Elevators or piers?
It’s been a bad week for space elevator enthusiasts, such as myself. An article at Nature.com uses the research of Italian scientist Nicola Pugno to give the space elevator a thorough kicking. Basically, he believes that the necessary tensile strength of the ribbon is unattainable, even using carbon nanotube materials. To quote:
So can a space elevator be made? “With the technology available today? Never,” he says.
Ouch. I’m personally taking heart from the word ‘today’ - there’s a lot of people out there working hard to beat the problems that beset getting an SE operational, not least that Liftport bunch. We shall have to see what happens. It may turn out to be just another science fiction dream after all, but I hope not.
However, while scouting about the responses to the above article (many of which I found via Ted Semon’s Space Elevator Blog), I was pointed towards an alternative concept that was new to me, which doesn’t rely on materials with as great a strength as the SE requires - the ’space pier’.
A space pier is basically a mass accelerator raised 100km off the earth on a long ‘pier’ of supports. According to Newton’s Laws, anything shot off it fast enough (10G or so) should plunk itself neatly into orbit. Compared to the SE, the tech is lower (even current), the tolerances are safer, and the costs are far lower. Trouble is, due to the far larger planet-side footprint I can see the N.I.M.B.Y. squadrons not liking it one bit…’Well, yes, but I don’t think you should build it *here*!’
Ah, well. Something will crop up. We’ll get off this ball of mud somehow. And then we can start fixing all the damage we’ve done to it!
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May 26th, 2006 at 12:26 am
I don’t see this as bad week; more like just a thing. We’ve known about the paper for a few months, posted on the Forum about it. In January. As always ‘more study is indicated’. Too early to call it a done deal, too early to throw up our hands and call it a day.
May 26th, 2006 at 12:34 am
Space Pier - I don’t rate it’s chances. There is a world of diff between ‘technically doable’ and going to happen in real life.
And yes, glass houses, pot calling kettle black. I’m for anything that gets us up there for a reasonable price. But to get my support you’ve got to demo it’s got at least a reasonable chance.
May 26th, 2006 at 4:52 am
[...] At the Velcro City Tourist Board (cool name, that), he’s disappointed but not discouraged. He also weighs in on the Space Pier option. [...]
June 24th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
[...] Obviously, though, and as I’ve mentioned before, it would be even better if we could move away from the whole rocketry business entirely, and use methods of reaching orbit that don’t amount to strapping the payload and/or crew onto what is essentially a controlled explosion, and crossing our fingers. I’m a big fan of the space elevator concept (as regular readers will know), and there are other methods being kicked around various arenas as well, like the Slingatron and the Launch Ring, two similar concepts that involve accelerating a payload magnetically before launching it to orbit. But sadly all these concepts are still jus concepts at the moment, and the powers that be seem to like rockets better anyway. [...]