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| Science & Technology |
| Wanted: Inventors to Build Space Elevator |
| 2005-10-19 |
| A $50,000 contest aims to inspire new ways to hoist you and your luggage into orbit Space travel is relatively cheap compared with the cost of leaving Earth. The space shuttle, for instance, burns more than half a million gallons of fuel blasting into orbit, making every pound of payload cost $10,000. Now the nonprofit Spaceward Foundation, with a $400,000 grant from NASA, hopes to fast-track the technology to reach space on the cheap, without rockets. Later this month, the agency will host the 2005 Beam Power Challenge, a $50,000-prize contest to inspire the automated climbing machines and wireless power necessary to lift people and cargo into space on a 21st-century elevator cable. First imagined by Russian space pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1895, a space elevator consists of a thin, ultrastrong tether that would stretch from Earth's surface to geosynchronous orbit, a distance of about 22,300 miles. Laser or microwave beams would power elevator cars up the tether. The goal of the challenge, expected to take place at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, is a bit more modest: to send an automated climber, loaded with cargo, to the top of a 200-foot Kevlar-like tether at a rate of at least one meter per second. A 10-kilowatt xenon spotlight, shining upward from the base of the cable, will power each climber. The fastest climber toting the heaviest payload wins. Such a setup won't whisk you into orbit, but that's beside the point, says Spaceward Foundation director Ben Shelef. "It will get more minds working," he says. Below, Brad Edwards, author of The Space Elevator: A Revolutionary Earth-to-Space Transportation System, rates the favorites. continued at link... |
| Posted by:DanNY |
| #6 "Most recently, they've combined carbon nanotubes, one of the strongest substances known, with diamond, one of the hardest. What they will get from that is anybody's guess." Valkyrie pleasers? :) |
| Posted by: Threrert Slarong8575 2005-10-19 19:38 |
| #5 Many of these new materials really are amazing in how unnatural they are--the weird things they can do that just seem unreasonable. For example, they have a 1" diameter plastic rod that is many times stronger than a steel I-beam. A single such rod could form much of the verticle support of a multi-story building. On a more common note, I've seen a demonstration with an ordinary screw made from an extraordinary alloy. They smashed the screw with a sledge hammer, and then it re-formed to its original shape without a scratch. It healed itself. Other alloys are flexible at room temperature, but just a few degrees cooler and they violently return to the shape in which they were originally cast. Springs made of this alloy sit idle until cooled, then have almost instant tension or compression of many pounds psi. Most recently, they've combined carbon nanotubes, one of the strongest substances known, with diamond, one of the hardest. What they will get from that is anybody's guess. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-10-19 18:00 |
| #4 Was this idea conceived before or after the LSD party? |
| Posted by: The Happy Fliergerabwehrkannon 2005-10-19 17:24 |
| #3 The cables won't be made of steel, more likely a variant of carbon fibre. Go read Arthur C Clarke's "View from Serendip" or "Fountains of Paradise". |
| Posted by: DWMF 2005-10-19 14:30 |
| #2 beam me up, scotty. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-10-19 11:22 |
| #1 I don't imagine that a space elevator is possible--the forces in play are just too great. But that being said, I still heartily encourage the effort, because the subsidiary and spinoff possibilities are very possible, practical and economical. Oddly enough, the most ordinary of spinoff applications may prove to be the most profitable in the long run. For example, steel cable is terribly heavy, expensive, bulky and prone to corrosion. Replacing several tons of steel cable with a few pounds of carbon fiber cable that is twice as strong, creates cost savings in the billions of dollars. Granted, it will have problems that steel cable doesn't have, but it will be superior for many, many applications. And who knows? If they actually can make a practical space elevator, it would change everything. A spaceship the size of a destroyer can do a lot more than one the size of a school bus. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-10-19 11:21 |