The Space Elevator: 'Thought Experiment', or Key to the Universe? (Part 1)
Sir Arthur C. Clarke took note in 1981 that then current materials could construct a stable tower 40 kilometers high. Just long enough for the International Linear Collider. So why not test the concept with the construction of the ILC? There must be some benefit to building in the air rather than burrowing in the ground.
And there would have to be some energy savings from dropping your particles over 39 kilometers as opposed to maintaining a 'straight' path conforming to the earth's curvature or tangential to it.
Or split the difference with a 18 - 20 kilometer tower combined with a tunnel of similar length that uses an angled configuration proposed in the literature.
Friday, March 25, 2005
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http://www.spaceelevator.com/
Concepts for a space elevator have developed in a different direction from some of the initial visions, however. Essentially, we now have a spider on a thread which would begin in geostationery orbit, rather than immense structures observable as far as the air allows. The earth-bound base may consist of something resembling a sea-based oil rig. The elevator is essentially a cable with a twenty-ton capacity 'cage' crawling along via its own devices. The cable is composed of carbon nano-tubes or 'fabric', which do exist in limited quantities and lengths, largely for R&D.
Power supply is an interesting design. Rather than try to run electricity along a non-conducting cable, thinking is to supply power via lasers from the ground (or once above 100 kilometers or so, feed it from space where solar power can really be made to work).
Hopefully ascent would be a fairly rapid event so that capacity per year is high compared to current rocketry. And once one cable is running, a second can be bootstrapped by using the capacity of the first.
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