Tom James @ 27-05-2009
In the same general theme as Keith Loftstrom’s launch loop concept [via Speaktomanagers] we have the Rotating Space Elevator:
Golubović and Knudsen have introduced the Rotating Space Elevator (RSE), a rotating system of a floppy string that forms an ellipse-like shape. Unlike the traditional Linear Space Elevator (LSE) made of a single straight cable at rest, the RSE rotates in a quasi-periodic state.
…
“The idea came by itself,” Golubović told PhysOrg.com. “I was thinking how to make things move easily and quickly up the traditional Tsiolkovsky-type space elevators. In my kitchen, I was mixing coffee in my cup too vigorously and the centrifugal force on the rotating coffee won over gravity to make some of the coffee lift and splash out the cup. This was my ‘eureka’ that lead to adding a similar conceptual feature to the old space elevator idea…
[via Next Big Future][image from Physorg]
Related posts
Tom James @ 16-03-2009
A classic Big Dumb Object is discussed in Short Sharp Science: a space elevator combined with a maglev launcher to propel prospective lunar colonists into orbit:
The lunar elevator doesn’t actually reach the regolith. Instead, the elevator ribbon ends 10 kilometres shy of the lunar surface so that no lunar mountain peaks hit the end, or terminus, of the orbiting elevator.
So how do astronauts make that 10 km jump to the elevator’s dangling tail? Easy: as the terminus passes overhead, they are fired in a magnetically levitated train along a track that’s been laid across the lunar plain and which gradually eases upwards to become vertical.
If they are fired at just the right time – and I wouldn’t like to be the person specifying or writing the software to do that, they are caught by some kind of robotic grappler at the terminus, which attaches the train to the ribbon.
[image from Hamed Saber on flickr]
Related posts
Tom James @ 23-01-2009
Space elevator prospects have improved with the development by Cambridge scientists of a method for creating longer, less brittle carbon nanotubes by combining multiple nanotube strands:
Currently, the Cambridge team can make about 1 gram of the new carbon material per day, which can stretch to 18 miles in length. Alan Windle, professor of materials science at Cambridge, says that industrial-level production would be required to manufacture NASA’s request for 144,000 miles of nanotube. Nevertheless, the web-like nanotube material is promising.
“The key thing is that the process essentially makes carbon into smoke, but because the smoke particles are long thin nanotubes, they entangle and hold hands,” Windle said. “We are actually making elastic smoke, which we can then wind up into a fiber.”
Also worth checking out some of the alternatives to traditional space elevators that aren’t so demanding of tensile strength, like Keith Lofstrom’s launch loop, an electromagnetically “inflated” orbital launch system. [thanks to Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)]
It’ll be fun to see which of these designs actually gets off the ground: just as long as they don’t get off the ground then return unexpectedly.
[from Physorg][image from neilbetter on flickr]
Related posts
Tom James @ 05-01-2009
A nice confluence of Clarkian techno-positivism and 21st century orbital solar power in this post on Short Sharp Science:
There’s another slight problem: the elevator doesn’t exist.
And neither do the supermaterials that could make it a reality. The elevator community’s oft-quoted carbon nanotube fibres languish in labs unable to stretch more than a few tens of centimetres without breaking.
All the more reason, says Swan, to get serious research into elevator technology underway. “We should initiate the space elevator project now and have the space solar power people buy into the concept that we’ll have one by 2030 and start planning for it. Instead of a 50-year horizon, let’s have a 20-year one.”
Stirring stuff. The space elevator is in the class of things I definitely hope to see within my lifetime.
[from Short Sharp Science][image from tanakawho on flickr]
Related posts
Paul Raven @ 19-10-2007
This week sees the 2007 Space Elevator Games taking place near Salt Lake City, Utah; contestants from all over the world will be attempting to break records with their climber, tether and power transmission system designs in an attempt to win the $1million prize. Think what you like about the feasibility of space elevators, but you can’t deny the almost Quixotic glory of such an event – a testament to the human ability to dream big. Follow the progress of the event at the aptly-named Space Elevator Blog, which has been posting vigorously on the preliminary rounds. [Image from SpaceElevatorBlog]
Related posts
