OT: About Space Elevators

dogscoff · #1 October 10th, 2002, 09:12 AM

Quote:

I can imagine a little (huge) oceanic platform where cargo liners (and maybe cruise ships) come to load and unload cargo,

Heh, that's a good point. HOw to get stuff to/ from the floating platform? Boats, sure, but boats are slow. It would be quite ironic if something this high tech revitalised some older technologies like flying boats & airships.

Dragon of the void · #2 October 10th, 2002, 11:19 AM

Good point about the lightning, Taz.

MAybe they yould even use this power that comes down the cable, it just has to be strong enough. Thus you would not need to "ground" it, you channel the current into your battery.

dumbluck · #3 October 10th, 2002, 11:33 AM

D of the V: Man, that's one honkin battery your talking about!!! Do they even make batteries with that kind of capacity? CAN they even make batteries with that kind of capacity????

dogscoff · #4 October 10th, 2002, 12:37 PM

Quote:

MAybe they yould even use this power that comes down the cable, it just has to be strong enough. Thus you would not need to "ground" it, you channel the current into your battery.

Well, if memory serves me correctly, according to Dr Emmet Brown ot the Back to the Future series, a lightening strike supplies exactly 1.21 jiggerwatts of electricity, which happens to be the exact amount needed to send a sports car into the past. So you could actually go up the cable in Australia at 9 in the morning and come down in Europe at midday in 1955.

Seriously, I should think the cable would actually do away with lightning in the area altogether... As I understand it, lightning is when static electricity builds up at cloud level to such an extent that it has to find the route of least resistance to the ground.
With a permanent link between the ground and all levels of the atmosphere, (and I'm not sure but I think bucky carbon would be a pretty good conductor) surely the static would be constantly conducting itself to ground and so there would never be enough built up to form an arc (lightening). Ummm...

You can tell I haven't studied science in 10 years!

Spoo · #5 October 10th, 2002, 05:03 PM

Quote:

the static would be constantly conducting itself to ground

Even better for powering the thing if you have a constant current.

geoschmo · #6 October 10th, 2002, 05:19 PM

Well, once again according to the Faq on the website that Baron linked to, the current flow from the electrical diferential would be negligable. They kind of skirt the lightening issue by simply saying the best way to avoid lighetning strikes is to have the cable in an area that has a low histroy of lightening activity. That doesn't really say though what happens if it is hit.

I guess the ribbon itself won't be used for powering the climbers as I thought originally. They are suggesting photo cells on the climbers and use a ground based laser aimed at the cells to power the motors on the way up and down.

Geoschmo

dogscoff · #7 October 10th, 2002, 05:36 PM

Anyone ever read a scifi book called "The Descent of Anansi" (or something like that)? Can't remember the author. It was pretty good anyway. It wasn't exactly about space elevators but at the end of the book they've got these two damaged spacecrafrt joined by miles and miles of ultra strong cable, and they use the difference in orbital speeds at different heights to come safely down into the atmosphere. Same principle that keeps the proposed elevator up, I think.