Yep a great big tether ball. Only a satelite is attached to one end, the other a giant building holding the string. IMAGINE the force on the string.
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Yep a great big tether ball. Only a satelite is attached to one end, the other a giant building holding the string. IMAGINE the force on the string.
Well the results are in and there are a lot of very excited people over at NASA
And it seems the Magic Mushrooms out West are good for something, way to go UBC :D
Quote:
"What happened this weekend is akin to the Wright brothers' first powered flight," said Spaceward Foundation founder, Metzada Shelef. 'We hope these short climbs will be the first in a series of much longer climbs toward future space elevator concepts. The ingredients are there to make some great future achievements. ' The Spaceward Foundation is NASA's partner in this Challenge program.
Here is little diagram of how the space elevator may be.
source
Quote:
A space elevator would consist of a cable attached to the surface and reaching outwards into space. By positioning it so that the total centrifugal force exceeds the total gravity, either by extending the cable or attaching a counterweight, the elevator would stay in place geosynchronously. Once sent far enough, climbers would be accelerated further by the planet's rotation. This diagram is not to scale.
The elevator is going to have to be big. Clark saw the elevator much like MURACU's diagram. Anchored to earth at the bottom and to a large asteroid at the top with a halfway station in between.Quote:
--Arthur C. Clarke, 1978, The Fountains of Paradise.
After a cruise through tropical waters, you arrive at a large, anchored platform in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The sea is calm, the sky a picture-postcard blue. But you've come in search of an experience even more uplifting than floating on the balmy seas.
You board an elevator at the top of the platform and prepare for the ride of your life. After only a few minutes in the pressurized compartment, you leave Earth's atmosphere behind and the planet appears as a brilliant, ever-shrinking ball of blue. With Earth exerting less and less of a tug, you feel noticeably lighten The sky gradually blackens and the heavens are aglow with more stars than you've ever seen before.
While you marvel at the crystal-clear view of the Milky Way, you try not to think about a harsher reality: For the next 7 days, your life will literally hang in the balance. All that will keep you aloft is a slender ribbon that stretches from the top of that mid-ocean platform to your destination 100,000 kilometers into space.
Clark though the cable would be made of diamond or sapphire thread I think now the plan would be for it to be a carbon nanotube.
This chap has thought about it a lot:
http://www.isr.us/Downloads/niac_pdf/chapter1.html
I would think there'd have to be slack at all times. If that thing ever went taut, regardless of what materials are used, it would probably snap.Quote:
Yep a great big tether ball. Only a satelite is attached to one end, the other a giant building holding the string. IMAGINE the force on the string.
Hi The_Captain,
Everything would be wrapped in Duck Tape :D
Eg ;)