The future of jumping?

[AggieDave 6]

Who knows, eitherway I want to jump one!

http://www.mywisecounty.com/news/083004-1.htm

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1st Space Elevator Competition Set for Mid-2005


Mountain View, California -- Millions of Americans are aware of the private industry race to space beginning next month with Bert Rutan's SpaceShip One seeking to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize by launching and landing a manned vehicle capable of lifting three humans to 62.5 miles altitude twice within 2-weeks but a new private space race is now underway as well.

The new race to space is emerging that may be an even more exciting and challenging than that of the Ansari X Prize and may hold the promise of low cost Earth-to-orbit and beyond launches that would make SpaceShip One technology appear to be from yesteryear.

The Spaceward Foundation has launched a new prize called "Elevator: 2010" to bring technology and engineering focus to the many challenges associated with the design and construction of a space elevator. The ultimate goal is to build the equipment components needed to lift payloads into space by light-powered platforms. Such platforms, also known as climbers, would move up and down super strong carbon nanotube ribbons rising as high as 62,000 miles above Earth's surface.

It is estimated that a function space elevator could low the costs of getting packages into low Earth orbit from the current rate of approximately $10,000 per pound to less than $100 per pound revolutionizing space travel and space construction activities as never before.

"We firmly believe that the set of technologies that underlie the infinite promise of the space elevator can be demonstrated, or proven infeasible, within a five-year time frame," the Web site for the competition declares. "And hence our name. Elevator:2010. We promise to get an answer for you by then."

The Spaceward Foundation goal is to enlist both the private sector and academic institutions in a series of competitions to develop the various pieces of a space elevator for demonstration projects with the first Space Elevator Competition set for June or July 2005 in conjunction with the 4th Annual Space Elevator Conference in San Francisco, California.

The competition will be in three areas: Climber Competition, Tether Strength, and Power Beaming Competition. The fastest-moving climber would earn its team a $50,000 prize, with a $20,000 second prize and a $10,000 third prize. The strongest ribbon would win a $10,000 first prize, and the best power-beaming system could win $10,000.

"We are working with several large organizations on collaborating with the competition, but since we want to allow universities to consider this ahead of the academic school year, we have decided to announce the competition now, and will be releasing details soon about our partners," Ben Shelef, a member of the Elevator:2010 team, told MSNBC in an e-Mail published Saturday.

"We've gotten feedback from the universities, so we know it's feasible," Shelef said. "It's the same thing as the solar cars, but on steroids."

"For so long, this was a science-fiction concept," Michael Laine, president of the LiftPort Group, a Seattle-area company that is working to commercialize space elevator technologies told MSNBC. "And now that people are seeing that serious people are doing research on this, they'll start to think, 'Oh, maybe we should get involved, too.'"

It has been estimated that an operational space elevator could be built in the southern Pacific Ocean on a converted off-shore oil rig for about $10 to $15 billion dollars within the decade. Yet many technologies will have to be developed far beyond the laboratory testing in which they exist today such as the carbon nanotube tether 100-times stronger than steel yet much, much lighter.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[towerrat 0]

The only problem with jumping it would be the risk of hitting the ribbon. You wouldn't be able to take big formations off of it unless the group is highly experienced. You could still have a blast off of it though.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes!

[RevJim 0]

then there is this little problem:

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less than $100 per pound

Um, I'm about 210 at exit.
Do the math.

I'll ride the planes.

It's your life, live it!
Karma
RB#684 "Corcho", ASK#60, Muff#3520, NCB#398, NHDZ#4, C-33989, DG#1

[Morcyk 0]

Sounds like it could be bad. Imagine jumping so high that you can't even tell what state you're over. What if you hit some strong gusts? What's the chances that when you get low enough to pull that you'd be anywhere near your dropzone? But then again, it could just be newbie paranoia.

[DTOXX 0]

Talk about doing the math.

I read this as "Design the main components of our 15 billion dollar system and earn up to 100 thousand for your troubles."

-------
D.T. Holder
SIMstudy

[Zenister 0]

so would this count as a A or an O?

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[EDYDO 0]

I just want to know what is going to hold up that elevator tether into space and if it falls, will it hit my house?

Ed

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

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then there is this little problem:

Quote

less than $100 per pound

Um, I'm about 210 at exit.
Do the math.

I'll ride the planes.

I imagine that's a ride to full altitude.
A "low altitude" jump at 14,000 feet would probably be a lot cheaper.

Blue skies,
-

-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

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I just want to know what is going to hold up that elevator tether into space and if it falls, will it hit my house?

Ed

More like, "If it falls, how many tens of thousands of houses will it hit?"

Blue skies,
-

-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[christoofar 0]

I don't think there is any steel composite available that is inexpensive enough to build such a critter. And considering the wind loads such a structure would have to take I would think it would be completely unfeasable.

It takes a lot of steel reinforcement to keep existing tall buildings from failing due to strong wind loads (below the 200mph range), what on earth could be done with an elevator column going several miles up in the air where wind speeds are higher the further up you go?

I guess the best small scale equivalent would be a metal straw/column that is 500 feet long (0.125 square foot space inside), to represent a steel structure that is 100,000 feet high and has 25 square interior space. But we know that this kind of structure won't word as a free-standing structure, something would have to be designed to help support at least the first 10,000 feet of the structure........

OK forget it, my brain hurts

____________________________________________________________
I'm RICK JAMES! Fo shizzle.

[christoofar 0]

Mmmm okay nevermind seems like there's an [url http://www.elevator2010.org/site/reference.html]easier[/ur] way to do it

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I don't think there is any steel composite available that is inexpensive enough to build such a critter. And considering the wind loads such a structure would have to take I would think it would be completely unfeasable.

It takes a lot of steel reinforcement to keep existing tall buildings from failing due to strong wind loads (below the 200mph range), what on earth could be done with an elevator column going several miles up in the air where wind speeds are higher the further up you go?

I guess the best small scale equivalent would be a metal straw/column that is 500 feet long (0.125 square foot space inside), to represent a steel structure that is 100,000 feet high and has 25 square interior space. But we know that this kind of structure won't word as a free-standing structure, something would have to be designed to help support at least the first 10,000 feet of the structure........

OK forget it, my brain hurts

____________________________________________________________
I'm RICK JAMES! Fo shizzle.

[mr2mk1g 10]

That’s the problem with this sort of technology. It’s so far “out there” that people have difficulty conceiving it.

Go read up on carbon nanotubes and come back and tell us why this thread has anything to do with steal.

[larsrulz 0]

Being I work with Carbon based composites, you won't find a single researcher who knows anything that says this is possible in the next 20+ years. While we are finally to the point where material engineers can make single wall carbon nanotubes relatively "inexpensive", getting their maximum strength in a composite is not possible. A composite requires two materials, a reinforcement (the nanotubes in this case) and a matrix, generally an epoxy (think about those bonehead composite helmets where you can see both the fibers and the epoxy). Unfortunately, there is no epoxy that can bond to the nanotubes strong enough to actually break them. As each individual nanotube length is a maximum of micro-scale, i.e. a few 0.000001 m or a few 0.001 mm, the nanotubes merely pull out of the matrix instead of breaking under the load applied. This means that while the theoretical strength for a particular carbon nanotube composite may be 100 tons, the real world strength will be closer to about 1 ton (around 1% theoretical strength is what many researchers tend to get).

I got a strong urge to fly, but I got no where to fly to. -PF

[billvon 3,114]

Answering a few ones here:

>The only problem with jumping it would be the risk of hitting the ribbon.

Not really. If you exit above the atmosphere, Coriolis force will cause you to fall away from it. If you exit _in_ the atmosphere, it's going to be a very rare day when winds allow you to hit it in freefall or shortly after opening. It would be similar to an antenna BASE jump on a windy day, which is one of the safest BASE jumps you can do, since in brakes your canopy does not have enough drive to make it to the antenna/guy wires even if you have an off-heading opening.

>>less than $100 per pound
>Um, I'm about 210 at exit.

Yeah, but that $100 per pound is for a trip to 22,000 miles. If it scales, a trip to even 10 miles (30,000 feet) would be $9.

> I just want to know what is going to hold up that elevator tether
>into space and if it falls, will it hit my house?

Gravity and inertia hold it up; it stays up for the same reason satellites do. If it did ever come out of orbit, it would come in so fast that it would either burn up completely or land with kilotons of force.

> I don't think there is any steel composite available . . .

Nope, carbon nanotubes are currently the only materials strong enough for the elevator. Steel doesn't come close.

[billvon 3,114]

>As each individual nanotube length is a maximum of micro-scale, i.e. a
> few 0.000001 m or a few 0.001 mm, the nanotubes merely pull out of the
> matrix instead of breaking under the load applied.

Right, but if you can extend that to, say, a meter per tube, you'd have a composite that had to deal with a much lower shear load per meter. Right now we can't do that, but then again, twenty years ago we couldn't make useful nanotubes or Buckyballs at all.

[kelpdiver 2]

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>>less than $100 per pound
>Um, I'm about 210 at exit.

Yeah, but that $100 per pound is for a trip to 22,000 miles. If it scales, a trip to even 10 miles (30,000 feet) would be $9.

It said low earth orbit for the $100 value. I'd read that at 62.5 or 100 miles, not a geosync at 22,000. If the first 30,000ft (6 miles) was just as pricey as the last, the plane would be winning, and by a lot.

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

I basically understand the idea of the geo-sync counter weight....but I can't grasp how you would build such a structure. Would you start from the weight and work down?

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[Clownburner 0]

>Yeah, but that $100 per pound is for a trip to 22,000 miles. If it scales, a trip to even 10 >miles (30,000 feet) would be $9.

Not to nit-pick, but isn't 10 miles more like 52,800 feet (36,288.6 cubits)?

>Gravity and inertia hold it up; it stays up for the same reason satellites do. If it did ever >come out of orbit, it would come in so fast that it would either burn up completely or land >with kilotons of force.

It's the 'kilotons of force' that make this a risky venture to live beneath.

7CP#1 | BTR#2 | Payaso en fuego Rodriguez
"I want hot chicks in my boobies!"- McBeth

[cvfd1399 0]

Just have a really really big 3 ring release at the "base" and cut it away allowing rockets to propel it away from earth, or would the spin of the earth throw it away?

[billvon 3,114]

>Not to nit-pick, but isn't 10 miles more like 52,800 feet (36,288.6 cubits)?

Yep, you're right; make that $5.

[billvon 3,114]

>but I can't grasp how you would build such a structure.

Start from geosync orbit. Extrude one tether up (away from the earth) and one tether down (towards the earth.) As long as the center of mass stays at 22,000 miles, the entire structure still orbits above one point on the earth. Eventually one end of the tether reaches the ground and the other is 44,000 miles out into space; the whole thing stays in balance. Or you could extend it only 1000 additional miles away from the earth if you use a big weight on the end to keep the center of mass in the right place.

[kelpdiver 2]

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>but I can't grasp how you would build such a structure.

Start from geosync orbit. Extrude one tether up (away from the earth) and one tether down (towards the earth.) As long as the center of mass stays at 22,000 miles, the entire structure still orbits above one point on the earth. Eventually one end of the tether reaches the ground and the other is 44,000 miles out into space; the whole thing stays in balance. Or you could extend it only 1000 additional miles away from the earth if you use a big weight on the end to keep the center of mass in the right place.

What happens when the tether starts hitting air resistance? Shouldn't that either slow it down, or lead to trouble with the orientation?

[billvon 3,114]

>What happens when the tether starts hitting air resistance?

Nothing much. It's in geosynchronous orbit and is not moving in relationship to the atmosphere. The only problem you'd have is wind causing the end to flap around; but with the stresses this tether would see, winds would be the least of your problems.