/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.11755576]

Why isn't there a space race to build the first space elevator?

Seems like the country to build it first would pretty much have monopoly of space travel. Anyone who wants to send something up would want a ride. Is it really that impossible?

[Anonymous No.11755577]

Elevator to where

[Anonymous No.11755580]

>>11755577
The ISS

[Anonymous No.11755587]

Do we even have material that strong and flexible enough to carry all that weight?
And if so, are we capable of manufacturing enough for a project as large as this?

[Anonymous No.11755590]

because the material needed to build such a thing don't exist yet

[Anonymous No.11755594]

>why isn’t there a space race to use grey goo to build the first dyson sphere so we can create a warp engine? Seems like the country to do it first would have a monopoly on alpha centauri

[Anonymous No.11755609]

>>11755590
Ultra-strong carbon nanotube factory on a satellite. Just build it already.

Also, wouldn't it be possible to build a space elevator on the moon with current day materials?

[Anonymous No.11755633]

>>11755576
450 billion upfront investment, rockets sending up the material costing the most. The only thing which is missing is that the space elevator-orbital ring being memed into mainstream

[Anonymous No.11755640]

>>11755590
Geostationary space elevator, no, orbital space ring at 400miles height, yes. That idea came from Tesla and was refined by Paul Birch

[Anonymous No.11755649]

>>11755640
Isn't 400 miles up just at the Van Allen belt?

[Anonymous No.11755686]

>>11755576
>>Why isn't there a space race to build the first space elevator?
>He doesn't know about the apocalypse

[Anonymous No.11755724]

>>11755576
> space elevator
Space elevators has to be one of the most retarded science memes ever. Even if one could be built (lol), a space elevator would just be a gigantic lightning rod. Especially so since it would be constructed of carbon nanotubes (making it an almost perfect conductor).

Related, redpills on lightning in space and why space elevators would be retarded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NenomdAZ11M

[Anonymous No.11755730]

>>11755649
>Van Allen belt
Shhh, the stupid goyim aren't supposed to know about the Van Allen belts.

[Anonymous No.11756101]

>>11755590
>>11755587
Colossal carbon tubes have the required macroscale specific strength necessary to make a space elevator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_carbon_tube
>>11755609
carbon nanotubes aren't strong enough at the macroscale to make a space elevator. But colossal carbon tubes are. However we can't make them much longer than a centimeter.
>>11755576
because there isn't a large need for very cheap space access. Satellite internet is a good reason for cheapish space access, but it doesn't require very cheap launch and it might not pan out. The iridium constellation which was to provide satellite based phone, fax, and paging service over the whole world was supposed to be quite profitable. It meant that iridium could monopolize all the phone, fax, and paging over the whole world. It was a huge flop because the time it became active cellphones were much better than the brick sized satellite phones. A bunch of cheap space launch companies died when iridium died too. The same could happen again. And really for a satellite internet constellation you don't need launch to be so cheap that it justifies the cost of building a space elevator. Other issues are that we don't have materials strong enough to build a space elevator. Because near term you have to power the climber with a laser, the efficiency is less than that of a rocket.
>>11755580
space elevators have to go past geostationary orbit or they don't work at all
>>11755640
Orbital rings require A HUGE AMOUNT OF MATERIAL. So this space elevator concept requires roughly 200,000 kg of material to LEO for an initial space elevator that can bootstrap itself:
http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/472Edwards.pdf
That includes cable mass, counterweight mass, propellant to bring it all to GEO and more. According to the following paper, a basic orbital ring needs 1.8*10^8 kg of material: https://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/OrbitalRings-II.pdf
And making that one requires space factories

[Anonymous No.11756123]

>>11756101
>Colossal carbon tubes
The reported strength is just an aggregate of C-C bond strengths measured using spectroscopy, not a property of a bulk material.

[Anonymous No.11756133]

>>11756123
Not spectroscopy sorry, microscopy.

[Anonymous No.11756223]

>>11756123
>>11756123
I don't know what the fuck you're smoking, but they measured the strength of colossal carbon tubes by performing tensile testing of a 5 mm long fiber:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160809234518/http://www.mse.ncsu.edu/research/zhu/papers/CNT/PRL-CCTs.pdf
They stretched the fiber until it broke. No fancy microscopy or summing up C-C bond strengths

[Anonymous No.11756235]

>>11755576
Isn't practical, you are limited to only one point in space, while the most demanded space activity (communications) demands many points, trajectories and orbits.

[Anonymous No.11756250]

>>11756223
You still will not get this 7GPa strength in a km of this stuff.

[Anonymous No.11756328]

>be me, 2035
>flying my SpaceX Intercontinental Massive Planecraft (or SIMP for short) from New York to London
>cruising at 150,000 feet
>going to be in
>L O N D ON
>O
>N
>D
>O
>N
>in 10 minutes to fuck this really hot cyberchick I matched with on PlentyofFishonEarth
>chilling and browsing channel 64 out of boredom
>suddenly hear a loud crash
>SIMP starts shaking and I can feel the craft rapidly descend
>look outside
>mfw right wing has been cleanly cut off
>attempt to control SIMP
>contact mesosphere traffic control (MTC) and explain the situation
>"PULL UP PULL UP PULL UP"
>start panicking
>rapidly decending and losing contact with the MTC
>hear few final words from MTC
>make out something like "collision ... elevator cable "
>mfw I collided with the space elevator and am about to die horrifically
>mfw all this for some cyberpussy
>we should never have left the surface of the earth

[Anonymous No.11756732]

>>11756250
prove it.

[Anonymous No.11757229]

>>11755633
pretty sure that a metal ring that encompasses the circumference of the earth + radius of 120,000ft (i think), in addition to the rocket costs, would be in the high hundreds of billions alone.

wages and personnel and planning, probably trillion

[Anonymous No.11757244]

>>11756328
>implying such planes would be manually piloted
>implying the autopilot and flight plans would let you anywhere near the space elevator
>implying you wouldn't be shot down long before you got to the elevator

[Anonymous No.11757254]

Space elevators are a meme, even more since pic related

[Anonymous No.11757256]

>>11755576
Cost. Its the reason why most ifl science shit never happens

[Anonymous No.11757258]

>>11755577
your mom

[Anonymous No.11757262]

I had a dream once where we used the best alternative, which in the dream was a high-atmosphere launching platform suspended on balloons.
Spacecraft and cargo were winched up to the platform and then spacecraft would launch from the platform. Never rand the math on it, but in the dream I remember someone telling me it saved money in the long run because the rocket fuel needed to reach orbit from the balloon altitude was much less.

[Anonymous No.11757264]

>>11757229
So Jeff Bezos could fund it with a few years of Amazonbucks

[Anonymous No.11757438]

>>11755576
we could build one today, on the moon
but to build one on earth we need a cheap way to mass-produce nano-carbon-wire

[Anonymous No.11757469]

>>11757258

[Anonymous No.11757599]

>>11757254
How fast would it have to go to lift up?

[Anonymous No.11757609]

>>11757254
the launch loop is a meme because it's unstable. It can wave back and forth like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DVn06r8FUs
except the math says that once it starts waving back and forth it will wave back and forth out of control. Accelerating a load may cause all sorts of instabilities too.

[Anonymous No.11757630]

>>11755576
While somebody tries to build the space elevator, someone else is building a moonbase or marsbase.