Bull Dork ([info]prufrock451) wrote,
@ 2005-08-24 09:10:00
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The space elevator bubble!

Get out your checkbooks, because the window of opportunity to buy low is shrinking fast!

Since the collapse of the 1990s virtual real estate bubble, we've built a pretty impressive bubble built on real real estate. That's doomed to collapse soon too. With space on Earth and pretend space devalued, there's only one place left to go- outer space.

If, like me, you're a slavering nerd who compensated for an unhappy childhood by developing an elaborate structure of imaginary friends, locales and situations, who regresses to this escapism when presented with stressful situations or difficult choices, and who has built up a secondary series of defensive rationalizations which center on rebranding yourself as a visionary rather than as a man-child, then you've probably noticed increasing buzz over a space elevator.

Now, for those of you who don't write fan fiction based on computer games (although in my own defense, my 'After Action Report' was so awesome that I was contacted by the producer of The New Twilight Zone), here's a little about the space elevator.

A space elevator is basically a space station attached to a cable. This cable is attached to the earth. It is carefully balanced so that the centrifugal force of this huge cable balances out the gravitational pull. This cable would have to be about 62,000 miles long.

Today, hauling a satellite into orbit costs millions of dollars, the effort of a huge team of dedicated nerds, and thousands of tons of wasted metal and fuel. A space elevator could haul a satellite into orbit with about the same amount of logistical fuss that surrounds an Amtrak trip. You just put something into a container, hook it onto the cable, and send down a counterweight from the elevator station. Whoosh! After a couple of days going up the cable, your satellite is 62,000 miles up and a low-orbit craft will tow it into place.

You will be able to go to space, too. In your shirtsleeves, watching out the window as the world slowly shrinks away beneath you. If you go for the whole package, a week after you leave the ground you could be orbiting the moon. No gut-wrenching g-forces. No grueling physical training. Nothing more stressful than a two-hour course on tube-based foods and the downsides of using a vacuum toilet. (Hint: be prepared for a hickey on your puckerhole.)

The space elevator will change the world. Space tourism will no longer be the realm of ultra-rich daredevils, but rather the equivalent of today's Caribbean cruise (right down to the ass hickeys). The cost of satellite TV, radio, internet, phones, etc., will all plummet. Exploration of deep space will double, triple. Solar panels will beam down enough energy to shut down half the world's coal power plants. Someone will send up a huge array of rockets, and get unimaginably rich by hauling back an asteroid with 10,000 tons of platinum in it. Within a generation after the space elevator goes operational, we will colonize the solar system. Polluting industry can be moved off-planet. Nuclear waste can be safely chucked on the far side of the moon, and safe nuclear power will join the orbital solar plants in providing humanity with an unending supply of clean energy, as we drive hydrogen-powered cars made of space platinum and wear diamonds forged in space by the first ignition of the sun.

That, my friends, is one hell of a business plan.

There are a few things powering the building elevator buzz. First, the spectacular meltdown of the great space programs. Russia's program is basically a bankrupt amusement park. They turn on the power once every couple of years for a rich nostalgia victim. China is laughably trying to jump from the Mercury Age to the Gemini Age. NASA is tied to the ridiculous '75 model space shuttle, and the ESA... well, you probably don't even know what ESA stands for, and that's my point right there.

Second, Space Ship One. On the one hand, it's exciting. On the other hand, it's a teensy plane that can barely even carry a passenger sixty miles up. It's not exactly Battlestar Galactica. It's a promise- nothing more.

Third- there's the tiny problem of how the living shit you build a 60,000 mile-long cable. That's been kind of a sticking point. Well, a few years ago they figured out that carbon nanotubes, stronger than steel and one-tenth the weight, would let you build an excellent space elevator cable. The main problem with that is that weaving nanotube fiber is about as labor-intensive as making a traditional Persian carpet, except you don't need a PhD from MIT to weave a Persian carpet. However, machines which are just now coming on the market can mass-produce nanotube fiber. Within five years, prototype nanofiber sheets will be appearing in consumer products. TV screens and computer monitors you can roll up like a projector screen or fold up in your pocket. Windows with built-in Internet browsers. Self-heating jackets with satellite radio. And, yes, space elevator cable.

The conquest of the universe is leaving the feasibility study phase and entering prototype testing. You can see how this excites nerds. Already, startups are gestating and testing their hauler vehicle designs. People are signing contracts to build nanofiber manufacturing plants. This is happening now. This is the next great bubble. Space is the new black, people.

Here's the problem. Which (if any) of these pie-in-the-sky startups will have the money and technical savvy to complete the most audacious engineering project in human history? Will they also have the political clout and smarts to outwit a US government who will try to seize their patents in the name of national security, to outwit the corrupt regimes along the equator that will exploit their position on the prime elevator-building spots? Will they also be able to maintain security, or will terrorists manage to sever the umbilical cord between Earth and the fledgling lifeboat-less space colonies, while also sending a 60,000 mile long structure plummeting to Earth and basically destroying everything within ten miles of the equator?

And can they turn a profit doing it?

The answer to all of these questions is: bloody unlikely. But the rewards of a functioning elevator are so dizzying- as far beyond the dreams of Bill Gates as $100 billion and control of the Internet would be beyond the dreams of the doges of Venice- that inaction is impossible. The logic of the market demands that the attempt be made. The logic of the media demands that there be hysterical coverage. The logic of your 401(k) plan demands that this will be a very real part of your life soon.




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[info]corvis7
2005-08-24 03:59 pm UTC (link)
You see, it's day like this when I feel, well, small. I am blathering on about Rock Star INXS and James is talking about the next amazing invention that will revolutionalize the world.

Maybe I'll save my treatise on Quantum Leap for another day.

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[info]prufrock451
2005-08-24 04:19 pm UTC (link)
I want to hear about Quantum Leap. *bangs desk*

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[info]squigsoup
2005-08-24 04:16 pm UTC (link)
Wouldn't it be really heavy? Wouldn't it knock the Earth off its axis? Wouldn't passing spaceships ram into it and then sue Earth for liability damages? (Because if there's one thing I know about aliens, it's that they are all greedy lawyer types.)

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[info]prufrock451
2005-08-24 04:22 pm UTC (link)
1) It wouldn't be really heavy, because the 62,000 mile length balances the gravitational pull against the centrifugal force pulling it into space. It's effectively weightless.

2) No. See above.

3) Spaceships within Earth's gravity well are probably there without permission and therefore their civil suit would be gravely weakened.

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[info]washeteria
2005-08-24 04:26 pm UTC (link)
are you sure about this 60k miles thing
i thought it was only like 35 miles into the top of the stratosphere or soething liek that

liek when they do the flight tests for the shuttle and they only go 15 miles up and then come back down

is all that extra thousands of miles of cable to lighten the bottom?


why not just have it open at the end and let the vacuum of space suck the stuff out of it

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[info]prufrock451
2005-08-24 04:51 pm UTC (link)
See, the answers to these questions involve something I've heard described as "math".

This is why other people have space elevator startups and I'm writing about space elevators in my blog as a break from using the word "retarded" too much.

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(Anonymous)
2005-08-24 05:10 pm UTC (link)
i dont understand math and science
thats why i work at an art museum

i think your blog need more use of "retarded"
ui laso would like to see the phrase ass-load used more often too

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[info]lucre
2005-08-24 05:02 pm UTC (link)
Orbiting solar panels sending power back down to earth: How do they do it? Last I heard about this idea they were using microwaves to transmit power harvested from orbiting photovoltaic cells down to earth. The big drawback of course is that you'd have an immense [mega/giga/whateverthef**k]wattage of power concentrated into a few microwave beams occupying invisible vertical swaths of sky. Call me crazy, but I'm guessing that the effect of foreign matter entering such a beam could be catastrophic. It's a big sky, and there's a lot of schmutz in it that could just happen to find its way into a microwave beam. On the bright side, if you managed to cultivate a single kernal of popcorn the size of the Pentagon, get Orville Redenbacher to seal it into a paper bag the size of Alexandria along with a Washington Monument Reflecting Pool worth of salt, and enough partially hydrogenated soybean oil to fill RFK Stadium (I'm planning on doing this in the capitol area, you see), you'd then need some way to get the thing up and into the beam, and that, of course, is where the Space Elevator comes in.

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[info]prufrock451
2005-08-24 06:26 pm UTC (link)
It's like Real Genius only SO MUCH COOLER and not co-starring Uncle Rico.

The microwave beam thing is problematic. Of course, an excellent alternative use would be focusing that power onto solar sail spacecraft instead of carting up oodles of expensively refined fuel.

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[info]lucre
2005-08-24 11:16 pm UTC (link)
The real reason The Pentagon ocurred to me in connection with solar power is that just yesterday I passed by the Pentagon Solar Power Farm. I like to imagine a charming Okie in straw hat and dusty flannel, shouting orders to a tiny Border Collie who chases Photons into the waiting cells.

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[info]fakemustache
2005-08-24 10:57 pm UTC (link)
i was just going to say something dumb about harnessing space's vacuum for our own power through some sort of "Life straw" like design...

i guess is said it anyways.

power of the future!

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[info]fakemustache
2005-08-24 11:11 pm UTC (link)

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[info]prufrock451
2005-09-09 05:19 pm UTC (link)
I just realized I never replied to this.

I found it HILARIOUS.

And special bonus points for placing the LifeStraw on the equator where the space elevator would go!

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[info]fakemustache
2005-09-10 12:18 am UTC (link)
i'm glad someone liked it. i hope it is obvious that there are some turbines in the square

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One thing
(Anonymous)
2005-10-24 02:15 am UTC (link)
As you're zooming up the space elevator (or even when you get to the top) you will continue to experience gravity. The gravity will get weaker as you get higher, but you won't experience "zero-g" until you get to your desired altitude and then "jump off" the space elevator.

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