Space Elevator

[dragonrider]

Has anyone ever heard about the space elevator? It's an idea for a tether that attaches to the ground at one end, and attaches to a counterweight that is out past geosynchronous orbit at the other end. The fact that the counterweight is out past geosynchronous orbit means that the tether is kept tight by centrifugal force, and you can run an "elevator" or "climber" up the cable to orbit.

You could drop a satelite off at the geosynchronous orbit point, and have it in orbit without ever sending up an expensive and dangersous rocket. Or you could take it all the way out to the counterweight, and the centrifugal force would fling it to the moon or Mars or beyond.

It sounds like science fiction, or some crazy-assed stoner idea, but there are engineers and scientists working on it right now. The X Prize people are spnosoring contests related to developing parts of the technology, like the tether and the climbers.

Here are some links:

Space elevator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator)

The Space Elevator Reference brought to you by SpaceRef (http://www.spaceelevator.com/)

What do you think of this idea?

[mikeyjo]

I remember reading about different materials based on things like spiders silk that could provide the strength needed for the tether.

Would be great if they can get it figured out. It would make space exploration exponentially easier and cheaper.

[dragonrider]

I guess the biggest problem has always been to find a material that is strong enough and light enough that it could support it's own weight over the kind of distance involved.

Now they are working with carbon nanotubes --- microscopic tubes of carbon that have a single molecular structure. They are incredibly strong and light, and theoretically they could work as tether material. There are processes for making small amounts of the nanotubes, but no good maufacturing processes yet for actually making them into a tether. That is one technical hurdle that is probably not very far away from being solved.

[andruejaysin]

Carbon nanotubes are probably a near term possibility, but a space elevator might be further off than you think, geostatic orbits are over 20,000 miles up. That's compared to 200 for the space shuttle. It's not at all clear there is enough need to move stuff that high to justify the cost, even it is technically possible. Pretty much the only things that orbits that high are communication satellites.

[Number 1 DJ]

word i had read this in a popular science mag on the john once

[WaZ]

If we ever want to do things in space, then it's probably a good idea. There's also the issue of orbiting mass (I think there's a name for that?) colliding with it...