My Christmas Gift
Ho, ho, ho! Santa Brad is comin’ to give you this fine classic slice of wingnuttery from James D. Miller, the TechCentralStation columnist last seen here warning about China’s plans to create a master-race of baby Einsteins within the next 10 years. In this very special column from March 2006, Miller says that Republicans can guarantee themselves victory in the midterm elections by pledging to construct a space elevator. Enjoy!
Elevating Elephants
By James D. MillerFor the 2006 midterm elections, Republicans should propose an idea so big that it stretches to the stars. Republicans should commit the government to building a space elevator by 2020.
Oh yes, let’s. Since America isn’t involved in a disastrous war in Iraq, and since it isn’t facing a catastrophic meltdown in the subprime loan industry, and since its citizens aren’t at all concerned about their job security in the era of globalization, it’s time to build a fucking space elevator. Because really, when a government looks up and down at its “to do” list and sees building a space elevator at the very top, it better have already created the best bloody utopia in human history.
A space elevator would essentially be a 62,000-mile cable stretching from the earth’s surface out into space. Because one end of the cable would be in high orbit, gravity would prevent it from falling back to earth. Once the cable was in place, space travelers would board n elevator-like device and ride up the cable.
Clearly, this would be a brilliant pander to the crazy-rich-guy-who-wants-to-live-in-space wing of the GOP.
The 62,000-mile cable would endure tremendous stress from supporting its own mass, so the primary challenge in building a space elevator lies in constructing the cable out of material strong enough not to break.
This doesn’t at all sound like an expensive waste of money.
Fortunately, scientists have determined that carbon nanotubes, which are over one hundred times stronger than steel, could be used for the cable. Unfortunately, no one yet knows how to fashion mile-long strands of carbon nanotubes — but we are close.
Which is more than enough reason to invest billions of dollars into it. And hey, once we use the space elevator to transport all of that precious oil found on the moon back to Earth, it’ll start paying for itself! Boo-yah!
The benefits of space elevators
Space elevators could make going into orbit as cheap as flying across the Pacific. They could make space vacations financially feasible for many Americans.
No they couldn’t. Dude, stop it. Having a damn space elevator won’t allow Joe Sixpack to go on weekend getaways to Mars.
Space elevators would also give the U.S. the high-ground in any future military conflict. With the elevators we could easily launch or destroy spy satellites. They would also help the U.S. set up a “Star Wars” missile defense system. Finally, space elevators would allow the military to deploy inexpensive non-explosive kinetic weapons that could be dropped from orbit on our enemies.
Space elevators will also be equipped with “lasers” that will combine to form what I call a “Death Star.”
Why should the government build it?
Usually, the marketplace is far superior at developing technologies than the government.
Gavin adds: Like with the NASA Corporation and its moon program.
But even free market supporters should favor the U.S. government building space elevators.
This sounds like the biggest wingnut welfare program in world history.
As Glenn Reynolds has written, President Bush has called for America to return to the moon by 2020, and it would be much cheaper to do this with space elevators than conventional rockets. So, given that the U.S. government is going to spend tens of billions of dollars on space exploration anyway, we should all support the government in spending this money in the most beneficial manner.
Gavin adds: If I were editing this piece, one of my notes at this point would read, CUT: “As Glenn Reynolds has written, President Bush has called for America” SUB: “Confucius say.”
Furthermore, a private corporation that built space elevators would not be rewarded by the market for reducing the risk of human extinction. Markets, therefore, provide suboptimal incentives to build space elevators, so the government has a legitimate role in helping to finance them.
Markets also provide suboptimal incentives for delivering quality health insurance, but then again, health insurance doesn’t have cool lasers that can be used to blow up teh savage sand people and OMGOMG I WANNA SPACE ELEVATOR!!!!!
Why should Republicans propose building space elevators?
Because only the world’s craziest assholes can propose such a crazy asshole plan?
I admit it: part of the reason I want Republicans to make space elevators part of their 2006 campaign is that I am a Republican and fear that otherwise we will lose considerable power in the midterm elections. A space elevator proposal would be visionary, pro-defense, pro-environment and easy to understand, so it could attract significant support for Republicans.
It would be difficult for Democrats to enthusiastically support a space elevator proposal. The left-wing environmentalists view the threat of global warming primarily as a means of combating capitalism, and they would be horrified by any proposal that could reduce the harm of global warming without curbing commerce.
The Democrats would be uncomfortable with the militarization of space that U.S.-owned space elevators would allow. They would undoubtedly prefer that space elevators be built not by the U.S. but by some international coalition. Such Democratic opposition to a U.S. space elevator would allow Republicans to portray Democrats as being not only weak on defense but also hypocritical on the environment.
Uhhhhh yes, James. Yes, that’s certain to work. No, no, you’re not at all a bonky glibertarian loon. Wait, what’s that? You also think the government should spend billions of dollars to construct your own private army of mega-hot robo-whores? Erm… [walks sloooooowly from keyboard…]
Giant frickin’ Solar panels Baby!
For fuck’s sake.
A space elevator would essentially be a 62,000-mile cable stretching from the earth’s surface out into space.
Would it be too much to ask we switch over to the metric system first? Anyway, the height of a geostationary satelite is 22000 miles, I think he’s misplaced a decimal or something.
In defense of the space elevator, projections I’ve seen for cost bring it in at actually under the cost of the current shuttle program, which is pretty widely acknowledged as expensive and wasteful. Additionally, it really would completely change the terms of the game with regards to getting into space, although not for people. Right now, the most expensive part of getting into space is lifting out of the earth’s gravity well. Rockets are really inefficient and costly. People would still need rocketry, since there’s too much radiation in the upper atmosphere to spend that much time there, but you can do all the heavy lifting for fairly cheap.
It is still, however, 10-20 billion dollars, and 20 years off at best, but it’s not an absurd idea, and there are big advantages over the current space program.
Ironically, the republicans cut the NASA budget by three million dollars the last cycle, which was made up by closing the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, the institution that financed and developed our current conception of the space elevator. Republicans are no friends of science, and the militarist and libertarian overtones they give to this project are one that it definitely doesn’t need.
At any rate, the guy’s a wingnut, yes, and the idea of republicans embracing this idea is laughable, but that’s a poor reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The space elevator is a good idea, and one that merits coming back to, as a society, in a few decades. Maybe less, we’ll see how the research goes.
I think this project would be worth it if we send all the wingnuts up in their space elevator . . .
. . . and then cut the cord.
Regardless of the merit of the idea (and there is some merit), the idea that the idea would be pursued successfully to completion by the Republicans is absurd. There would be a massive rollout, klieg lights, buzzword-filled backdrop, and five days later Bush would be back to sniffing his armpits.
A space elevator is a pretty good idea, insofar as ways to get things into space. It has the advantage of not dumping lots of chemicals into the upper atmosphere.
Another potential advantage, if the carbon nanotube route is chosen – they’re gonna need a lot of carbon. Maybe some smart person will say “Gee, I got a idea! Let’s trap some of all those gigatons of carbon we’re pumping into the atmosphere every year, and convert it into carbon we can use for building stuff and stuff.”
I suspect GE and other defense contractors won’t be very fond of the idea of dropping rocks on people instead of launching missiles and dropping bombs outta planes. Not a lot of profit in rocks, unless you own the elevator and charge by the gram for lifting stuff into orbit.
Because really, when a government looks up and down at its “to do” list and sees building a space elevator at the very top, it better have already created the best bloody utopia in human history.
What he said.
Once the cable was in place, space travelers would board n elevator-like device and ride up the cable.
Personally, I’d prefer we didn’t get our technical sciencey-type ideas from someone who can’t master a keyboard. Also, it might be good if there was some place to go at the end of the space elevator, and that sounds pretty expensive, too.
And while the Shuttle program may be a worse waste of resources than a space elevator, I have a better solution: scrap the shuttle program.
James appears to believe that there are more republican voters who want to be best friends with a robot than there are republican voters who believe we’d better get the gays and atheists out of the country before the Second Coming, and I frankly doubt he’s right though I’d be interested to watch that play out.
Mars, bitches! Have a nice trip!
NASA does not want to build a space elevator. NASA is a government bureaucracy that tries to keep its budget inflated with bloated ridiculous programs. Cheap and efficient space travel is something they try to either avoid or destroy at all cost. NASA could have had a Single-Stage-to-Orbit (SSTO) rocket by now, but it was buried in favor of hyper-expensive shuttle flights. We could have gone to Mars in the 90’s with the Mars Direct system and two Atlas launches, but that got squeezed out for silly dreams of orbital drydock facilities and fleets of interplanetary spacecraft.
NASA would take a space elevator program and shred it.
[…] Der Rocketführer added an interesting post on My Christmas giftHere’s a small excerpt […]
I’m not sure if I’m with ya buddy on the space elevator hatin’ … but you made a really important point about how Dems. can sell universal health care:
health insurance doesn’t have cool lasers that can be used to blow up teh savage sand people
Medical treatments do now use lasers. So we just call cancer cells, etc., “savage sand people” and maybe the techno-GOoPers will line up behind liberal calls for universal health care?
Plus, what music will they play while you’re riding the elevator? Who gets that franchise?
Plus, having done research on the Biblically-predicted New Jerusalem, which will be an entire city, ready for habitation, that will descend from Heaven after the Millennium, I can tell you these mind-blowing details:
The N.J. will be 1,400 miles long, wide, AND HIGH. By my calculations, an elevator traveling from one of its upper floors will take between two and three days (non-stop) to reach the ground. It will be like taking an elevator from Baltimore to Dallas.
This “cable” is 62,000 miles long? What powers the cab that contains the passengers and cargo? At what speed does it travel?
How is this not some wacky “futurist” idea off the cover of Popular Mechanics in 1952?
While a space elevator would indeed be “awesome”, I’m pretty sure the technical problems [not to mention the cost] are pretty fucking prohibitive at the moment. Maybe by 2050 when we finally pull out of Iraq and the technology is there.
The other advantage to using carbon nanotubes for a space elevator is that, depending on the angle of atom arrangement, it can be used as a superconducting cable. I’m not sure exactly what angles give them super tensile strength, or super conducting abilities, but if they are close to each other, a huge solar array can easily be used as the counter weight, and send electric power back down the cable.
And what if someone farts in the space elevator car on the way up? It’s not like you can just get off on the next floor. You will have to hold your breath until you get to your next stop, suffering while the whole time some tinny musak version of Air Supply’s greatest hits stabs your brain through your ears.
Oh, the humanity!
This actually is technologically doable. The only remaining major obstacle is how to construct the cable. The cab would be powered by solar power, or power transmitted to it by laser or other means. It would travel quite slowly, taking many hours, perhaps days to reach orbital altitude, but at a tiny fraction of the energy of rockets, and far more safely.
But it’s all moot right now anyway. This is like calling for sending humans to the moon in 1934 when you’re still trying to figure out how to keep your V1 rockets from blowing up on their little launch pads. People who advocate sinking billions into this are 30 years ahead of themselves.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure Republicans proposing yet another huge government boondoggle is going to be a big winner. Remember, it’s only socialism when the government is spending on health care.
Because one end of the cable would be in high orbit, gravity would prevent it from falling back to earth.
Sure, there’s plenty to mock about this “To the stars! Excelsior!”-ism without getting all technical and sciency, but, really: gravity will prevent the Space Elevator (cost 2000, Great Scientist) from falling back to earth? Gravity, which is all about things falling to the earth, not angular momentum or even helpful space elves, which, while wrong, at least wouldn’t be as obviously wrong as gravity?
Now, I’ve never actually taken a physics class, so if I’m all wrong about this, I apologize. But gravity WTF?
How does he propose fulfilling the defense potential of the elevator when it could quite clearly simply be cut or unmoored at the Earth end? I’m sure a moderately accurate bomb strike could knock the bastard out the ground . . .
The space elevator is not really possible with current technology. There are plenty of adavntages over our current system, but like Ted said it’s like calling for a moon program in 1934.
The one advantage that isn’t real is the military one. You could take potshots at satellites over the Western Hemisphere, but (assuming the elevator is on U.S. soil) line-of-sight is going to keep most of the Eastern Hemisphere out of the line of fire. The elevator needs to be in geo-synchronous orbit over a fixed point. Dumbasses.
Apparently he doesn’t know the difference between gravity and inertia. In the theoretical models of a space elevator, a counterweight would tighten the cable through inertial pull as it sits in orbit.
michael d-
Actually, gravity would keep the space elevator from falling to earth if you build it right. I’m not sure how it works, as its been to long since my physics class (and since I saw the first episode of Gundam 00, which has space elevators). We can look it up.
I thought NASA wanted to build a mass driver before the space elevator. A mass driver, also called a Verne gun by some, uses magnets to hurl an object into space. Cheaper than a shuttle, possibly cheaper to build and maintain than a space elevator, but a couple problems. Safety comes to mind. Some sci-fi writers imagine space elevators carrying humans and cargo, mass drivers flinging more cargo into space to be picked up by shuttles in orbit.
Wait. He wants to build an Umbilicus?
The wikipedia space elevator article would be a good starting point for those who are interested in the geeky aspects. Not really possible ATM, and way too vulnerable to physical attack. I’m reminding of mention of a large “Lake Kilimanjaro” in a story by Iain Banks (not the little volcanic lake), but orbital-speed kinetic attack (or just a deliberate deployment of massive amounts of orbital debris) is probably a worse threat.
Wow, that sounds great. I definitely want to spend lots of time in places with environments that are incompatible with human life, toxic atmospheres, and unbearable temperature extremes. Having grown up in Houston I just can’t get enough of that stuff.
Democratic opposition to a U.S. space elevator would allow Republicans to portray Democrats as being not only weak on defense but also hypocritical on the environment.
“Opponents of GOP insane fantasy: weak on defense, or just hypocritical?”
This guy must work for Faux News.
Thank you, Brad. That was a lovely gift.
How does he propose fulfilling the defense potential of the elevator when it could quite clearly simply be cut or unmoored at the Earth end?
What, you think a rag-tag group of 19 fanatics could possibly bring a tall structure down by hijacking a plane with knives and crashing it into the thing? Wacko!
Regardless of the merit of the idea (and there is some merit), the idea that the idea would be pursued successfully to completion by the Republicans is absurd.
They would borrow the money from China, make it gas-powered, spend half the budget on generating publicity, put Dan Quayle or Karl Rove or some horse-admiration-club lawyer in charge of the project, declare success 3 days into it, and that would be the last we ever heard of it.
What the idiot means when he says gravity will keep it from falling back to Earth is that he doesn’t understand the concept. I think he’s gotten confused about why the wire wouldn’t snap or get tangled up. The space end of the elevator would be in a geosynchronous orbit – meaning it would be about 38,000km up. In such an orbit, an object remains over the same point on the ground, and you’d get an effect something like if you had a ball on a string and started spinning around. Communication satellites are often in these orbits.
The space elevator is an old idea, and there’s nothing crazy about it at all. I’m confident we will build one eventually. Given what we know today, it would seem like (in the long run) the cheapest, easiest and most efficient way to put objects up into space. It may well get built in (some of our) lifetimes. And no, I don’t trust the Republicans to build it.
Re: Space Elevator
What if somebody pushes all the buttons in the elevator on the way to the Mars P.H.? It’ll take a lot longer to get there. A LOT!
Building a space elevator to drop rocks on people.
These guys are Vogons.
(assuming the elevator is on U.S. soil)
It needs to be on the equator, as I recall
PaulG: the height of a geostationary satelite is 22000 miles, I think he’s misplaced a decimal or something. (the article said 63,000)
Theron: The space end of the elevator would be in a geosynchronous orbit
Yes, this idea is just frikkin wacky (incidentally, one of my longstanding complaints is that while unmanned spaceflight has been incredibly useful, manned spaceflight has no apparent benefits beyond the psychological, and manned spaceflight has tremendous fiscal and opportunity costs) but – commenting purely as a science fiction fan who hasn’t done physics since undergrad – I think the center of mass would have to be in a geostationary orbit. Although – leaving aside the obvious possibility of a massive counterweight – this would make the cable twice as long as the orbital height, not almost three times as long.
Testing.
The spam filter won’t let me post on Clif’s thread.
wtf
The space elevator is an old idea, and there’s nothing crazy about it at all
Well, the part about starting work on it right now though we haven’t got the money, and we as a country could probably ignore it for a while as the science and our economy improves a bit, that seems kind of crazy.
Also, the fact that we have lots of other higher priorities but James thinks this is a winner anyway. That seems kind of crazy, too. Not to mention indicative of moral bankruptcy on James’ part. Starving humans? Fuck ’em. Mars, bitches! But then, I guess there’s a reason he’s a republican.
Just me, maybe, but if we’re going to throw a ton of money at a random speculative jobs-and-hope Big Concept, how about the Apollo Project? We could use better sources of energy, you know, today. The space elevator isn’t really useful till we start building more places for people to go once they’re in space.
PaulG: the height of a geostationary satelite is 22000 miles, I think he’s misplaced a decimal or something. (the article said 63,000)
Theron: The space end of the elevator would be in a geosynchronous orbit
If the elevator is made of uniform material with the cross section everywhere the same, it would need to be 143’700km long.
I dunno how much this is in miles (who uses miles for scientific stuff nowadays anyway?).
Then the forces earthwards and the antipodal ones would be the same.
It can be made shorter when you have a counterweight at one end (though getting a counterweight could be a problem). And no, we currently don’t have the materials strong enough and producible in large quantities enough to build one.
It also would have to be placed at the equator and AFAIK the USA has no territory which is at the equator, right? So it would have to be an international cooperation anyway.
Using it for military applications though is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. A space elevator is a very fragile thing and one well placed bomb would destroy it easily.
Anyway, it says much about the mindset of those people if their only category of useful is “pro-military” and good for vacations (wtf? anyway).
The idea of building a space elevator isn’t crazy. The idea that the republican party could build a space elevator however is – I mean, comeon, they can’t manage to get water to New orleans, they’d can’t win a war they started by choice and their only skill won’t be much of an asset – cutting taxes won’t get you an elevator, sorry.
The other problem is of course that this is a huge, vulnerable target (and that at least the cable-based idea needs to be doen at the equator) – so you’d better revise your foreign relations strategy.
Oh, and he is right about the costs for a trip to the orbit becoming cheaper than a flight over the pacific, IF you ignore the development costs and have enough use of the elevator to balance the higher maintenance costs (micrometeorites, anyone?) – planes need fuel, which isn’t going to become less expensive, while the elevator just needs energy – which isn’t really scarce in orbit.
As for the humanitarian value of an elevator… it makes space travel as clean as you can get (and cheap, as stated)… combine this with, I dunno, maybe the solar power satelite concept???, and you have a pretty much emission free energy supply – how does that sound? Independence from foreign oil, no nuclear waste, doesn’t really contribute to global warming, cheap nergy prices? Sounds like a winner to me.
Yes, feeding the hungry and giving everyone education has priority, but losing sight of all longtimegoals for the shorttime goals can’t be the answer either.
Ladies and gentlemen — The Alan Parsons Project!
Oh, and yeah, the idea that the space elevator is a useful military stucture is ridiculous – it’s long, fragile and of great startegic values (even if you DO NOT use it as military staging ground) – it would be the first target any advanced army (lets say china) would take out.
Hell, terrorists might be able to take it out (one bomb or plane…) – and of course, against terrorists the elevator would be useless.
The only nations you could use the elevator like he dreamt up would be nations that wouldn’t stand a chance anyway – and last tiem I checked, we didn’t need another edge against the Iraqi army. What we needed was more boots on the ground and actual, thought-out plans on what to do after we won, and no technical revolution will replace those.
“‘Cuz, like, Democrats would probably be all, ‘Let’s make it a VW van, man,’ and then they’d like paint a wizard fighting a tiger on the side of the space elevator, and they’d play a lot of Grateful Dead and I don’t like that band. I want a space elevator like in that one GI Joe episode where Snake Eyes jumps off and parachutes, and Democrats wouldn’t build that.”
Stupid jerks.
Why should Republicans propose building space elevators?
Because it would solidify a Democratic win….forever.
“And I want the letter M stricken from the English language!”
All the same, I think Mitt Romney should spearhead an exploratory program now.
Oh, yes, by all means let’s test the Space Confetti theory!
If the break occurred at higher altitude, up to about 25,000 km, the lower portion of the elevator would descend to Earth and drape itself along the equator east of the anchor point, while the now unbalanced upper portion would rise to a higher orbit. Some authors … have suggested that such a failure would be catastrophic, with the thousands of kilometers of falling cable creating a swath of meteoric destruction along Earth’s surface; however, in most cable designs, the upper portion of any cable that fell to Earth would burn up in the atmosphere. Additionally, because proposed initial cables (the only ones likely to be broken) have very low mass (roughly 1 kg per kilometer) and are flat, the bottom portion would likely settle to Earth with less force than a sheet of paper due to air resistance on the way down.
If the break occurred at the counterweight side of the elevator, the lower portion, now including the “central station” of the elevator, would entirely fall down if not prevented by an early self-destruct of the cable shortly below it. Depending on the size, however, it would burn up on re-entry anyway. Simulations have shown that as the descending portion of the space elevator “wraps around” Earth the stress on the remaining length of cable increases, resulting in its upper sections breaking off and being flung away. The details of how these pieces break and the trajectories they take are highly sensitive to initial conditions.
like Ted said it’s like calling for a moon program in 1934.
I seem to recall a mad visionary called Werner von Braun doing exactly that.
and way too vulnerable to physical attack
What Bill Arnold said. If James Miller had thought it through, he might have realised that the whole concept requires demilitarising space, but then he might not be so keen on it.
I thought NASA wanted to build a mass driver before the space elevator. A mass driver, also called a Verne gun by some, uses magnets to hurl an object into space.
Oh dear. [shakes head in sad resignation]. Mass drivers again. There is a wave of enthusiasm for mass drivers every 20 or 30 years. Some space enthusiast rediscovers the concept, builds a table-top version that fires paper-clips down the hallway, gets funding to scale up the model… and the idea dies a quiet death until next time.
Remember the halcyon days of O’Neill Cylinders and the L5 Society? Mass drivers were going to make it all possible.
Unfortunately, no one yet knows how to fashion mile-long strands of carbon nanotubes — but we are close.
Though only for values of ‘close’ so large as to be unquantified.
if this is what the “science-friendly” repubs are dithering on about now, the “gray goo” can’t befall us soon enough
I apologise for the lack of snark in my previous comment. It will be funnier if you imagine it spoken in a nasal whine, as if I am speaking through an allergic reaction to shrimp.
Why can’t we just use the Umbilicus? It’s already attached to the Satellite Of Love. Oh wait, that crashed.
In defense of the space elevator, projections I’ve seen for cost bring it in at actually under the cost of the current shuttle program, which is pretty widely acknowledged as expensive and wasteful.
You’re assuming the space elevator program would meet projections (which does not happen in real life–ever) and not become similarly wasteful and expensive as money gets “diverted” within the program.
Well, the entire thing depends not on rockets and budgets, but on whether or not some lab geek can figure out how to mass produce long string carbon molecules. If that happens, it is feasible, if not don’t waste your time.
Another problem is that there really isn’t a large enough presence in space at the moment. OK, cheap satellite launches, but that’s about it. You are not gonna fund it with space tourism.
Like the stupid space station/orbital drydock idea, the space elevator assumes that there is a lot more business going on in space than we have at the moment. Maybe if we get a profitable Mars colony going in the next two or three decades (entirely possible if we get off our collective asses), or we can start sending out automated probes to mine the asteroid belt, then this will become useful. Until then, we are probably better off with rockets.
The Russians developed a working space shuttle. They then crunched the numbers on it and found they were better off with their more primitive Soyuz launches. The Russian space shuttle is sitting out in a field rusting. Fancy technology is not always the best.
Look, it’s only 3,000 miles from New York to San Francisco. Using the same length of cable as the Space Elevator, we could build 20 Sideways Elevators Across America so people wouldn’t have to drive across the country. Wouldn’t that make much more sense?
Best part about a space elevator is that is was conceived by a Russian who “believed that colonizing space would lead to the perfection of the human race, with immortality and a carefree existence.”
Those confused wingnuts, going all communistic on us.
It’s a wonderful idea.
One that we can’t do yet. It’s not like the moon shot, in which we sorta didn’t have the parts in the right order yet but the math was there… We don’t know how to make carbon nantubes a milimeter long, let alone several kilometers.
Geez these guys are really removed from reality.
But hey! If we had spent as much money on NASA as we spent in Iraq we could have:
20 ITAR fusion reactors,
400 supercolliders,
3000 shuttle programs…
Once the cable was in place, space travelers would board n elevator-like device and ride up the cable.
I would support such a structure as long as it had no functional “down” option. We could then shove him in it and press up.
This project is obviously vital to our national defence, and Halliburton should get immediate funding to get going on it right away.
Well, we’ll obviously have to build some giant robots to defend elevator from terrorist.
“Another problem is that there really isn’t a large enough presence in space at the moment. OK, cheap satellite launches, but that’s about it. You are not gonna fund it with space tourism.”
Launch costs are the biggest problem with the Solar power satellite concept. You won’t be able to fund it with space tourism, but clean, efficient energy might do the trick. Just saying.
The comments over there are the gift that keeps on giving.
Marvin the Martian: “There is a growing tendency to think of man as a rational thinking being, which is absurd.”
i, People are getting the technical details wrong and laughing at their own mistaken assumptions. The centre of mass would indeed be in geosync orbit, meaning that there would be a counter-weight cable extending further out – possibly further than the 22,000 miles to Earth as it might be thinner. This also offers a means of getting stuff out of the gravity well entirely, not just into orbit.
ii, It’s not a stupid idea, just not practical AT THE MOMENT. The primary constraints are materials science and lack of an economic rationale.
iii, That second constraint may not actually exist – consider someone 20 years ago asking what possible use consumer broadband would be. Provide a cheap means of getting into and out of space, and the applications may start piling up immediately.
iv, Compare this with the Apollo program – the technological payback on that was considerably more than the cost.
v, It’s not politically viable. It may cost less than the Iraq war, but killing brown people is always more palatable to teh American people than anything constructive.
vi, If done by the Republicans, it will take twice as long and cost three times as much to be half-way constructed – and will be run on a cost+ basis by corporations such as Haliburton. Those two facts will not be unconnected…
vii, There’s a varient which may be technically viable now, although more vulnerable.
I speak as a professional astrophysicist and proponent of space exploration who has studied space elevators in some detail.
Not only does this Miller guy not understand space elevators, he seems to have failed to look at more than the most rudimentary summary of them. My guess is he got ahold of a copy of “The Science of Discworld”.
Lesley:
The lowest estimate cost of the iraq war I’ve seen was $456 billion (which excluded indirect effects on the US economy (poil prices) etc.pp. – most other estimates are 1 trillion and above.
According to article the cost of the entire space shuttle program from its inception to 2005 was 145 billion.
The entire budget of Nasa from 1958 to 2007 is $419.420 billion.
We could fit at least 3 shuttle programs into the LOWEST cost estimate of the iraq war. We could fit Nasa’s entire liftime budget into the Iraq war. Instead we used that money to bomb a country which had nothing to with 9/11, created sympathy for Al Quaeda&assorted elements, and poisoned the international relationship with a war for oil… and we didn’t even manage to get oil.
You know, it is sad when Republicans read science fiction books, because they’re not bright enough to understand the “fiction” part of the equation. Undoubtedly this brainstem just finished reading book two or three of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy – in which such space elevators play a major role, espcially when they come crashing down on the Martian surface killing thousands – and thought “Hey, this seems neat. We Republicans can do that.” …
Oh well, at least he doesn’t hold office or have power over anything.
I think we should build a Space Elevator at the same time that we massively cut taxes on multi-millionaires. According to this curved line on the back of this cocktail napkin, the tax cuts will so stimulate the economy that the Space Elevator will pay for itself!!!1! Plus all the multi-millionaires will get something new and different upon which to squander their vastly augmented personal fortunes. One thing that comes to my mind immediately is that they can establish weightless bordellos in orbit! (There are no blue laws in outer space, you know, and just imagine the novel sex-positions space vacationeers could come up with.)
Finally, something will have to be done with all the waste products generated in the orbiting cathouses. The obvious solution will be to simply let them trickle down to Earth. The intense heat and pressure from atmospheric re-entry will transform the carbon in these waste products into diamonds, which will fall out of the sky onto the roofs of the workies below. C’mon, workies, even if you personally can’t afford to visit the Mustang Space-Ranch yourselves, don’t you want free diamonds from Heaven? So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll vote Republican, workies!
(Think they’ll buy it? Maybe if we get Pat Robertson to promote it on his teevee show. His audience will buy anything.)
I love how they just out-and-out admit now that they propose policies just so they can portray Democrats as this-and-that.
It’s a COOKBOOK!!!
mikey
“Well, we’ll obviously have to build some giant robots to defend elevator from terrorist.”
I was thinking of this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orguss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMsVIjviKDU
Ah well, as long as we get mecha out of it.
“I was thinking of this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orguss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMsVIjviKDU
Ah well, as long as we get mecha out of it.”
Well, my vote is on a few Senjutsuki:
Even though they did not have a space elevator (though it wouldn’t have lasted until mankind would’ve needed it anyway )
[…] My Christmas gift […]
Miller’s brand of Republican thinks of outer space as the Ultimate Gated Community. They’ll build the space elevator, see, and all the Right-Thinking Glibertarians will ride it straight to the top, where it will be nothing but White Guys in Spacesuits and Bimbos in Mini-skirts. Then, after all the White Guys have removed themselves (and their bimbos) from this tumultuous globe of want and strife and untermenschen with insufficient respect for White Guys, they’ll just… cut the cord! Farewell, “Mother Earth”, and don’t expect so much as a phone call or a postcard, because Manifest Destiny, bee-yotches!!!!1!!
And then, won’t we be sorry we laffed at teh Brave Pioneers?!?
Of course, this is the silliest sort of narcissistic fantasy, but then, if “silly narcissistic fantasy” wasn’t one of modern Republicanism’s most valuable products, how do you explain Donald Trump or Newt Gingrich?
ii, It’s not a stupid idea, just not practical AT THE MOMENT. The primary constraints are materials science and lack of an economic rationale.
Isn’t that what was said about the Santa Monica Freeway?
Arthur C. Clarke wrote about it back before any of us was born. The engineering is there, it’s the proper materials we lack. Until we figure out how to properly mine the asteroids for fresh water, there won’t be any economic rationale.
How does he propose fulfilling the defense potential of the elevator when it could quite clearly simply be cut or unmoored at the Earth end?
That’s why I am proposing that we build a space escalator. It’d be less vulnerable to attack (trust me), a lot more impressive, and think about how many Slinkys could fit on it!
Crazy assholes? See sendahole.com.
Can we have an elevator operator too? You know, like Fran Kubelik in The Apartment? I know it’s so 60s but, hey, so was that NASA moon thing, right?
Hold on, Sadlynauts — won’t the Huckabee Republicans have decreed the earth officially flat by 2020? And a space elevator will be an insult to God akin to the Tower of Babel or something?
Closer to true than most of the comments here, but not exactly. There will be much more mass above GEO than below it because the centrifugal force acting on the mass above GEO has to balance the force of gravity acting on the mass below GEO. It’s closer to correct to say that the center of weight of the SE is at geosynchronous orbit, where weight is the result of gravity or centrifugal force acting on mass.
Just to correct some of the other misconceptions, current estimates for the construction of the first SE are in the range of $5-10B (approximately the cost of the Big Dig or a month of Iraq). It would be capable of lifting one 5-ton payload to GEO per day at a cost of about $200/kg. (Current cost using rockets is about $10,000/kg.) The second SE would cost substantially less, maybe $2B, because we could use the first one to raise it. The first won’t be built until 10-20 years after someone figures out how to make a sufficiently-strong CNT cable, but soon after that there will be a dozen or so. They will be used to build multiple-gigawatt solar power satellites that could eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels for energy.
It’s unlikely in the extreme that the SE will be built by the US government. My favorite candidates are Qatar, Singapore, and Richard Branson.
And yes, we’ve heard all the jokes about elevator music, kids pushing the buttons for all million floors, etc. etc.
They are just taking the piss now, aren’t they? It’s like the Overtard Window. Each says something more retarded than the last until we don’t think Jonah Goldberg is a retard.
Someone should point out that it’s not working.
> Hold on, Sadlynauts — won’t the Huckabee Republicans have decreed the earth officially flat by 2020? And a space elevator will be an insult to God akin to the Tower of Babel or something?
Au contraire mon ami, the space elevator dovetails nicely with Jacob’s vision from the Old Testament:
“…He came to the place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!…”
Pfft, fuck that. After Iraq, we take Ecuador. Because of, um…freedom or something.
Closer to true than most of the comments here, but not exactly. There will be much more mass above GEO than below it because the centrifugal force acting on the mass above GEO has to balance the force of gravity acting on the mass below GEO. It’s closer to correct to say that the center of weight of the SE is at geosynchronous orbit, where weight is the result of gravity or centrifugal force acting on mass.
Just to correct some of the other misconceptions, current estimates for the construction of the first SE are in the range of $5-10B. It would be capable of lifting one 5-ton payload to GEO per day at a cost of about $200/kg. (Current cost using rockets is about $10,000/kg.) The second SE would cost substantially less, maybe $2B, because we could use the first one to raise it. The first won’t be built until 10-20 years after someone figures out how to make a sufficiently-strong CNT cable, but soon after that there will be a dozen or so. They will be used to build multiple-gigawatt solar power satellites that could eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels for energy.
It’s unlikely in the extreme that the SE will be built by the US government. My favorite candidates are Qatar, Singapore, and Richard Branson.
And yes, we’ve heard all the jokes about elevator music, kids pushing the buttons for all million floors, etc. etc.
They will be used to build multiple-gigawatt solar power satellites that could eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels for energy.
Plenty of that ‘sunlight’ stuff here on earth surface, come to that.
Someone has been watching his brand new DVD collection of Star Trek Voyager.
P.S. How sad is it that I know that his “space elevator” concept came from one of the episodes? At least I don’t recall which season it’s on …
True, but up there it shines 24 hours a day. And surprisingly, it’s more efficient and cost-effective to beam it down 36,000 km by microwave than to push it through a 3,600 km wire from Arizona to NYC. Finally, real-estate costs are a lot lower up there: zero.
However, there’s some truth in what you say. If Nanosolar really produces photovoltaics in vast quantities for $1/watt, we can put them on all our roofs and get more power than we do now from oil. I have a nice 50 sq-m roof facing directly south, just right for solar.
Well, there all you Methodologically Correct Liberal Fascists go again! But we are not intimidated by your Methodological Correctness. No, we are not.
This gundam serie is the best. I cannot forget my initial time watching Gundam Wing then know about japan mobile gundam. Hope to possess additional wonderful gundam serie within the future
adore robots in basic, esp gundam mobile suit. Gundam is actually a piece of arts, why do they appear so detail. Japanese are sure amazing.
I realize the 2worry,I am very l glad to hear that you got your Supra fixed; I remember reading about some of your questions2x !.
1) space elevator: impossible with current materials, including current carbon nano fibers.
2) we need a functional economy before we can invest the trillion$ needed to build one of these
3) let’s actually build something in space, so we have a reason to build a trillion $ elevator to get there.
4) i’m a firm supporter of increasing our reach into space, but it is not at the top of the priority list, it’s more like #4 or #5 after the economy, a workable healthcare system, and stopping the pointless invasion of random countries every decade or so. space exploration is about equal to the environment in my view, it’s not super critical, but it is important.
5) i see lots of comments here blaming republicans or democrats or whatever for the poor state of the economy. consider this: republicans might do things wrong, but democrats don’t do anything. inaction is as bad as improper action in my view.
6) come on guys, it’s a 60,000KM cord of unknown materials, are we really worried about this impossibility right now, let’s leave it to the grand kids.