Space Elevator Not Gonna Happen

What about the hundreds or even thousands of lower orbit satellites (including the GPS ones)? One hit and either one or both is destroyed.

You don't think that can be avoided? How do they keep sats from running into each other any other time?

Rick C.

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Of course I did. What has that go to do with space elevators?

And magical forces might come into it if the entire platform was built around a giant unicorn.

sonances would be immense. You would end up with a standing wave from here to space

There might be problems with vibrational modes, but they wouldn't be immens e.

The obvious analogy is to the CO2 molecule, which has two stretching modes

- symmetrical and asymmetrical - and two bending modes (in the x- and y-pla nes respectively).

The stretching modes would be excited by solar tides and lunar tides, and w ould presumably be actively damped by moveable counter-weights (crawling up and down the cable) about half-way down to earth and halfway out to the sp ace end of the structure.

The bending modes would be harder to deal with. A large current loop in the equatorial plane about half way down to earth could deal with bending mode s in one plane, but not the plane most likely to be active. Ion thrusters a t the half way stations would probably be the preferred solution.

The bit of the cable in the atmosphere would damp the bending modes a littl e, but very little.

Torsional modes of oscillation are obviously possible, but there's no obvio us way of exciting them, and a lossy coupling between a mass wrapped around the cable at the geostationary orbital height would probably provide enoug h passive damping.

moving/extensible tether

I explained that a few posts back, caused by conservation of angular momentum as you reel the tether in the system starts to spin faster - (it's already spinning once per sidereal day) when it gets much shorter it spins much faster.

Not going to work. there's nothing strong enough to make a uniform loop from. the existing plans use a tapered tether.

Sorry, DLU#1's design: moving/extensible tether

I explained that a few posts back, caused by conservation of angular momentum as you reel the tether in the system starts to spin faster - (it's already spinning once per sidereal day) when it gets much shorter it spins much faster.

yeah, those were your exact words when you dismissed a permanent tether.

No, Clarke belt. when this thing spins up. There's a lot of angular momentum there

Why would you reel the cable in??? Once it is in place it would be left in place.

Rick C.

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There's nothing strong enough to make a single tether either.

It's all a fantasy anyway. Why not fantasize about something that would solve a lot of the many problems with this device. Let's thread it and corkscrew stuff into space.

I haven't seen any estimates of how much money would be required to research/develop/manufacture/install this device. And how much energy would be consumed in the process. Maybe we'd save enough money on rocket fuel to pay it all back...someday, maybe...

The more I think about it, the more questions I have. What keeps cracks from propagating as this thing whips around in the atmosphere? I can't imagine making a crack-free cable 20 thousand miles long. And how do you splice shorter sections together?

I wouldn't it's DLU#1's plan.

John S wrote in news:q357e2$ouv$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Wow, Johnny... none of us here would possibly know that a collision causes damage.

Go get a replacement for your sunken rubber duck, so you can go back to sitting in the tub. You are too childish to attempt playing with the big boys. If you were once mature, that went out the window when you hard wired yourself as an asshole.

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

What he is saying is that the platform sits at geosynchronous space orbit with a whole bunch of moving LEO orbit device flying past in the space between your platform and the Earth.

This is why my "deploy at time of use" idea would be one of the only feasible methods.

To get right down to it, we would be better off suspending a platform in high altitude air with balloons and launching with reduced requisite boosters since there is less of a jump to get into space.

Or have an acceleration ramp up a mountain slope leading to a 'soft' railgun finish push to space.

Idea C could be used to send water to the moon too. Maybe keep us from drowning in our stupidity about the water on this globe too.

snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Like I said. A punk f*ck like you onviously knows nothing about gyroscopes.

Jasen Betts wrote in news:q363fo$62p$6 @gonzo.alcatraz:

Spins up? It is not a satellite, ya dope.

I actually know quite a bit, but the obvious thing I know - and that you don't - is that gyroscopes don't have anything to do with bean-stalk style space elevators.

Do try to learn the elementary details of the stuff you pontificate about. You'd look less like like a twit if you did.

snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Except that I specififcally stated that it would NOT be a 'beanstalk style space elevator'.

I guess your vocabulary is severely limited. Try looking up the word 'hoist'. Need more help? Try rope hoist.

snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

You are no part of any 'we'.

And in this thread, "WE" are talking about a tether hoist.

You are an abject idiot.