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Thread: Space Elevators - SciFi is becoming RealityNonFi

  1. #31
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    "Suck Mary-Beth Suck!! Blow is just a figure of speech!!!"

  2. #32
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    Right, now we have that out of the way, thanks for the topic Squeak. The Wikipedia site is pretty good and has grown since I last read it.

    There are all sorts of interesting science projects which we have the capacity but not the political will to explore. Fusion reactors, anti-matter, and space elevators are but 3 examples.

    Jerry Pournelle told the US Congress in the 1970s that if they took the money from nuclear weapons development and devoted it to fusion power, we'd have working reactors today. Pournelle is a visionary scientist and Sc-fi author whose writings about the edges of scientific discovery are well worth reading.

  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by Winston001 View Post
    Essentially the lift/tether is hundreds of kilometers long,
    Try 50,000 km plus long
    The center of mass of the entire cable / terminus /counterweight system is in a geosynchronous orbit,which has to be 42245 km from the earth.
    The actual counterweight itself is further out,at a distance that is dependent on what size asteroid that can be captured and manoeuvred into orbit

  4. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by Steam View Post
    It's an elevator, so the most practical idea is that it has a counterweight, so some stuff goes up and some goes back down to earth.

    The systems in design at the moment don't use a counter weight like a elevator in a building.That would require 84490 km of cable.

    Quote Originally Posted by Steam View Post
    Otherwise it's going to take exactly the same amount of energy as a shuttle launch to get a payload into orbit.
    less the energy needed to lift the weight of the space shuttle and fuel

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