developing their own space programs, and allows us to tie third world countries in to tighter relationships with us. It also keeps us as a “space broker” American companies would be set to offer safer space tourism. American satalites could be placed cheaper and faster than the competition. We would be in a far greater position to repair our existing space inferstructure.
This would make Mars exploration that much easier. And most importantly, being a space broker would keep America relevent, incase China and India ever wake up to the benifites of being a superpower.
ppGaz
But, they didn’t. The space-obsessed can’t think with that kind of clear practicality, apparently.
Did you read my posts?
Comsats, wx sats, GPS … are not about “exploring space”. They’re about “employing” space to do useful work.
Useful work = good.
Useless and self-conscious “exploration” = bad
Like I said, tell me what useful work was done during the last shuttle mission … that didn’t have to do with the grotesque, all-too-slow death of the shuttle program itself?
What was “explored” during the last shuttle mission?
Bob Munck
Nada.
I’m an old space nut — I trekked out to Edwards to see the roll-out of Enterprise, watched all the moon landings, worked for several years on the ESA Spacelab and the STS, and I am fairly disgusted with the whole manned program. Sure, we needed the Shuttle and men in space to service the Hubble, but only because it was designed that way. The cost of shuttle service missions could have paid for several brand-new Hubbles. And the ISS … don’t get me started.
I do think that the Moon Landings were important for the cultural and psychological outlook of the human race, but they were done in such a stupid way that it’s not clear that the overall effect has been positive.
One thing the Space Elevator will do is to make a great deal of the manned rocket program seem like an even worse idea than it was. As a character in one of the SE SF novels said, “rockets are wrong.”
David Rossie
The.oopla,
Space exploration and space commerce will likely help humans grow past the tired concepts of national-interests and superpowers and such. In any case I certainly hope that’s what happens. Commerce needs no gov’t control or sponsorship and American trade will flourish with or without US space dominance.
Ferris Valyn
Shit – ppGaz, thats a load of crap, and you should know it. I am not talking about spending 10 trillion dollars, or something like that – I am talking about spending a reasonable amount – its like the levees at New Orleans – through beuracratic idiocy, you had a system that broke down and flooded the city. Instead of spending extra to shore up the leevees.
Think of it like this – you have a guy who needs to get a car – this guy does a lot of driving, so much so that a hybrid makes real sense for him, espicailly with the way gas prices are right now. anyway, he goes to a dealer, and the dealer says “I only got 2 cars – I have this brand Prius that gets 70 miles to the galleon, and I have this 20 year old truck that gets 10 miles to the galleon – which do you want?” in effect, we choose the truck.
And, since I am assuming you want specifics, please vist astronautica
From the web page
“NASA also had ambitious plans – for large space stations, lunar bases, nuclear interplanetary rocket stages, and manned Mars expeditions. NASA went through a long iterative process in designing and selecting the space shuttle, leading ultimately to the same conclusion as the Air Force. Initial Phase A concepts were for two stages, both either winged or lifting bodies, both recovered at the launch site for reuse. NASA explored some alternative concepts, including Lockheed’s LS200 single orbiter with drop tank, and Chrysler’s SERV ballistic single stage to orbit vehicle, before proceeding to Phase B. The Phase B designs were more refined but still used the same two-stage approach. At this point the controversy were over large cross-range winged designs, medium cross-range lifting body designs, and minimal cross-range stub-wing designs. NASA’s Faget strongly pushed for the stub-wing design.
Eventually the Nixon administration advised NASA that not only were there to be no flights to Mars, no nuclear interplanetary stages, no space station, no more Saturn V’s, no orbital transfer vehicle – but there wouldn’t be a space shuttle either if NASA couldn’t get the development cost down and get the USAF to participate. A USAF requirement was a large cross-range to allow recovery of the orbiter at Vandenberg AFB from polar orbits in the case of abort-once-around scenarios. This, together with wind tunnel studies indicating that Faget’s straight wing was unstable at re-entry speeds, drove NASA to the delta wing. The reduction in development cost led NASA to throw away the concept of reusing anything but the engines and guidance systems. Instead the shuttle would be boosted by cheap solid fuel boosters and, taking a concept from the Air Force, the propellants would be put in a big expendable drop tank.
Following the usual charade of competitive bidding, NASA picked the same contractors as for X-15 and Apollo, who would build precisely the vehicle it had in mind. North American Rockwell was selected to build the orbiter, with its Rocketdyne Division making the main engines, Thiokol for the solid rocket boosters, and Martin Marietta for the External Tank, to be built at the government Saturn IC factory at Michoud.
To finance the Shuttle in the austere 1970’s, already-built Apollo hardware that would have supported a second Skylab mission was sent to museums and American manned space flight went into a long hiatus. Budget cuts and overruns reduced the number of shuttles built from five to four and delayed the first flight from 1978 to 1981 (thereby ruining the plan to save Skylab on an early shuttle mission). Although several elements were cancelled (a space tug), the project did not much overrun its original cost (development ended up costing $ 6.744 billion in 1971 dollars, versus $ 5.15 billion estimated – less than a quarter of the Apollo program cost).
The pretext for the shuttle was that it would be much cheaper than expendable launch vehicles and would replace them all. Production was accordingly terminated by the US government of Delta, Atlas, and Titan vehicles. NASA staff and contractors were under incredible pressure to justify this decision by increasing the shuttle launch rate, lowering the turn-around time, and thereby reducing the cost per launch. When the shuttle Challenger exploded and the entire US space lift program was shut down for almost a year, the fallacy of this situation was exposed. The US Air Force and commercial users returned to use of expendable launch vehicles. When the shuttle began flying again, it was only for NASA programs. ”
Now, remeber 2 things in addition – this was over 10 year period, which means nasa spent less than a billion dollars on development per year. and the second thing is, this was all brand new territory for the engeineers. So they had to do a certain amount of basic research to figure these things out. so it wasn’t like they needed trillions of dollars – shit, its been postulated that had they been allowed to double the the development cost, we would have cheap access
ppGaz
In that case, call me a space elevator fan.
Ferris Valyn
David, it at least needs some control, if for no other reason than people need to be able to legally claim property they own.
Lee
ppGaz,
Has there ever been an example where something has been ’employed’ without first being ‘explored’? I sort of see the agrument you are making, but we are able to ’employ’ space now because of the technological breakthrus we made during the space race. Before you scroff at that idea, when we started the space-race we could not even launch a rocket (manned or otherwise) into space. We had to ‘explore’ the science to learn how to accomplish, that what is now, relativly common.
Exploration is not just manned.
TallDave
The used-up climbers will cluster at the far end to provide the needed counterweight. They’ll mass about 400 tons.
Ah, interesting. I hadn’t caught that part before, but it makes sense: have the elevator lift its own counterweight. Certainly easier than capturing an asteroid.
Thanks for commenting, great to have a real expert here.
Veeshir
I’m all in favor of space exploration in general and the space elevator, I just keep reading this when asking about the materials necessary
Carbon nanotubes (CNT), discovered in 1991, are almost certainly strong enough.
Almost certainly. Probably. Should be.
I’m not trying to be the guy who said, “I told Orville and I told Wilbur and now I’m telling you, that thing’ll never fly.” but, I would like to see the material that can stand up to the stresses involved, and there are many.
The temp at the top will be radically different from the temp at the bottom. Wind patterns will affect it differently at different levels. There are plenty of places where major storms are rare, but there’re none where they’re nonexistent. We’re talking about a ribbon of metal at least 100 miles long, straight up, that supports its own weight and that of the elevator and its payload. That’s huge.
I keep hearing that it’s theoretically possible. It’s also theoretically possible to build a building a mile high.
As for why explore space, how about resources? Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter there is the equivalent of a planet that never formed (or was blown up, depending on who you read). There are also 7-9 (depending on who you ask) other planets and myriad moons that we can exploit.
We need to exploit our solar system. I’ve seen people on this page decry strip mining, how about we haul an asteroid around and just mine that?
As someone asked, the elevator would be a good way to get rid of toxic waste. Sending it into the Sun would work very well. If we sent the entire Earth into the Sun it might get noticeably hotter, might not, so sending in nuclear and other toxic waste would not affect it in any scope that would be measurable.
I just don’t know how close we are to a material strong enough to make the ribbon.
TallDave
Good point. As I’ve said before, there is a reason we never went back: it’s a big, airless, resourceless, useless hunk of rock that costs $100 billion to get to.
Which is why it would make a lot of sense to put that $100B toward something more practical like a space elevator.
rilkefan
Proponents, you’ll have to address this comment from demimondian to keep this idea on my radar. A diamond isn’t a molecule but it’s not a heap of carbon, either.
ppGaz
Bwunh? You lost me … from space to levees? Anyway, if you are “talking about” spending any money, and want to know what I think about it, I’ll need some information:
a) How much, and
b) What for
Then I’ll comment on that specific proposal.
I sort of see the agrument you are making, but we are able to ‘employ’ space now because of the technological breakthrus we made during the space race.
ppGaz
Correction, my last post was submitted in error.
The last part should look like this:
Not much “exploration” of space was necessary to support the Comsats, wx sats, GPS sats, etc.
Most of the “exploration” I’ve seen has been bad made-for-tv-space-movie stuff. Waste of time. Huge waste of money.
AFAIC the main thing we’ve learned from the shuttle program is how expensive and lousy the shuttle is as a primary transportation system to space. And we just seem to be bent on continuing to learn that same thing until we are down to one vehicle, or until all the tiles fall off.
Shaun
Read Red/Green/Blue Mars.
Basically, we build it.. all the important people move onto it.. then we cut the line and send the top spinning off into space.
It will take them years go get back!
By then we will no longer need their leadership.
Shaun
wheels
Robert Heinlein once testified before Congress on the value of spinoffs from the space program. You can read it here.
Many (probably most) of the spinoffs aren’t related to manned exploration, but a significant number are. Note also this quote:
“It is easy to prove that the space program paid for itself several times over in terms of increased gross national product … and in new technology … and in saved lives. But they won’t believe any of that, either.”
ppGaz
Space boosterism is fun for those geek picnics. But some of us taxpayers want to know what things will cost and what the returns will be. The same sort of questions you’d get if you took the proposal to private interests.
And the idea that because there is all this “unknown” benefit and potential out there which somehow justifies large — “immeasurable”? — costs …… let me say this about that: THE FLEECING OF AMERICA. Not on my nickel.
ppGaz
When will the point of diminishing returns be reached, and how will be know that? Will the Space Booster Club be as giggly about informing me of that as they are about pimping more and more “exploration” and Dog knows what else?
I didn’t think so.
TM Lutas
here’s a reference to a scholarly paper in 2000 that measured 15 carbon nanotube ropes. The things snapped between 13 and 52 GPa with a mean of 30. Now we’ve made an awful lot of progress since 2000 so I’m reasonably sure that this isn’t the latest research, just the best I could google up quickly. In short, the skeptic claim that there’s nothing past 15 GPa measured in microscopic samples is just bogus.
The purpose of a space elevator is to employ space. The effect of a space elevator will make space exploration fully fundable by private interests, whether nonprofit or commercial.
demimondian
Well, you could at least repeat my claim correctly: I allege (and stand by) the claim that nothing greater than 15 GPa has been measured in bulk material. Your example is silent on that claim.
Ferris Valyn
ppGaz, earlier, you said
the implication being that what they needed was unlimited funds. That is crap. What they needed was reasonable funding for the shuttle development. If you read my post, you would see that Nasa was getting screwed, in terms of all the stuff they had to throw in the shredder, and what they had to do to shuttle development. And thats the point. Of course, I do admit this is somewhat acedemic, since no one has a time machine. Anyway, you wanted a specific proposal. Here is mine
1 – finish station, and turn it into a space business park. Yes, this will take money, but launch prices are coming down – one company, which is being backed by Elon Munsk of paypal fame, has a rocket that gets prices down to $1000 a pound. And at that point, other businesses will become interested in using space. Add a hotel module for one thing.
2 – Encourage real competition – I don’t know exactly how to do this, but something along the lines of getting Nasa out of the launch busines, and giving the new upstart companies a fair playing flied to take Nasa astronauts into space.
3 – work to bring launch costs down through advance technology (space elevator being one of them)
You see, there are a number of new companies out there that are entering the business field, with real money behind them(Branson, Rutan, and paul Allen for one – the founder of paypal for another – the guy who created doom – Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame- the guy who owns I think its motel 6 chain for another – the list goes on), but the biggest problem for them frankly is that you have Lockheed and Boeing litterily squeezing them out. That has happened countless times, and they are trying to do it right now to one of the companies concerning a launch facility they recommisioned with there own money.
As for how much it will cost, frankily I don’t think it will cost that much more than we are spending right now. The biggest thing infact is making certain that Boeing and Lockheed are not allowed to keep a monopoly on spaceflight
Lee
It was still exploration and it is the basis on which we ’employ’ space.
So what is your level of ‘too much’?
Since it is by definition exploration and we do not know what benefits we might reap from it in the future. Or did they envision all of types of satillites we would eventually employ when our first satellites were launched and did a cost/benefit analysis?
bdunbar
demimondian Says:
Why don’t we just pray real hard and let GOD lift us into space?
Sometimes, when I look at the current design plans for the “space elevator”, that’s what I think these guys are actually doing.
Snark sure is cool. I would be interested in knowing which plans you’ve looked at are faith based. No, really – if you have valid criticism, let us know. Liftport Forum is probably the best place at http://www.liftport.com/forums/
Ferris Valyn Says:
A question for all those who think that private enterprise should do it on its own -would private enterprize have built either the interstate highway system or the arpanet (and subsequently the internet)? Did private enterprize benefit from them? Do the positives of those things outweigh the costs?
Depends on the cost. Dr. Edwards hangs a 6 billion price tag on it. I think he’s low balling but it’s not much more than that. This puts it well within the realm of private enterprise; Boeing introduced the 777 for that much.
Ferris, if you’re really working on a paper for Dean – get in touch with me at brian dot dunbar at liftport dot com.
We’re not political, we’re practical. We can show you how to build at least part of a practical, workable space program, one that benefits the public in general. We understand the value of a dollar and how to return more bang for the buck.
rilkefan
bdunbar – could you answer the specific criticisms, not snark, made here? Also, what sort of modelling uncertainties/accounting assumptions/risk assessments go into that 0($6*10**9)? I imagine Boeing had a pretty good grasp on the above, and a certain amount of practical experience…
bdunbar
I can try. Some of this is not my area of expertise – you’d be advised to try the Yahoo space elevator list or post a question on the Liftport Forum.
Nonsense. Strengths exceeding 15 GPa have only been measured in microscopic samples. The maximum strengths measured in bulk material are significantly smaller. More than that, there’s no practical mechanism for making stable arrays of collated fibers.
The poster is correct in the former, and I believe incorrect on the latter point.
The thinking from my point of view (and Liftport’s is similar but not the same) runs something like this: there are enormous advantages to having material whose strength exceeds (for exmaple) 15 GPa – so much so that many institutions and companies are working on it. When perfected there will be many uses for the material, one of which could be a space elevator. If you’re ready with a plan and technology to take advantage of it, you’re that much further ahead in the game. We’re betting that the advances in material will come along sooner rather than later – this is an optimistic view, I admit.
And, no, I’m not wrong about alpha particle irradiation. It’s merely one of those inconvenient physical realities of a vacuum that the elevator advocates have ignored.
I am not sure what the poster is talking about – could not any other refernces to ‘alpha’ in the other posts.
And I’m not wrong if I point out that thunderstorms are a dreaful threat to the bottom 10 to 20 km of the ribbon. That the ocean water in which it is immersed is corrosive to the nanotubes. And any of the other problems people have pointed out
Frankly we don’t know if thudnerstorms are a dire threat or not. It’s possible this is so. The Edwards design acknowledges this by spotting the first in a location that is, from a weather perspective, one of the most benign you can find. No one is talking about dunking the ribbon in sea water, or any water.
And you have not explained how the little climbers (by the way, how are you going to power them? plutonium thermoelectric generators?)…how the little climbers do the welding. You can’t use adhesive remember—you have to bind the nanotube ribbons directly to one another…for 50 km.
Some reading would answer this question. Plans are to power the lifters (climbers) with beamed electricty, probably generated by free electron lasers. Microwaves are another possibility but probably ruled out by the size of the rectenna.
Also, what sort of modelling uncertainties/accounting assumptions/risk assessments go into that 0($6*10**9)? I imagine Boeing had a pretty good grasp on the above, and a certain amount of practical experience…
Good question – the answer is ‘a fair bit’ but of course with no actual budget I can’t point to line items or cost centers. I can say that we’re keenly aware of both spetacular and minor failures in process, execution and engineering, and it is not our intention to build a mucking great structure only to see it fail.
One (partial) answer is to expose as much of the design process as legally allowed to the public – the many eyeballs approach from open software. I note this is not THE pannacea or a cure-all but we feel it’s a good first step to prevent dumb mistakes. We’re not all knowing or all smart and it’s too easy to become culturallly blindsided.
Note that ‘Boeing’ does not, actually, have a good grasp on all of this, the people IN Boeing do. The smart clever ones who actually make the company (or any company, I’m not picking on Boeing) go might well want to work for a company like LPG if we can make the place more attractive to work at.
Ariel Boekweg
The main purposes of the space elevator is have cheap access to space and to get energy with out causing polution and just for the fun of it. You can get more information on the space elevator and updates on the project by supscribing to our newsletter at http://liftport.com/lists.php. Thanks for your interest and support, Ariel Boekweg