Although I heard about this concept via science fiction many years ago, I wasn't aware how far the materials research had got since then. People were talking about Kevlar at that time. This really sounds quite practical. Space awaits us!
@@robertgraybeard3750 but you can't build a space elevator on the moon because geostationary (celestostationary? lunostationary?) orbit for the moon is outside it's sphere of influence
@Fredrik: I agree with you that investors from the valley could be inspired to take that technical development risk, there is a lot of ROI in it for them.....
"how do you send 140,000 tonnes to GEO?" You send up 20 tons -- full length but very thin, unreel it down to the surface, then send up a tiny robot that add a single strand to it. The next robot can be a bit larger, adds more. Repeat several hundred times.
that doesn't solve the problem that every kilometer lower it gets it will start deviating from going straight down and move off to the side at ever-increasing velocity
@@alt8791 I am unable to make head nor tails of your comment. I don't know what "it" is; the robot that is adding strands to the cable is going up from ground level. Also, why would anything "deviate off to the side?" Gravity pulls straight down, toward the center of the Earth. My comment summarizes the results of a great deal of analysis and design by a hundred or so people who collectively know a great deal about physics, strength of materials, etc. We had annual conferences with participants like Arthur C. Clarke and Paul Allen.
@@BobMunck here's the deal: the tether, if being lowered from space (the most reasonable option), will descend from Geostationary. As it descends, its altitude will decrease, increasing its orbital velocity. This will cause it to move ahead of the endpoint. Eventually, the tether may snap/wrap around the planet/other bad things. This isn't a project-killing problem, but it's still one that is far more complex than it seems at first glance.
@@alt8791 No, the entire construct -- tether and delivery vehicle -- is in GEOSTATIONARY ORBIT. The fact that the bottom end of the tether is moving down where orbital velocity is higher doesn't mean that that part of the tether will move faster; it's not in orbit at those altitudes. Where would the energy come from to make that part of the tether move faster? If things worked the way you're postulating, every satellite in orbit would start to spin, because all of them have some part that is lower than the altitude that the entire object is orbiting at (and some part that's higher). Believe me, people at NASA and ESA (I've worked for both) have worked this out and done experiments with tethers in orbit.
Correct. Even without a counterweight, the part of the cable above geostationary orbit has to be longer than the part below due to the weakening of Earth's gravity with distance. With a counterweight, shorter outer cable lengths could be used, but would require progressively larger weights. Eventually one would reach the point where the cable stops at geostationary orbit with an infinitely massive weight.
What intrigues me is what will replace this technology? It hasn't been done to the point of building the first operational elevator; rather all the separate lines of research for the various components are being developed. The mega-structures for the sea based platforms, the high output electric trolleys or linear maglevs , even the software systems for working out gravitational and servo-mechanical tensions for running these kinds of systems. It's not just nanotubes as much as it is also 'emergence & convergence' towards a very adaptive transportation and support structure that has far more reaching uses. But what will replace it? We still have horses and row boats... but not that much cultural dependency for them as principal transport.
After watching Gundam 00, where Earth succeeded to build 3 space-elevators and a ring of solar panel, i wondered if it could be possible. Well, it seems almost possible. Fascinating.
Fascinating talk. I've been reading and keeping my eye on space elevator development for a while now. What I want to know is how theoretical the idea of "roping" the carbon nanotubes is. Has it been tested? Also would've liked an update on the status of what would propel the elevator up-presumably the LaserMotive system that won the Nasa prize.
Austin Rogers There are various groups looking at spinning/roping, most prominently Rice University (USA) and University of Beijng (China). Nobody has been able to produce a long rope with the strength of a single fibre, yet. Indeed, the propulsion is a fascinating aspect in the elevator and I am very thrilled by the progress in the various competitions. At some point I will have to look into the latest on the elevator, again. Last time I checked was already a year ago.
I don't care how strong the carbon nanotubes are, I guarantee they're not strong enough to withstand a 500-lb satellite slamming into them at 8 kilometers per second
What you were told about tension is correct if the rope itself doesn't experience any forces through the middle. If you're playing tug-of-war, then you have 10 people all pulling on the rope in different places. As the rope passes each person, the tension increases by the amount that person tugs. It is similar with with gravity acting on a space elevator. Tension changes with height because of the rope's own weight. Most efficient engineering is to keep constant tension per area.
2013 Space Elevator Conference will be held at Seattle's Museum of Flight from August 23-25. Conference is organized by ISEC - International Space Elevator Consortium. There is also a Space Elevator group in Japan - Japan Space Elevator Agency and one in Europe - EuroSpaceward. You can also read the Space Elevator Blog or the Space Elevator Reference.
tourism, infrastructure of space-bourne resources, education (student opportunities), etc. Due to recent manufacturing methods, the cost wont be near that much, however still expensive. But cost overtime is much less than current tech. The more the services are used, the lower the cost will be until cost balances with simple maintanence and demand.
The SE will be 1-2 meters wide and the thickness of a piece of paper. If it breaks, it'll mostly burn up in the atmosphere and what's left will flutter down harmlessly.
finally someone else has the idea of a "space crane". Had this idea years ago and was wondering why haven't seen anyone else speak about it till now, instead of the old space-*tower*-elevator thing.. I also assume the cable would reach a mountain top so it doesnt need to be as long / heavy or we could do a hybrid tower / space crane. or big floating blimp + space crane... and even cable(s) with blimp like balloons attached in segments to help the weight issue.
Nope, the extra distance is meaningless over 144,000 klicks. It will be attached to a floating platform at the equator. The platform will be the size of a very large ship and be very mobile, and be able to move at least 200 kilometres in any direction, so that it can maneuver out of the way of large tropical cyclones which are common at the equator. You can't attach anything to the cable, as it would prevent the climbers working on it! The climbers would have the ability to stop and climb over each other, so that trips are always leaving and departing. The ultimate expression of the elevator is the globe-spanning diamond towers Arthur C describes in 3001.
Chris Davies Everyone thinks that it sould be on a mobile platform on the water but I disagree with that. When you have it on the water no matter what it would not even be close to as stable as it would be as if it was connected to land. Also how would you purpose that we would not touch the cable to be able to go into space. You don't show much logic in your answer
Unfortunately the link doesn't work, can you check? Regarding your other question: I think there are many engineering challenges left for building the elevator. We should start tackling them after we will have solved the material problem - that should be our focus for now.
Some benefits would be making it possible to mine the moon and other bodies for resources not commonly found on earth ( Helium-3 for example) , also space-based solar power which is vastly more effective (as you have no clouds, and no night interfering),
I mean, Project Orion as used as a launch vehicle from earth might be more dangerous to the environment/onlookers, but this thing is fatal for any crew that (attempt to) use it (before a satellite hits it and it comes tumbling back down to earth).
That said, I think that similar project could pursued on planets with lower mass, such as Mars. The population density on a secondary planet will never reach Earth's, and the lower gravity makes this structure way more feasible.
You could probably flywheel gyrostabilise the lifts to negate the amount of pull on the cable to increase your max payload and perhaps even help climb it.
Great point. I have seen the elevator games climbers oscillating a lot when going up. Gyros certainly would help in that. They cannot, however, reduce the tension on the wire.
Swim in space like you do in the sea,use the air to minimize the weight by splitting and joining the "rope". Share space,earths atmosphere and ground. Combine combine combine Don't think all as one and you can have your space crane.
Don't build the elevator all the way to the ground. Hang a deck halfway through the atmosphere or whatever length materials can tolerate. Pick up passengers there and take them into space. Perhaps such a deck could hang low enough for airships to reach it?
Couldn't one use shorter nanotubes if you could make the nanotubes bond with each other, rather than simply relying on them not slipping past each other?
Awesome talk. Before nanotubes, Arthur C. Clarke thought "Carbon 60" was to be the material that would make it possible. I guess he meant buckyballs. It's the strength in carbon bonding anyway. It was interesting to find out about zig-zag, armchair and chiral in Drexler's book on nanotech.
Actually, to me, it is. I think that the sheer size of such a structure poses way more problem than he present in his short TED talk. I saw a few models/simulations of the cable rupturing at different parts, and in many cases a good deal of the cable would land on earth, crashing down with huge speed, and mass. A structure hitting the surface with the mass of the Golden Gate with large speed would be devastating for millions of people. A rocket failure can be handled better.
A recent patent will allow space elevators to be built with current materials. It has multiple tethers at its center ( for greatest strength ) and fewer tethers as you move away from center ( for lesser amounts of mass ). Liftport has plans to build a Lunar elevator from current material. Using the same material for an Earth based elevator would reach the lunar gravity center (about 9,000 km AGL) approx. 1/6 G. Add this new concept and you could reach Earth's surface. We can do this now. Let's get started. What do you think?
I might have missed this in the presentation. But is there a timeframe when we could have this elevator fully operational, years,decades, centuries? Or do Google have to fund another X-prize to make this happen? :
you might have missed the real inventor of the space elevator, papa markus inventing the space drone elevator using artificial machene intelligence! there is NO timeframe where markus langraf is not a thief of ideas
Unfortunately there is no concrete program or dedicated research on the elevator cable. It applies what was said in the talk: We'll have the elevator about ten years after everybody will have stopped laughing. We are still laughing ...... Seriously, I beliebewe can build
Can help , the ISS Tracker to find out , the lost , Blackbox data . of the plane crashes. in the Oceans ? can you give me the answer,s of this questions .
I see the problem as economic. You're talking about something hugely exprensive ~ 100 Trillion The benefits are putting satellites in orbit, building a platform for further space projects, etc. Granted, it would be great to have, but I don't see the benefits justifying those kinds of resources.
it'll be fun when it gets hit by a starlink or OneWeb satellite traveling at 8km/s relative speed and sends the cable crashing down to earth. or a dead kosmos satellite. or the ISS. or WorldView-2. Or an Iridium satellite. Or a spent Delta II upper stage. Or really just anything.
June 27, 2013: 50cm long nanotubes Yingying Zhang, an Associate Professor at Tsinghua's Center for Nano and Micro Electronics, and co-author of the paper, tells Nanowerk. "Based on our findings, we successfully synthesized half-meter long carbon nanotubes, which, so far, are the longest in der the world.
wrong. it's bad. this space elevator was stolen from the home of papa markus ten years ago by the tyrant markus landgraf. if we all rise up we can return it to it's rightful owner papa markus.
While we are waiting for the space elevator we could put our recycled aluminum cans and plastic soda bottles to good use by building an orbital ring in near earth orbit. A ring around the earth would be weightless because the gravitational forces cancel out even when the ring is far from centered. The tremendous gravitational forces that would try to collapse the ring can be cancelled by spinning the ring at about 8000 m/sec. But then how do you connect a cable to such a spinning ring? A large platform electrostatically elevated on the top of the ring could support many tons of rope and cargo. A large plastic ring around the inner aluminum ring would prevent the metal ring from becoming electrically neutralized by the many charged particles that would be attracted towards the ring. At one ton per kilometer, a 40,000 kilometer ring would weigh about as much as ten space shuttle missions. A few space factories could produce the pipes and other parts. Over two million tons of plastic bottles and jars are discarded in a single year.
it is not that simple because of the moon, even if the gravity of the earth acts neutrally on the ring the moons gravity would shift it and would result in it eventually being pulled in by the earth due to the sides not being equally distanced from the center of the gravitational pull.
Howdy Pr Um. I guess the trip would be around $300/kg or so. Still a lot, but much better than the $20000/kg we pay today. Where to go? Well, like said in the talk, if you let go from the end it's all the way to Saturn due to the slingshot. Letting go from other places takes you to the Moon, Mars, Jupiter. Of course you will need a rocket engine at arrival.....
you would go to a space station, conveniently located in the middle of the Van Allen Belts, where you would be fried by the radiation of you spent more than a few days there.
The cable no matter what it's made out of has to be continuously made stretching 100 miles long with varying thicknesses throughout the entire cable then you have to come up with a way to wrap it all up and pack it all into a rocket and put it in orbit with a mechanism to unroll it down...... I believe that's possible.
+dokkiro Although I cannot claim I have researched the subject, it seems the idea would be to grow a portion of the cable once in space. I (we) will have to research the development of tech on growing it in zero-G (which seems to never be mentioned in space elevator videos / overviews for non scientists of the field...)
OneillSG7 Actually I was being sarcastic. Although I do believe it's possible, I do think we would be living on Mars or Venus long before this is ever built. Then again I would have said it's impossible for computer to beat human in playing Go just 5 years ago.
the only way that the cable could be made and used in this kind of idea is to make it in space on a space station that is maid to use rotation to artificially create a gravity field that the cable could be made in. the way of getting it from orbit to the surface though is nearly impossible though unless you could figure out a way to remove the affects of the atmosphere on reentry for both the cable and the ship that helps guide it down to the surface.
Why make the counter weight beyond geo-stationary orbit a long cable? If you are suffering diminishing returns in terms of G force the further out you go, would it not make more sense to use bulk mass a short distance above the geo-orbit?
+Dan Rob Is it maybe that the counterweight has to be in the atmosphere of some other planet, that the g force pulls it the opposite way you know.? Other thought: maybe a compromise of weight and centrifugal acceleration
Dion Blaster That's just a little less crazy, but still insane :D ^ Where are you going to find a planet that would have a matching orbit with the elevator?
its bullshit, yeah alone for the reason that the weight would have to spin with the planet. In fact the counterweight or rope has to avoid being in some gravity field of another planet :D.. The centrifugal force is the key.
why does the cable have to go up from the geostationary point? why must the cable be 144,000km long? i though it only needed to be 22000km long to get to geostationary orbit
Howdy, length is not a problem. You could build it only to the 36000km to GEO, but then you'd need a counter weight on the other side. Having just more cable of the same mass (as the counter weight) on the other side does not increase the tension (which is the critical parameter), but gives you the opportunity to climb it up (down) to reach the Moon and the planets.
2112design But the counterweight must be further out than geostationary orbit to pull the cable tight with centrifugal force. Think about it - the cable below geostationary orbit is not moving at orbital speed so it would fall to Earth otherwise.
@@robertgraybeard3750 If the center of mass is farther out than geostationary, even by a little bit, it will lag behind the ground station until it eventually snaps the cable.
@@alt8791 No, it won't. The location of the center of mass is largely irrelevant. The SE is not in orbit; it's attached to the Earth and held up by centrifugal force acting on the counterweight. Centrifugal force, by its very nature, points directly away from the center of rotation of the Earth; there are no forces acting on the SE to make it move laterally.
Bob Munck I thought that by nature the COM would have to be in geostationary. Isn’t that the whole point of the counterweight? If not, why bother with the counterweight at all, given that centrifugal force will hold it out at any altitude?
The space elevator idea is outdated. The orbital ring idea is the new height of efficient methods to leave earth's surface and it does not even require super strong materials to build.
I dont' think so. It would be a great way to test out the functionality of the device. Besides that landing with a rocket propelled device always bears some risks. It does not necessarily need to be the moon. Just something with low gravity
area78 Well, the reason a space elevator would be easier on the moon is the weaker gravity there. You could build one with existing materials, but you wouldn't have proven anything really since cable material IS the main difficulty. It will also be an extremely costly project nonetheless and has little practical use because we're not trying to get off the moon.
Space elevators require the end of the tether to be in geostationary orbit so that it hovers over one spot. The moon rotates so slowly that where "geostationary" (I know the term doesn't really work for the moon, because geo=earth and all that, but...) orbit would be is outside the moon's gravitational influence, rendering space elevators there impossible.
Yes, it is and would be of great help getting down to and back up from the surface of the Moon. Interestingly, the ways Lunar SEs are held up are different from an Earth SE. The latter is held up by the rotation of the Earth putting centrifugal force on the counterweight. A Lunar SE on the far side of the Moon would also be held up by centrifugal force, but it would be caused by the rotation of the Moon around the Earth, not the rotation of the Moon. A Lunar SE on the near side of the Moon wouldn't be held up by centrifugal force at all but by the Earth's gravity. It would be along the line between the centers of the Earth and Moon and would have a counterweight a little bit closer to Earth than the L1 Lagrange Point. L1 is the point where the gravity of the two bodies is equal (and in opposite directions). This happens about 85% of the way from the center of the Earth to the center of the Moon, or 56,314 km above the Moon's surface. So a Lunar SE would be about 60-65,000 km long. Note that it would be relatively easy to travel between the Earth's surface and the Lunar counterweight, much easier than all the way to the Moon's surface.
Yeah - that one was bad! I'll do better next time - promise. Anyway - the tulip remark was referring to an earlier talk, which was given in german. Just to let you know.
Markus Landgraf it just seems odd and unnatural when people try to make jokes at these things... imo.... so when are we going to see an actual space elevator and which country you think will be the 1st one to build one.... also what is going to happen when you got extreme temperature change? the higher you go it will get colder but in space the sun will get really hot.....
Well, space has no "temperature". It's not cold- nor is it hot. The cable will have a temperature: about 150K when in eclipse (of the Sun by the Earth) and 450K when in the Sun. These temperatures are acceptable to carbon nanotubes. The cabin will have thermal control on the outside (like any spacecraft) and air-conditioning on the inside.
What's sad is that we are still relying on primitive technologies based on decades ago and aren't inventing new technologies that are much more effective in all scopes. For instance, motors and wheels. These are actually a primitive type of tech, to have something that transcend that, is to look into bioscience, to have something that can be powered in other means, to do things that a motor and wheel can do, but also more. Robotics currently have robo cranes with motors and gears (wheels in a sense), if we have bioengineering make robotic machinery that doesn't use motors and gears and replace them with another more efficient technology, then that is how we make the next step to space elevators. For instance a human arm bends and moves using a muscular system, powered biologically. Rather than looking at artificial body parts for amputees, i'm thinking of giant robotic arms that can be remotely controlled like a human's. In short: We need robotic muscles? io9.gizmodo.com/scientists-just-created-some-of-the-most-powerful-muscl-1526957560
Why one cable? If we instead built seperate platforms floating ontop of helium tanks, tethered to eachother, and the top platform large enough to launch spaceships, couldn't that first of all be realized with today's technology, and second, wouldn't it pave the way for that 140.000 tonne nanotube cable we need for a "real" space elevator, when the time comes? I don't know why we are not launching from air ships today, since in comparison to rockets it takes very little effort and money to reach quite a height.
+Chris Savage Because reaching orbital height is not nearly as difficult as reaching orbital velocity and using airships adds tons of complication to an already difficult problem with little benefit.
Yeah...not to mention the butterfly effect. With a shockwave from the mass and distance fallen by the sheer weight of the cable crashing into earth, who knows how many tremers/future earthquakes/tsunamis that will cause!
I think NASA should scrap all of their meager efforts to efficiently exploit loe for research and exploration purposes and concentrate their efforts into developing the materials and technology needed to exploit space cable systems AND efficiently harvest,store and transmit solar energy. Literally been there done that, if we are not going beyond the Moon then beyond certain jpl missions and asteroid and comet mapping and control efforts then all resources should be concentrated on this effort.
+Michael Southcott I agree. Because of NASA's funding, they would need to do a joint effort with multiple space organizations, or contract the public's help. Which is what I thought would happen if NASA wanted to do anything beyond probes, but then SpaceX and the others cropped up. They aren't focusing on space elevators, they are making profit off of payload launches on regular rockets. Because NASA's contracts with boeing and others aren't getting men into space, except for the old way. Virgin wants to do passenger spaceplane trips. SpaceX doing unmanned payload launches, and developing a crew capsule (the one thing NASA has managed to clung to designing). It seems clear that we need to let go of rockets altogether - and a space elevator is the way to go. But my question is, will NASA ever be able to do it? Or are we waiting on other private companies? Why is no one more concerned with the obvious short, mid, and long-term solution that is leaving rockets behind for space elevators?
+Michael southcott Your statement is rather extreme - NASA is involved in many research projects and I'm certain all will contribute to the expansion of the human race into space. Also, there is the asteroid impact danger - they have to find all the big NEOs - they've found about 90% of the ones that could cause civilization to collapse - plus they have to find all the medium sized ones that could merely destroy a city - they've found about 1% of them. And they have to develop ways with dealing with an asteroid on a collision course. So far as a space elevator is concerned, one for the Moon will be a lot easier - it could be build using Kevlar. The lunar space elevator will be different in one other way, it will use Earth's gravity acting on the counterweight rather than centrifugal force. Then building the infrastructure for lunar mining and exportation will facilitate building a space elevator for the Earth.
no it is not safe, think of when power lines break. they thrash around damaging what they hit, it would be a lot like that but much more damaging and would most likely break into multiple pieces when it is let through the atmosphere due to the affects of reentry.
140,000 tonnes x $4.2 million/tonne to send to space with a Spacex rocket = $588 Billion dollar to send into space... spacex can carry 21 tonnes into geo sync orbit, so 140,000/21= 6,666 launches... if they launched one rocket per day, this would take 18 years to get all this stuff into space. That's not including the cable unreeling unit. I think they need to re-think this one.
+Eric Denne The plan is to launch a very thin seed cable weighing about 140 tons with a single heavy lift rocket. From there you can use cable wagons to deploy more strands as they run up and down the elevator (the growth would be exponential; thicker cable = more additional strands per run). This is possible since all strands share the load in parallel.
There's a vsauce about this... I think he said it reduces the cost from $20,000EUD to about $1,000EUD per kilogram. So it's quite significant. More importantly, you have to remember that you could feasibly use this system to launch a spacecraft from GSO and gain considerable range improvement upon an Earth launched rocket. Distance is currently limited because we use about 90% (don't quote me on exact numbers here) of the rocket fuel (which is also the heaviest element in the rocket) just breaking atmo. ^_^
Sorry for the late reply, I'm reading this only once a year. At TEDx I couldn't talk about some of the details. The idea would be to send a pilot cable, which is used to pull up thousands of more strands.
Markus Landgraf Question: the force that acts at the nano scale and allows you to spin small nano tubes into fibers doesn't act at 18cm scale. So how would you spin them into a cable if you grow the at the length?
Good question. The spinning exploits the van-der-Waals forces to connect individual fibers. The fibers themselves are strong due to their chemical structure. Now the van-der-Waals forces are proportional to the contact surface of neighbouring fibers. If fibers are very long (i.e. 10 - 100cm), the van-der-Waals forces exceed the chemical bound strength. That is when it becomes easier to rupture an individual fiber than to separate two fibers.
@@odril you still haven't accounted for the simple fact of orbital mechanics that *every satellite below geostationary orbit* will hit the tether. I don't care what magic future materials you've dreamt up, I know for a fact they can't withstand constant nuclear blasts.
@@alt8791 True. There was no time in the TED talk to address it. The canonical answer is that the oscillations of the cable must be managed in any case, because climbing and descending vehicles will initiate oscillations. The way this is done by exploiting the mobility of the base on the Earth's surface. My moving the anchor by ~100 to 1000m back and forth the cable's oscillations can be precisely managed. The amplitudes are sufficient to avoid any tracked object (including operational satellites and space debris larger than 10cm). There are currently about 100,000 objects of this size in orbit. It sounds a lot, but there is a lot of space up there. From experience with the ISS I'd say there will have to be one avoidance manoeuvre per week. Objects smaller than 10cm will hit the cable and it has to be designed for this. This is done by constructing the ribbon with multiple, inter-connected strands. If one strand breaks, the others can take the load. Once the broken strand is detected, a repair team goes up in a special cabin and fixes that segment of the ribbon. Still, our biggest problem is the material strength.
Allot of hype and no explanation of how it would be strung. Just dropping down from geosync orbit wouldn't work. Something would be needed to guide the cable where it needed to go and keep it from being dragged.
+Michael Holloway Why wouldn't it work? The gravitational force on the one end and the centrifugal force on the other end will pull the cable straight, all one needs to to is controlling the speed of release at the spool to keep the center of mass at geosynchronous orbit.
+maximkazhenkov11 Oh come now. Translation doesn't make my meaning that hard to understand. No one, that I can find, not even Arthur C., has offered a guess on how the cable can be placed there stretching from a high geosync orbit down to a single, safe, point anchor on the surface. Yes, once it is there it is easy to conceive that it will work, but how do you get it there? Anything between an end in geosync and the ground would require energy and complex maneuvering to maintain position between those points. It's just like a TED lecture to leave the messy details to some future nerdy schleps, but the prominent absence of those details make me less than enthused.
Michael Holloway "not even Arthur C." He is a science fiction author, so not the place you would normally look for detailed engineering solutions. There are detailed studies performed by NASA covering most engineering aspects of the space elevator, including the cable deployment: www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/472Edwards.pdf The whole of Chapter 5 deals with cable deployment from GEO.
this is a ripoff of papa markus and his space elevator. curse you markus landgraf you stole his idea AND his name?! What's next, his firstborn?! give papa markus credit for this theodore talk as soon as possible and a handwritten letter of apology. markus landgraf i am watching you
Am i the only one who actually thought he was way funnier than the crowd thought he was.
+Danny Kidane Yeah I kept thinking "those ppl in the front row should be lol'ing"
German audience. They have a special "sense" of humour
OneillSG7 - that would be l'ing ol!
Indeed I like his academical humour, also nice to brush up on the German
I like tulips
This is pure madness, for obvious reasons.
Although I heard about this concept via science fiction many years ago, I wasn't aware how far the materials research had got since then. People were talking about Kevlar at that time. This really sounds quite practical. Space awaits us!
David Chandlee - Kevlar will work for the Moon and Mars, their gravity is much less than Earth's.
@@robertgraybeard3750 but you can't build a space elevator on the moon because geostationary (celestostationary? lunostationary?) orbit for the moon is outside it's sphere of influence
@Fredrik: I agree with you that investors from the valley could be inspired to take that technical development risk, there is a lot of ROI in it for them.....
"how do you send 140,000 tonnes to GEO?"
You send up 20 tons -- full length but very thin, unreel it down to the surface, then send up a tiny robot that add a single strand to it. The next robot can be a bit larger, adds more. Repeat several hundred times.
that doesn't solve the problem that every kilometer lower it gets it will start deviating from going straight down and move off to the side at ever-increasing velocity
@@alt8791 I am unable to make head nor tails of your comment. I don't know what "it" is; the robot that is adding strands to the cable is going up from ground level. Also, why would anything "deviate off to the side?" Gravity pulls straight down, toward the center of the Earth. My comment summarizes the results of a great deal of analysis and design by a hundred or so people who collectively know a great deal about physics, strength of materials, etc. We had annual conferences with participants like Arthur C. Clarke and Paul Allen.
@@BobMunck here's the deal: the tether, if being lowered from space (the most reasonable option), will descend from Geostationary. As it descends, its altitude will decrease, increasing its orbital velocity. This will cause it to move ahead of the endpoint. Eventually, the tether may snap/wrap around the planet/other bad things. This isn't a project-killing problem, but it's still one that is far more complex than it seems at first glance.
@@alt8791 No, the entire construct -- tether and delivery vehicle -- is in GEOSTATIONARY ORBIT. The fact that the bottom end of the tether is moving down where orbital velocity is higher doesn't mean that that part of the tether will move faster; it's not in orbit at those altitudes. Where would the energy come from to make that part of the tether move faster?
If things worked the way you're postulating, every satellite in orbit would start to spin, because all of them have some part that is lower than the altitude that the entire object is orbiting at (and some part that's higher). Believe me, people at NASA and ESA (I've worked for both) have worked this out and done experiments with tethers in orbit.
by giving papa markus his design back!
Correct. Even without a counterweight, the part of the cable above geostationary orbit has to be longer than the part below due to the weakening of Earth's gravity with distance. With a counterweight, shorter outer cable lengths could be used, but would require progressively larger weights. Eventually one would reach the point where the cable stops at geostationary orbit with an infinitely massive weight.
incorrect. papa markus is god
What intrigues me is what will replace this technology? It hasn't been done to the point of building the first operational elevator; rather all the separate lines of research for the various components are being developed. The mega-structures for the sea based platforms, the high output electric trolleys or linear maglevs , even the software systems for working out gravitational and servo-mechanical tensions for running these kinds of systems. It's not just nanotubes as much as it is also 'emergence & convergence' towards a very adaptive transportation and support structure that has far more reaching uses. But what will replace it?
We still have horses and row boats... but not that much cultural dependency for them as principal transport.
After watching Gundam 00, where Earth succeeded to build 3 space-elevators and a ring of solar panel, i wondered if it could be possible. Well, it seems almost possible.
Fascinating.
Fascinating talk. I've been reading and keeping my eye on space elevator development for a while now. What I want to know is how theoretical the idea of "roping" the carbon nanotubes is. Has it been tested? Also would've liked an update on the status of what would propel the elevator up-presumably the LaserMotive system that won the Nasa prize.
Austin Rogers There are various groups looking at spinning/roping, most prominently Rice University (USA) and University of Beijng (China). Nobody has been able to produce a long rope with the strength of a single fibre, yet. Indeed, the propulsion is a fascinating aspect in the elevator and I am very thrilled by the progress in the various competitions. At some point I will have to look into the latest on the elevator, again. Last time I checked was already a year ago.
I don't care how strong the carbon nanotubes are, I guarantee they're not strong enough to withstand a 500-lb satellite slamming into them at 8 kilometers per second
What you were told about tension is correct if the rope itself doesn't experience any forces through the middle. If you're playing tug-of-war, then you have 10 people all pulling on the rope in different places. As the rope passes each person, the tension increases by the amount that person tugs.
It is similar with with gravity acting on a space elevator. Tension changes with height because of the rope's own weight. Most efficient engineering is to keep constant tension per area.
well, what YOU were told about the space elevator is INCORRECT. PAPA MARKUS INVENTED IT AND DESERVES ALL THE CREDIT AND SPÄTZLE
I like your forward thinking and I agree it would be bad to miss out on this historic opportunity due to the usual 21st century can't-be-done-itis.
2013 Space Elevator Conference will be held at Seattle's Museum of Flight from August 23-25. Conference is organized by ISEC - International Space Elevator Consortium. There is also a Space Elevator group in Japan - Japan Space Elevator Agency and one in Europe - EuroSpaceward. You can also read the Space Elevator Blog or the Space Elevator Reference.
tourism, infrastructure of space-bourne resources, education (student opportunities), etc. Due to recent manufacturing methods, the cost wont be near that much, however still expensive. But cost overtime is much less than current tech. The more the services are used, the lower the cost will be until cost balances with simple maintanence and demand.
The SE will be 1-2 meters wide and the thickness of a piece of paper. If it breaks, it'll mostly burn up in the atmosphere and what's left will flutter down harmlessly.
finally someone else has the idea of a "space crane".
Had this idea years ago and was wondering why haven't seen anyone else speak about it till now, instead of the old space-*tower*-elevator thing..
I also assume the cable would reach a mountain top so it doesnt need to be as long / heavy or we could do a hybrid tower / space crane. or big floating blimp + space crane... and even cable(s) with blimp like balloons attached in segments to help the weight issue.
Nope, the extra distance is meaningless over 144,000 klicks. It will be attached to a floating platform at the equator. The platform will be the size of a very large ship and be very mobile, and be able to move at least 200 kilometres in any direction, so that it can maneuver out of the way of large tropical cyclones which are common at the equator.
You can't attach anything to the cable, as it would prevent the climbers working on it! The climbers would have the ability to stop and climb over each other, so that trips are always leaving and departing.
The ultimate expression of the elevator is the globe-spanning diamond towers Arthur C describes in 3001.
Chris Davies Everyone thinks that it sould be on a mobile platform on the water but I disagree with that. When you have it on the water no matter what it would not even be close to as stable as it would be as if it was connected to land. Also how would you purpose that we would not touch the cable to be able to go into space. You don't show much logic in your answer
Unfortunately the link doesn't work, can you check? Regarding your other question: I think there are many engineering challenges left for building the elevator. We should start tackling them after we will have solved the material problem - that should be our focus for now.
unfortunately, the ideas in this video were stolen and REALLY belong to papa markus
Some benefits would be making it possible to mine the moon and other bodies for resources not commonly found on earth ( Helium-3 for example) , also space-based solar power which is vastly more effective (as you have no clouds, and no night interfering),
The most dangerous concept EVER
I mean, Project Orion as used as a launch vehicle from earth might be more dangerous to the environment/onlookers, but this thing is fatal for any crew that (attempt to) use it (before a satellite hits it and it comes tumbling back down to earth).
That said, I think that similar project could pursued on planets with lower mass, such as Mars. The population density on a secondary planet will never reach Earth's, and the lower gravity makes this structure way more feasible.
You could probably flywheel gyrostabilise the lifts to negate the amount of pull on the cable to increase your max payload and perhaps even help climb it.
Great point. I have seen the elevator games climbers oscillating a lot when going up. Gyros certainly would help in that. They cannot, however, reduce the tension on the wire.
Thank you Markus!
no. the only markus you should be thanking is papa markus, the REAL mastermind behind the space drone stack
Swim in space like you do in the sea,use the air to minimize the weight by splitting and joining the "rope".
Share space,earths atmosphere and ground.
Combine combine combine
Don't think all as one and you can have your space crane.
Q; Can it be an idea to build a large tube from Earth’s surface into space, to fill it with water, and to use it for transport of cargo into space?
Don't build the elevator all the way to the ground. Hang a deck halfway through the atmosphere or whatever length materials can tolerate. Pick up passengers there and take them into space. Perhaps such a deck could hang low enough for airships to reach it?
This was about a year ago and now we can mass produce graphene which is a lot stronger than carbon nanotubes
Couldn't one use shorter nanotubes if you could make the nanotubes bond with each other, rather than simply relying on them not slipping past each other?
Awesome talk. Before nanotubes, Arthur C. Clarke thought "Carbon 60" was to be the material that would make it possible. I guess he meant buckyballs. It's the strength in carbon bonding anyway. It was interesting to find out about zig-zag, armchair and chiral in Drexler's book on nanotech.
not awesome. papa markus, the real inventor of the space drone pyramid would NOT appreciate that you commented this, neddy boy.
Is the rotation included(doesn't seem to be)???
Actually, to me, it is. I think that the sheer size of such a structure poses way more problem than he present in his short TED talk. I saw a few models/simulations of the cable rupturing at different parts, and in many cases a good deal of the cable would land on earth, crashing down with huge speed, and mass. A structure hitting the surface with the mass of the Golden Gate with large speed would be devastating for millions of people. A rocket failure can be handled better.
actually, to me papa markus is the victim here
You need the counterweight in geosych first and the cable dropped from that. Otherwise its like trying to push a rope up in the air
What an awful audience.
Right? They didn't even laugh at the jokes! That was some pro level pun shit right there. Jerks.
Germans have no humour. Thats why they made funnybot.
south park
Welcome to TEDx
A recent patent will allow space elevators to be built with current materials.
It has multiple tethers at its center ( for greatest strength ) and fewer tethers
as you move away from center ( for lesser amounts of mass ).
Liftport has plans to build a Lunar elevator from current material.
Using the same material for an Earth based elevator would reach the lunar gravity center
(about 9,000 km AGL) approx. 1/6 G. Add this new concept and you could reach Earth's surface.
We can do this now. Let's get started. What do you think?
I might have missed this in the presentation. But is there a timeframe when we could have this elevator fully operational, years,decades, centuries? Or do Google have to fund another X-prize to make this happen? :
the timeline is infinity because it's never going to happen
you might have missed the real inventor of the space elevator, papa markus inventing the space drone elevator using artificial machene intelligence! there is NO timeframe where markus langraf is not a thief of ideas
Educational!
you need an education to learn that papa markus is sad now that his idea was stolen by the lugoobrious markus landgraf
Hmm... Still safer than Project Orion!
yeah, but at least Orion had a small chance of actually working. This doesn't.
Unfortunately there is no concrete program or dedicated research on the elevator cable. It applies what was said in the talk: We'll have the elevator about ten years after everybody will have stopped laughing. We are still laughing ...... Seriously, I beliebewe can build
In atmosphere could you use lighter than air technology to make a tower into space?
Can help , the ISS Tracker to find out , the lost , Blackbox data . of the plane crashes. in the Oceans ? can you give me the answer,s of this questions .
I see the problem as economic.
You're talking about something hugely exprensive ~ 100 Trillion
The benefits are putting satellites in orbit, building a platform for further space projects, etc.
Granted, it would be great to have, but I don't see the benefits justifying those kinds of resources.
I hope the speaker is the first one to take a ride in this elevator cause it sure won't be me .lol
I'm ready ;-)
it'll be fun when it gets hit by a starlink or OneWeb satellite traveling at 8km/s relative speed and sends the cable crashing down to earth. or a dead kosmos satellite. or the ISS. or WorldView-2. Or an Iridium satellite. Or a spent Delta II upper stage. Or really just anything.
If you like tulips then you're going to love your tulips on deeeez nuttts!
June 27, 2013: 50cm long nanotubes
Yingying Zhang, an Associate Professor at Tsinghua's Center for Nano and Micro Electronics, and co-author of the paper, tells Nanowerk. "Based on our findings, we successfully synthesized half-meter long carbon nanotubes, which, so far, are the longest in der the world.
that is great news! I guess we need to check whether those could be spun in an infinite cable and then test its tensile strength
da noch den Link dazu "Researchers grow half-meter long carbon nanotubes" www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=31326.php#ixzz2ji7rtmVq
how does counter wieght will work is it hold by some others gravity
??????
or you might use a maglev vertical constrution and keep it up to 90 feet above the soil or 120 feet above the earths surface ,well its just an idea
That's great. I am a software engineer, and would love to be able to dedicate my time to helping with this project. Is there any way I can help?
wrong. it's bad. this space elevator was stolen from the home of papa markus ten years ago by the tyrant markus landgraf. if we all rise up we can return it to it's rightful owner papa markus.
While we are waiting for the space elevator we could put our recycled aluminum cans and plastic soda bottles to good use by building an orbital ring in near earth orbit. A ring around the earth would be weightless because the gravitational forces cancel out even when the ring is far from centered. The tremendous gravitational forces that would try to collapse the ring can be cancelled by spinning the ring at about 8000 m/sec. But then how do you connect a cable to such a spinning ring? A large platform electrostatically elevated on the top of the ring could support many tons of rope and cargo. A large plastic ring around the inner aluminum ring would prevent the metal ring from becoming electrically neutralized by the many charged particles that would be attracted towards the ring. At one ton per kilometer, a 40,000 kilometer ring would weigh about as much as ten space shuttle missions. A few space factories could produce the pipes and other parts. Over two million tons of plastic bottles and jars are discarded in a single year.
it is not that simple because of the moon, even if the gravity of the earth acts neutrally on the ring the moons gravity would shift it and would result in it eventually being pulled in by the earth due to the sides not being equally distanced from the center of the gravitational pull.
I highly doubt that this super-material would burn up at such comparably "low" temperatures
would having a space elevator affect the magnetic field of the earth? also would it allow gasses to easier escape the gravity of earth?
no
@@alt8791 After 7 long years I finally have my answer..
oke would you have to pay for an elevator ride? where would you go at the end? and what is there to do?
Howdy Pr Um. I guess the trip would be around $300/kg or so. Still a lot, but much better than the $20000/kg we pay today. Where to go? Well, like said in the talk, if you let go from the end it's all the way to Saturn due to the slingshot. Letting go from other places takes you to the Moon, Mars, Jupiter. Of course you will need a rocket engine at arrival.....
you would go to a space station, conveniently located in the middle of the Van Allen Belts, where you would be fried by the radiation of you spent more than a few days there.
Could the nanotubes be chain linked somehow? And then coated with Carbyne.
Brilliant idea!
I want to invest every dollar I ever earn into this project. Where do I go to do this?
please don't, it's completely unfeasible and will never be built
now how do you send 140,000 tonnes to GeoSynch orbit?
The cable no matter what it's made out of has to be continuously made stretching 100 miles long with varying thicknesses throughout the entire cable then you have to come up with a way to wrap it all up and pack it all into a rocket and put it in orbit with a mechanism to unroll it down...... I believe that's possible.
+dokkiro Although I cannot claim I have researched the subject, it seems the idea would be to grow a portion of the cable once in space. I (we) will have to research the development of tech on growing it in zero-G (which seems to never be mentioned in space elevator videos / overviews for non scientists of the field...)
OneillSG7 Actually I was being sarcastic. Although I do believe it's possible, I do think we would be living on Mars or Venus long before this is ever built. Then again I would have said it's impossible for computer to beat human in playing Go just 5 years ago.
the only way that the cable could be made and used in this kind of idea is to make it in space on a space station that is maid to use rotation to artificially create a gravity field that the cable could be made in. the way of getting it from orbit to the surface though is nearly impossible though unless you could figure out a way to remove the affects of the atmosphere on reentry for both the cable and the ship that helps guide it down to the surface.
the cable was stolen from papa
piece by piece...till you got an initial elevator. then its self constructive.
Why make the counter weight beyond geo-stationary orbit a long cable? If you are suffering diminishing returns in terms of G force the further out you go, would it not make more sense to use bulk mass a short distance above the geo-orbit?
+Dan Rob Is it maybe that the counterweight has to be in the atmosphere of some other planet, that the g force pulls it the opposite way you know.?
Other thought: maybe a compromise of weight and centrifugal acceleration
Dion Blaster Atmosphere of some other planet.... What!?
I mean gravity, Einstein
Dion Blaster That's just a little less crazy, but still insane :D ^
Where are you going to find a planet that would have a matching orbit with the elevator?
its bullshit, yeah alone for the reason that the weight would have to spin with the planet. In fact the counterweight or rope has to avoid being in some gravity field of another planet :D.. The centrifugal force is the key.
why does the cable have to go up from the geostationary point? why must the cable be 144,000km long? i though it only needed to be 22000km long to get to geostationary orbit
Howdy, length is not a problem. You could build it only to the 36000km to GEO, but then you'd need a counter weight on the other side. Having just more cable of the same mass (as the counter weight) on the other side does not increase the tension (which is the critical parameter), but gives you the opportunity to climb it up (down) to reach the Moon and the planets.
2112design But the counterweight must be further out than geostationary orbit to pull the cable tight with centrifugal force. Think about it - the cable below geostationary orbit is not moving at orbital speed so it would fall to Earth otherwise.
@@robertgraybeard3750 If the center of mass is farther out than geostationary, even by a little bit, it will lag behind the ground station until it eventually snaps the cable.
@@alt8791 No, it won't. The location of the center of mass is largely irrelevant. The SE is not in orbit; it's attached to the Earth and held up by centrifugal force acting on the counterweight. Centrifugal force, by its very nature, points directly away from the center of rotation of the Earth; there are no forces acting on the SE to make it move laterally.
Bob Munck I thought that by nature the COM would have to be in geostationary. Isn’t that the whole point of the counterweight? If not, why bother with the counterweight at all, given that centrifugal force will hold it out at any altitude?
The space elevator idea is outdated. The orbital ring idea is the new height of efficient methods to leave earth's surface and it does not even require super strong materials to build.
What about a moon elevator? Is that feasible as of now?
+area78 Kinda, but it would also be pointless.
I dont' think so. It would be a great way to test out the functionality of the device. Besides that landing with a rocket propelled device always bears some risks. It does not necessarily need to be the moon. Just something with low gravity
area78 Well, the reason a space elevator would be easier on the moon is the weaker gravity there. You could build one with existing materials, but you wouldn't have proven anything really since cable material IS the main difficulty. It will also be an extremely costly project nonetheless and has little practical use because we're not trying to get off the moon.
Space elevators require the end of the tether to be in geostationary orbit so that it hovers over one spot. The moon rotates so slowly that where "geostationary" (I know the term doesn't really work for the moon, because geo=earth and all that, but...) orbit would be is outside the moon's gravitational influence, rendering space elevators there impossible.
Yes, it is and would be of great help getting down to and back up from the surface of the Moon.
Interestingly, the ways Lunar SEs are held up are different from an Earth SE. The latter is held up by the rotation of the Earth putting centrifugal force on the counterweight. A Lunar SE on the far side of the Moon would also be held up by centrifugal force, but it would be caused by the rotation of the Moon around the Earth, not the rotation of the Moon.
A Lunar SE on the near side of the Moon wouldn't be held up by centrifugal force at all but by the Earth's gravity. It would be along the line between the centers of the Earth and Moon and would have a counterweight a little bit closer to Earth than the L1 Lagrange Point. L1 is the point where the gravity of the two bodies is equal (and in opposite directions). This happens about 85% of the way from the center of the Earth to the center of the Moon, or 56,314 km above the Moon's surface. So a Lunar SE would be about 60-65,000 km long. Note that it would be relatively easy to travel between the Earth's surface and the Lunar counterweight, much easier than all the way to the Moon's surface.
who else caught the failed tulip joke lol
Yeah - that one was bad! I'll do better next time - promise. Anyway - the tulip remark was referring to an earlier talk, which was given in german. Just to let you know.
Oh, no worries. I wasn't trying to be rude.
You weren't. there is always room for improvement in public speech. Thanks :-)
Markus Landgraf it just seems odd and unnatural when people try to make jokes at these things... imo.... so when are we going to see an actual space elevator and which country you think will be the 1st one to build one.... also what is going to happen when you got extreme temperature change? the higher you go it will get colder but in space the sun will get really hot.....
Well, space has no "temperature". It's not cold- nor is it hot. The cable will have a temperature: about 150K when in eclipse (of the Sun by the Earth) and 450K when in the Sun. These temperatures are acceptable to carbon nanotubes. The cabin will have thermal control on the outside (like any spacecraft) and air-conditioning on the inside.
What's sad is that we are still relying on primitive technologies based on decades ago and aren't inventing new technologies that are much more effective in all scopes.
For instance, motors and wheels. These are actually a primitive type of tech, to have something that transcend that, is to look into bioscience, to have something that can be powered in other means, to do things that a motor and wheel can do, but also more.
Robotics currently have robo cranes with motors and gears (wheels in a sense), if we have bioengineering make robotic machinery that doesn't use motors and gears and replace them with another more efficient technology, then that is how we make the next step to space elevators.
For instance a human arm bends and moves using a muscular system, powered biologically. Rather than looking at artificial body parts for amputees, i'm thinking of giant robotic arms that can be remotely controlled like a human's.
In short: We need robotic muscles?
io9.gizmodo.com/scientists-just-created-some-of-the-most-powerful-muscl-1526957560
I didn't think this project still had momentum ?
it would if markus landgraf hadn't stolen papa markus's ideas🙄
yea, as Clasticon said.
Stop pretending like you know what you are talking about.
why does this remind me of gundam 00?
oh bad audio quality.. :(
Damn that's a hard audience! must be all germans
Hey, Germans are funny ass people! Great senses of humour. This crowd just sucked ass.
Thankfully he talked in your funny language. Such a b*** like you surely vote for Trump. Congratulations!
Why one cable? If we instead built seperate platforms floating ontop of helium tanks, tethered to eachother, and the top platform large enough to launch spaceships, couldn't that first of all be realized with today's technology, and second, wouldn't it pave the way for that 140.000 tonne nanotube cable we need for a "real" space elevator, when the time comes? I don't know why we are not launching from air ships today, since in comparison to rockets it takes very little effort and money to reach quite a height.
+Chris Savage Because reaching orbital height is not nearly as difficult as reaching orbital velocity and using airships adds tons of complication to an already difficult problem with little benefit.
Yeah...not to mention the butterfly effect. With a shockwave from the mass and distance fallen by the sheer weight of the cable crashing into earth, who knows how many tremers/future earthquakes/tsunamis that will cause!
He's a bad public speaker in English, but has very good points if you listen carefully.
His English was just fine - I had no problem understanding every word...
I think NASA should scrap all of their meager efforts to efficiently exploit loe for research and exploration purposes and concentrate their efforts into developing the materials and technology needed to exploit space cable systems AND efficiently harvest,store and transmit solar energy. Literally been there done that, if we are not going beyond the Moon then beyond certain jpl missions and asteroid and comet mapping and control efforts then all resources should be concentrated on this effort.
+Michael Southcott I agree. Because of NASA's funding, they would need to do a joint effort with multiple space organizations, or contract the public's help. Which is what I thought would happen if NASA wanted to do anything beyond probes, but then SpaceX and the others cropped up. They aren't focusing on space elevators, they are making profit off of payload launches on regular rockets. Because NASA's contracts with boeing and others aren't getting men into space, except for the old way. Virgin wants to do passenger spaceplane trips. SpaceX doing unmanned payload launches, and developing a crew capsule (the one thing NASA has managed to clung to designing). It seems clear that we need to let go of rockets altogether - and a space elevator is the way to go. But my question is, will NASA ever be able to do it? Or are we waiting on other private companies? Why is no one more concerned with the obvious short, mid, and long-term solution that is leaving rockets behind for space elevators?
+Michael southcott Your statement is rather extreme - NASA is involved in many research projects and I'm certain all will contribute to the expansion of the human race into space. Also, there is the asteroid impact danger - they have to find all the big NEOs - they've found about 90% of the ones that could cause civilization to collapse - plus they have to find all the medium sized ones that could merely destroy a city - they've found about 1% of them. And they have to develop ways with dealing with an asteroid on a collision course.
So far as a space elevator is concerned, one for the Moon will be a lot easier - it could be build using Kevlar. The lunar space elevator will be different in one other way, it will use Earth's gravity acting on the counterweight rather than centrifugal force. Then building the infrastructure for lunar mining and exportation will facilitate building a space elevator for the Earth.
LEO, not loe.
Fee fie fo fum.
so, is it safe to let this rope down our atmosphere? didnt know that... :P
no it is not safe, think of when power lines break. they thrash around damaging what they hit, it would be a lot like that but much more damaging and would most likely break into multiple pieces when it is let through the atmosphere due to the affects of reentry.
safe for us? yes. safe for the cable? not remotely. It'll get hit by every satellite and every piece of debris in space.
.... the elevator within ten years.
Hmm, carbon nanotubes, I was thinking grapheme and carbon fiber and then anchor with an asteroid in leo (low earth orbit).
Carnival Cruise Lines of the 21st century... a long weekend in space! Elevator to the Stars....he is a funny fucher
thinking B I G THINK REAL BIG SPIN-ME-A CABLE
4 day trip, no no no! carbon nano tubes conduct electricity. Use 2 cables of half the thickness and run a motor.
i have heard its 7 days trip!
who wants to ride on the worlds most expensive lightning rod?
140,000 tonnes x $4.2 million/tonne to send to space with a Spacex rocket = $588 Billion dollar to send into space... spacex can carry 21 tonnes into geo sync orbit, so 140,000/21= 6,666 launches... if they launched one rocket per day, this would take 18 years to get all this stuff into space. That's not including the cable unreeling unit.
I think they need to re-think this one.
+Eric Denne The plan is to launch a very thin seed cable weighing about 140 tons with a single heavy lift rocket. From there you can use cable wagons to deploy more strands as they run up and down the elevator (the growth would be exponential; thicker cable = more additional strands per run). This is possible since all strands share the load in parallel.
well how much is the global expenditure on space launches annually and what would this reduce the cost to?
There's a vsauce about this... I think he said it reduces the cost from $20,000EUD to about $1,000EUD per kilogram. So it's quite significant. More importantly, you have to remember that you could feasibly use this system to launch a spacecraft from GSO and gain considerable range improvement upon an Earth launched rocket. Distance is currently limited because we use about 90% (don't quote me on exact numbers here) of the rocket fuel (which is also the heaviest element in the rocket) just breaking atmo. ^_^
Sorry for the late reply, I'm reading this only once a year. At TEDx I couldn't talk about some of the details. The idea would be to send a pilot cable, which is used to pull up thousands of more strands.
Not nearly as dangerous as nukes.
You can't "pop" the Earth's atmosphere, don't worry.
Follow me on Twitter: @MarkusLandgraf
The information is fascinating, but the delivery was questionable.
Hey Chris, I'm sorry you didn't like it.
Markus Landgraf
Question: the force that acts at the nano scale and allows you to spin small nano tubes into fibers doesn't act at 18cm scale. So how would you spin them into a cable if you grow the at the length?
Good question. The spinning exploits the van-der-Waals forces to connect individual fibers. The fibers themselves are strong due to their chemical structure. Now the van-der-Waals forces are proportional to the contact surface of neighbouring fibers. If fibers are very long (i.e. 10 - 100cm), the van-der-Waals forces exceed the chemical bound strength. That is when it becomes easier to rupture an individual fiber than to separate two fibers.
@@odril you still haven't accounted for the simple fact of orbital mechanics that *every satellite below geostationary orbit* will hit the tether. I don't care what magic future materials you've dreamt up, I know for a fact they can't withstand constant nuclear blasts.
@@alt8791 True. There was no time in the TED talk to address it. The canonical answer is that the oscillations of the cable must be managed in any case, because climbing and descending vehicles will initiate oscillations. The way this is done by exploiting the mobility of the base on the Earth's surface. My moving the anchor by ~100 to 1000m back and forth the cable's oscillations can be precisely managed. The amplitudes are sufficient to avoid any tracked object (including operational satellites and space debris larger than 10cm). There are currently about 100,000 objects of this size in orbit. It sounds a lot, but there is a lot of space up there. From experience with the ISS I'd say there will have to be one avoidance manoeuvre per week. Objects smaller than 10cm will hit the cable and it has to be designed for this. This is done by constructing the ribbon with multiple, inter-connected strands. If one strand breaks, the others can take the load. Once the broken strand is detected, a repair team goes up in a special cabin and fixes that segment of the ribbon. Still, our biggest problem is the material strength.
nope. unless you carried it with you :)
140,000 tons of carbon nano-tubes taking 20,000 euros per kilo to get into space will be a lot of money and will take lots of rockets.
Stop pretending you know what you are talking about.
Allot of hype and no explanation of how it would be strung. Just dropping down from geosync orbit wouldn't work. Something would be needed to guide the cable where it needed to go and keep it from being dragged.
+Michael Holloway Why wouldn't it work? The gravitational force on the one end and the centrifugal force on the other end will pull the cable straight, all one needs to to is controlling the speed of release at the spool to keep the center of mass at geosynchronous orbit.
+maximkazhenkov11 Oh come now. Translation doesn't make my meaning that hard to understand. No one, that I can find, not even Arthur C., has offered a guess on how the cable can be placed there stretching from a high geosync orbit down to a single, safe, point anchor on the surface. Yes, once it is there it is easy to conceive that it will work, but how do you get it there? Anything between an end in geosync and the ground would require energy and complex maneuvering to maintain position between those points. It's just like a TED lecture to leave the messy details to some future nerdy schleps, but the prominent absence of those details make me less than enthused.
Michael Holloway "not even Arthur C."
He is a science fiction author, so not the place you would normally look for detailed engineering solutions. There are detailed studies performed by NASA covering most engineering aspects of the space elevator, including the cable deployment:
www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/472Edwards.pdf
The whole of Chapter 5 deals with cable deployment from GEO.
+Michael Holloway I think they would use something like a plumb bob
Awesome! Thanks for the link! One thing that astonishes me - NASA science study with imperial units.
Einfach mal LEM lesen!
Maybe if Trump makes his wall tall enough we can just climb it? :-)
this is a ripoff of papa markus and his space elevator. curse you markus landgraf you stole his idea AND his name?! What's next, his firstborn?! give papa markus credit for this theodore talk as soon as possible and a handwritten letter of apology. markus landgraf i am watching you