Going up: Japan builder eyes space elevator

[n2doc]

A Japanese construction firm claimed Wednesday it could execute an out-of-this-world plan to put tourists in space within 40 years by building an elevator that stretches a quarter of the way to the moon.


Obayashi Corp claims it could use carbon nanotube technology, which is more than 20 times stronger than steel, to build a lift shaft 96,000 kilometres (roughly 60,000 miles) above the Earth.

The company said it would carry up to 30 passengers at a time and travel at a speed of 200 kilometres per hour for a week, stopping off at a station at 36,000 kilometres.

Tourists would stay there, but researchers and specialists would be able to travel all the way to the end, said Satomi Katsuyama, the project's leader.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-japan-builder-eyes-space-elevator.html

[Newest Reality]

1. Where were you

when they built the ladder to Heaven?

[FSogol]

2. Remember when the US was at the forefront of science and technology?

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Yeah. :^(

[lastlib]

6. Why do Repugs think that we can cut education...

...and still be the at leading edge of technological achievement?

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. It still is:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/status_reports/power_beam.html

http://spaceelevatorconference.org/default.aspx

[Control-Z]

4. My son has been telling me about this

for a while now. I didn't really believe it much at first...

[lastlib]

5. Arthur C. Clarke would be proud.....

[Javaman]

7. Going up! nt

[DetlefK]

8. They haven't thought this through: Prepare to be killed by the mighty space-rope.

Quote from article:
"Rather than building it from the earth, we will construct it from the space."

I had the same idea during a conversation half a year ago and I hope, I'm not the only one who realized how insanely dangerous it is.


1. Install a space station in a geostationary orbit along the lattitude of Japan.
2. Get several tons of CNT-based lengths of rope into orbit.
3. Lower the rope down to earth. (Maybe first pulled into the right direction by a fist-sized rocket.)

Let's forget how the rope will shift the center-of-mass of the space-station and so on.

Rope: meet atmosphere.

4. You have a rope, harder than a steel cable, dangling down from the sky, swinging back and forth uncontrollably due to winds, establishing essentialy a kilometer-wide pendulum of death.
5. Avoid killing planes and satellites. Hire a good PR-team to battle mass-hysteria.
6. Catch that pendulum of death before its lower end starts killing people, damaging property and causing political fallout with neighbouring countries.
7. Once your plane has catched the lower end of your space-cable mid-flight, avoid being ripped to pieces and/or crushing to death and/or damaging the rope.
8. Transport the lower end to the installation down here on earth.

Good luck with that.

[VWolf]

9. FWIW, step 1 is impossible

Strictly speaking, a geosynchronous orbit must lie in the equatorial plane.

While a "geosynchronous orbit" (in the sense that its period is 24 hours) can exist at other inclinations, it would be useless for this purpose. From earth, the satellite would move cyclically from the northern to the southern hemisphere.

[DetlefK]

13. Sorry, english is not my mother tongue. Mixed up longitude and latitude.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Some points:

They are not forgetting about the centre of mass; even in this PR handout story in the OP, it notes the elevator would go above the geosynchronous point - all the way to 96,000km. You pay out the cable above the station at the correct rate to balance the cable below it.

4: by the time it reaches the atmosphere, you'll have paid out thousands of kilometres of cable, which will have a significant inertia, and so it won't be swinging that wildly.

5: put a decent radar reflector and a transponder on it, and it's just another thing for planes to not crash into. Satellites could be a problem; you'd have to work out the chances of an orbit crossing it. Some suggest you make the bottom end a unit that can manoeuvre so you can move it when a particular satellite is going to come very close (you'd need an accurate catalogue of satellite orbits).

NASA has studied this; lots of people have. See eg

http://www.isec.org/
http://www.spaceelevator.com/
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast07sep_1/

[Motown_Johnny]

15. you can only do geostationary orbit over the equator

so #1 isn't possible as written. Maybe do it over open ocean and build a platform to secure the cable once it reaches that level... or right to the bedrock at the bottom of the sea.


You might want to build the station, or the base for the station, at a lower altitude and then drop the "rope" and once it is near where you want it you fire rockets to move the station into a higher/slower orbit that is geostationary.

That spool of cable that is dropped to earth would need to be able to be anchored to the sea floor, at least temporarily. I don't know why you think a plane would be involved.


You might not need to drop the finished cable from orbit. Maybe just a "guide rope" could be dropped. Then you attach the cable along with a smaller version of the "elevator" and use it to lift the cable along the guide rope to the station.

Anyone who has read the last of Clark's Space Odyssey series is familiar with this concept. It may even happen someday but I doubt it will be in my lifetime.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit

^snip^

A geostationary orbit, or Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO), is a circular orbit 35,786 km (22,236 mi) above the Earth's equator and following the direction of the Earth's rotation. An object in such an orbit has an orbital period equal to the Earth's rotational period (one sidereal day), and thus appears motionless, at a fixed position in the sky, to ground observers.

[bayareamike]

10. Not happening anytime soon..

I guess it isn't CRAZY, but there are a lot of considerations that make it highly unlikely.

[HopeHoops]

14. This from a country with the most toxic nuclear meltdown in history.

I think I'll pass on the ride.