Sunday, October 05, 2008

Lovin' an elevator...

"80,000th floor: Hardware, Astronautwear, solar power satellites. Oh, good morning, Mr. Sheffield! Going... down?"

Scientists are kicking around the beanstalk concept again, this time with NanoTubes™!
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5 comments:

Gudis said...

I bet they end up building it in Quito Ecuador...

10:06 AM, October 05, 2008
Vinnie said...

I thought you meant this guy: Captain Aaron Sheffield

10:32 AM, October 05, 2008
theirritablearchitect said...

I do a rollback every time I hear about the latest and greatest attempt at the beanstalk.

It's no longer funny.

2:22 PM, October 05, 2008
Vinnie said...

Not funny is our space program in general. We plan to go back to the moon in 2018. If we wait any longer we will have to go through Chinese customs when we get there. Sun Tzu was Chinese. He understood high ground.

8:54 PM, October 05, 2008
Anonymous said...

Aren't they missing something here? Spectra (UHDPolyethelene) is at least 40% stronger than Kevlar, and dramatically better at absorbing shock loads.
Kevlar works because of the binder holding it together, Spectra by having long, flexible strands to spread the load out. Carbon can handle temperatures under -150 deg.C, Spectra can't. Weave the damned thing using a mix of each over an S-glass matrix, and stop thinking about a friggin' cable.
Useing a tube, my TI 30 says about 150 meters wide, and it's doable now. A tube is stronger under flexure than a solid bar the same diameter.
Flex a bar of steel. The inboard side is in compression, the outboard side is being stretched. Now flex it the other way, and the condition is reversed. At no time is the center contributing anything.
Use the same amount of material spread over many times the diameter and get logarithmically greater strength and rigidity, as well as a place out of the weather to move the cars.

7:44 PM, October 06, 2008

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