space tether.

[phat tony]

hi i asked a question about this before and didn't get many reply's.

the USA and Japan are convinced they will build space tethers within the next 20 years. i think they are mad, bonkers and or nuts.

i don't like putting down NASA because they have done so much for us but i am only saying what i feel is true.

i love the idea of a space elevator and have even designed one but i don't believe that the tether is a project that can succeed.

it has so many problems that can not be solved but none of them are even close to what the real problem is. people and fear.

would you believe that a 1mm thick ribbon is safe. i have asked hundreds and all say "never". my wife said she would not even go close to it.

i would use it because i would chop off my nards to go to space. they know the problems but are just ignoring them. both countries have stated the problems but only NASA has stated fear or safety. in the conference this year they are asking the public for any ideas they have about insurance. i think they should be asking about getting passed for human use. if they build it i dont see them getting passed, it will flop around and bob up and down because its connected to a floating platform, it could get hit by debris, it could break with no backup plan. and so many other problems.

would you use it if they built it. forget how much it would cost, just would you take the rick????.

[dtr42]

StarTrek's Space-elevator a Reality Soon is this the idea?? or like the one in the star trek episode "rise" Rise (episode) - Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki

[phat tony]

yes its basically the same but NASA is going 1 mm thick, you can view it on the NASA site but if you Google it you can see many places displaying the same idea. do you see it as safe. or more important do you think they would get passed for human use.

[phat tony]

in researching for my own design i have read many NASA papers on the subject and also read many peoples paper against the project.

the price for now is 40billion and climbing and that's worked out based on a material they have not even found yet. i see that price being a lot higher. but safety is something i cant get past.

[spacex]

As far as research and design is concerned, we need more work done on carbon-nanotube tether design. Very few people know that by lowering a super-conductive tether from the space station or a space craft, you can not only generate electricity, but generate a net thrust.

I'd like to see more research done on the Tether-Ship concept. If I remember right, the theory is that a tether can be used to ride the solar wind, which has a velocity of something like 400 meter per second. Surely and we can do some of this testing now.

There are also some amazing possibilities of nanotube battery design, that is nothing short of incredible.

The future is now! I hope they stop piddling and give Nasa some funding, along with some basic direction.

I'm as proud of our astronuats as anyone, but lately all I'm seeing is a bunch of old fart's patting each other on the back, and listing their credentials, and we haven't sent anyone past low-earth orbit in 30 years.

As far as tying a tether to the planet. There is no reason we couldn't use dangling tethers. Surely we are smart enough to figure out how to ride one into low orbit and capture one of various tethers to different orbital locations, or possibly, lower one from a tether powered orbiting craft. I wonder how one would navigate. Lower to increse thrust and raise to decrease. Seem a difficult possibility. I believe there's a guiidance issue in there somewhere.

There is some talk of using a tether to keep the ISS in orbit. Lowering it to boost thrust and gen power.

The speed and anglar velocity thing blows my mind. Considering the tie is at whatever the earth's rotational velocity is...to reach the ISS it must be moving 17,000mph, so you can do this crawling up a cable? I guess so. Your cable speed might be say 50mph, but at any point along th way the cable is moving much faster relative to the planet the farther you get.

Then there is the weight thing. I remember someone once postulating that because of the weight hanging the longer the cable gets, the heaveier it gets, that the cable may have to get wider as you go along.

There would have to be fail-safes to support the tether, say weigh stations, in case of disater. I don't see one length of material of a certain width from one point to the other as even possible.

Another thing that blows my mind is some of the very first competition tests involved running a platform up a cable with a laser.

That just kills me. We can't build a cable as strong as a spider's web, yet it seems like the ultimate optimism to use a light beam for lift in the very first tests.

Thanks, but if I'm going to ride it, I'd like some springs, a brake and some good old rubber wheels or something a little more proven than depending upon a power supply.

Don't forget that carbon-nanotubes are super-conductive. Given lightning strikes, there is more than a little danger implied...But if you build large enough capacitor banks, the system could generate lots of power. If we could figure out how to store and use it safely.

There are lots of reasons this is a good field of endeavor, I think.

spacex

(Since 93...Someone has stolen my username.)