...And The Beanstalk Grows
Just to prove that I'm not always ranting about bad things, I thought I'd share this news story from National Geographic with you.
The concept of the 'Beanstalk', or as it's now known, the Space Elevator, has been around for years. Arthur C Clarke suggested the idea in his 1979 novel, The Fountains Of Paradise, and since then it's been a popular sci-fi commodity. Take a string, carry one end into a space and attach it to a counterweight, tether the other end to a surface-based platform and let science do the rest. The 'cars' of the elevator travel up and down the nano-tube cable using electric motors and magnets, propelled by the energy of light alone.
I know it might sound a bit far-fetched but I've been following this project for some time and I'm with the believers on this. The economical advantages the technology offers are astounding, allowing solar exploration (ie: trips to the outer planets) at a fraction of the cost of contemporary space-shots. And just imagine the views as you're slowly lifted from sea-level to sixty-two thousand miles above the planet. It may not be for everyone but I really hope that this works. Hell, I want to be on the inaugural journey.
The biggest attraction for me is the travel opportunities it presents, and not just extra-terrestrial travel. Once you're in space, you're not limited by any of the resistive forces you get in the Earth's atmosphere, such as friction. Circumnavigating the globe goes from being a sixty-plus hour journey to just a few hours. You can watch the planet roll under you as you cross three continents, and it doesn't end there. Getting to the moon will be a stroll in the park, while visiting the nearer planets such as Mars or Mercury will be within the budgets of most people (as far as I can tell the biggest advantage of the elevator is its running costs - they're next to nothing compared to space flight).
It's still a fair distance off, but I'm betting that not many people believed JFK when he told the American public of his intention to get a man on the moon within a decade. And that was only forty years ago.
Keep climbing Sleepville. One day you'll reach the stars.
Other links:
Liftwatch.org - This site keeps track of all development on the elevator. [RSS]
Space.com - A good overview of where the technology is today.
Spacewire.net - Another good news site for things space-related. [RSS]
NASA - NASA have been working on this for a while. This article is from a few years ago.
The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation - Probably the best place to get info about ACC on the web.
The concept of the 'Beanstalk', or as it's now known, the Space Elevator, has been around for years. Arthur C Clarke suggested the idea in his 1979 novel, The Fountains Of Paradise, and since then it's been a popular sci-fi commodity. Take a string, carry one end into a space and attach it to a counterweight, tether the other end to a surface-based platform and let science do the rest. The 'cars' of the elevator travel up and down the nano-tube cable using electric motors and magnets, propelled by the energy of light alone.
I know it might sound a bit far-fetched but I've been following this project for some time and I'm with the believers on this. The economical advantages the technology offers are astounding, allowing solar exploration (ie: trips to the outer planets) at a fraction of the cost of contemporary space-shots. And just imagine the views as you're slowly lifted from sea-level to sixty-two thousand miles above the planet. It may not be for everyone but I really hope that this works. Hell, I want to be on the inaugural journey.
The biggest attraction for me is the travel opportunities it presents, and not just extra-terrestrial travel. Once you're in space, you're not limited by any of the resistive forces you get in the Earth's atmosphere, such as friction. Circumnavigating the globe goes from being a sixty-plus hour journey to just a few hours. You can watch the planet roll under you as you cross three continents, and it doesn't end there. Getting to the moon will be a stroll in the park, while visiting the nearer planets such as Mars or Mercury will be within the budgets of most people (as far as I can tell the biggest advantage of the elevator is its running costs - they're next to nothing compared to space flight).
It's still a fair distance off, but I'm betting that not many people believed JFK when he told the American public of his intention to get a man on the moon within a decade. And that was only forty years ago.
Keep climbing Sleepville. One day you'll reach the stars.
Other links:
Liftwatch.org - This site keeps track of all development on the elevator. [RSS]
Space.com - A good overview of where the technology is today.
Spacewire.net - Another good news site for things space-related. [RSS]
NASA - NASA have been working on this for a while. This article is from a few years ago.
The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation - Probably the best place to get info about ACC on the web.
Not forgetting of course that there are people in the Conspiracy Stables that believe that the moon landings never happened. When asked why they usually ignorantly state that there are 2 different light sources so they must be in a studio! Of course anyone who stops and thinks will realise that of course there are two different light sources. One is the Sun and the other .... well its the Earth isn't it. Why don't we get this on earth. Well the moon's reflective properties and size are no where near the scale of the Earth's. I personally like Sir Patrick Moores comment on these idiots, "Don't be stupid, why would they bother to fake it!". Sir Patrick was in on the moon landings and generally is the kind of person who speaks his mind so I'm with him. I am not saying that information conspiracies don't exist because they do! Look at the FBI's recent attempts to make messenger type programs illegal in order to prevent terrorism. Also you may be interested to know that during Saddams reign in Iraq it was a prisonable offense to even own messenger. Why? Because it is very hard to snoop on so you can talk about anything! Good isn't it.
I read somewhere a while back on a variation of the technique. The idea was to instead use a powerful laser to propel a disk-shaped object out of our atmosphere.
Apparently light can propel objects somehow. I forget how, but it may be the heat that is generated at the point where the laser hits the object.
A variation on that idea was to somehow gather sunlight from space, and focus it down in a tight beam. That beam would them be reflected back up and used to move the object.
Anything would be better than our current method of escaping gravity.
The idea of using light for propulsion is a fairly old one.
Solar Sails (which are still one of my favourites) are pushed along by just the pressure of sunlight. Way cool.
The laser system you mention is also being considered for the elevators, and as far as I remember works on a similar principle. Because the cars are 'tethered' to the cable using just magnets (no points of contact, so no friction, etc) the pressure of the photons from the beam should be enough to move the car. The added advantage here is then taking the energy of the beam and redistributing to life-support systems, etc. It's all very exciting stuff.
Thanks for the post, Morph3us.
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