OT: About Space Elevators

[sachmo]

Ok, here is what space.com has to say about the space elevator...

http://www.space.com/businesstechnol..._020327-1.html

[geoschmo]

I was born on July 7th, 1969. Nine days later Apollo 11 was launched.

For the first time since I realised my poor eyesight was going to prevent my childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, I have a real hope of making it into space in my lifetime. Maybe by the time I retire, I can take a vacation on the moon, or at least stay a week in an orbital hotel.

This is really exciting stuff.

Geoschmo

[Wardad]

Originally posted by Wardad:
Will it survive a colision with a fully laden 737?

I was just dramatizing a point about terrorism. As a high profile project, (actually another Wonder) the Space Elevator would attract some real nut balls.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Wardad:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Wardad:
Will it survive a colision with a fully laden 737?

I was just dramatizing a point about terrorism. As a high profile project, (actually another Wonder) the Space Elevator would attract some real nut balls.

---

And it's a valid point. The website Baron linked too even talked abou tit some. They are hoping that this would open up space to everyone and so it wouldn't be something one of the disenfranchised would want to attack. That may be a little pie in the sky, but ya' know.

Actually as remote as it is likely to be placed, it would be fairly safe. It not like a hijacked airliner would be able to sneak up on it if the nearest flightpath is thousands of miles away. But on the other hand it wouldn't take a fully loaded airliner to bring it down.

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

Actually as remote as it is likely to be placed, it would be fairly safe. It not like a hijacked airliner would be able to sneak up on it if the nearest flightpath is thousands of miles away. But on the other hand it wouldn't take a fully loaded airliner to bring it down.

Actually, if you plan ahead a little bit, it would take a lot more than that to bring it down.

If its out of the way, you have lots of time to take the plane down. They also have a very small, probably invisible from a distance, target to hit, so there is a fair chance they'll miss anyways.

Say a plane does come along and cut the ribbon. You will lose less than 30,000 feet of cable. Probably a LOT less, since they'd probably have to use the base station to locate the cable.
How do you repair the system? Just unwind some more cable from the counterweight station, and you're back in business...
Then put some more spare cable on the next elevator going up.

[Puke]

or they could have several parallel runs, that are interlinked at several intervals. say there are three cable runs. elevator cars could attacth around all three, but would be stable if only two held up.

while that might sound a little sketchy, the real advantage would be having the interlinkings between cables, so you would never really lose any. some would go slack, and you would just have to pick it up from where its dangling, and splice it back in.

or you can just go with the "reel some more out" method, which is probably alot easier, and maybe cheaper. the only problem there, is if 30,000 feet of cable come crashing down on the base-station, and sink it into the ocean.

A small battlegroup of cruisers and a AWACS or three, should be fairly capable of keeping air traffic away from it. I can imagine a little (huge) oceanic platform where cargo liners (and maybe cruise ships) come to load and unload cargo, and you would not want a several tons of cable to come slamming down on this.

the real cruicial time to defend it, would be when the elevator car is under 30 or 70 thousand feet, and would be vulnerable to conventional aircraft attacks.

[TerranC]

Originally posted by Puke:
A small battlegroup of cruisers and a AWACS or three, should be fairly capable of keeping air traffic away from it.

I don't think an military presence is necessary. And I think it will create a diplomatic incident if there is a military presence into something grand such as that.