Re: [twuug] OT: NASA space program

[Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 03:28:02PM -0500, Jeff Duffy wrote:

>  The basic purpose is to make money. A completed space elevator is estimated
>  to cost about 15 billion dollars. The company leading the project (High
>  Lift Systems) intends to sell freight transport at about half the cost of
>  what NASA charges, but each trip will take only two weeks to reach orbit
>  (as opposed to the months and years of planning NASA requires for shuttle
>  payload planning) and a single trip will ferry something like 10 times what
>  a shuttle can.

Ah, High Life has a different idea from the one I was thinking about.

I don't thinks this could happen for at least 50 years myself.  Arthur C
Clarke sent the CEO (Edwards) a note wishing him the best, and that
hoped it wouldn't take so long.

Clarke said in 1979 that the elevator would be built 50 years after
everyone stopped laughing.  The Russians proposed a space ribbon in
the 1960s.  Clarke wrote about a different kind in his last book, 3001.

>  The design is pretty neat: a 1 cm thick ribbon of superstrong carbon fibers

...even if they never build this, we could use the fibers on Earth.

They want to use buckytubes to glue the fibers together.  Pretty cool
stuff.

I don't see how the counterweight satellite will provide the necessary
force, as a geostationary orbit is stable by nature.  It only provides
the force needed to keep itself up.  When you put weight on the cable,
or even the cable's weight itself, I would think that the orbit would
decay without the satellite compensating.

>  One interesting thing to note is that the space elevator will make it
>  possible to put large amounts of freight in both orbital and spacebound
>  trajectories that the shuttle and Russia's cargo rockets cannot.

That is what looks so cool to me.  The idea was that they could fling
the stuff off at any point, using the Earth's rotation as thrust,
saving tremendous amounts of fuel.

Even some small spacecraft could ride.  The elevator is supposed to be
able to lift 13 tons at a time if built.

>  up giving High Lift some funding. One elevator under US control will give
>  the Defense Department a huge leap forward in controlling space (air
>  superiority), so my bet is that it will enter the budget sooner or later.

Never know.

>  The company says that it will take about 10 years to build, and 3-4 years
>  of that is research into making stronger carbon fiber materials for the
>  ribbon (of course a breakthrough or more money would accelerate the
>  process). I hope I get to see one operate in my lifetime.

The anchor satellite is supposed to be 650 tons, which is a lot of
shuttle or rocket trips!  I can't see how they could get that up with
the time frame they mention, and the budget they are talking about.

650 tons is big enough to survive reentry and cause some serious damange.

I think though, it will have an explosive effect if it gets done, since
they could then use the first one to rapidly build others.  

I'd like to see it happen too, lot's of change in the world is possible
with something like this.

-- 
UNIX/Perl/C/Pizza____________________s h a n n o n@wido !SPAM maker.com


-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
* To unsubscribe from the TWUUG discussion list, either send e-mail to
-  twuug-request@twuug.org with the word "unsubscribe" by itself
-  in the body of the message or visit: 
-  http://www.twuug.org/lists/twuuglists.html