Space elevator

[Marksman79]

I'm sorry to call you out as you are not the only one, but stop saying centripetal. its centrifugal not centripetal.

Yeah, you are right. I changed it. Everything else in my post is correct, though. I am a bit dyslexic, and I have trouble differentiating words that are very similar in meaning and spelling.

[Hideous]

Talking about Gundam, how bout mass drivers from Gundam seed? xD
No idea how to make them work though..

And elevator, nah the whole world would have to work towards such a plan, and seeing our current situation its highly unlikely, and would create a nice tasty target for terrorists :>

[DraconusIX]

TBH a meteor would likely not be an issue - a man made disaster (or lack of maintenance) would be the likely problem. Any big meteor would be detected quite likely (and easily taken care of) if we had the ability to make this structure. Any small meteor would not do much dmg, and low odds of it being hit. A once in a hundred year solar flare would cause bigger issues (involving the electronics).

Lets say you are putting a load of rocket fuel into orbit for interplanetary flights - for some reason, the "rails" that the lift rides on (any vehicle going up and down the space elevator would be traveling under its on inertia, probably some sort of magnetic field) and the a fire starts. Odds of such a thing might be low, but when such an object would be meant to stand for centuries and would have all of the earths payload going into space - the amount of material moving along it during its lifetime....lets just say I would not be surprised of it looked more like a constant procession of 1000m cargo ships going up and down the line. the .0000001% chance adds up over a few hundred years.

[keese]

Unfortunately, Carbon Nanotubes are already extremely expensive. Trying to manufacture 120,000 miles of carbon nanotube cables would likely bankrupt the Earth.

It's my understanding that the reason they're so expensive is because the procedures they use to grow them are extremely low yield. So basically if you can develop a procedure to raise the yield the cost goes down.

[Reeve]

Usually I hate to quote myself, but in this case I'll make an exception, since there are many more promising concepts (at least as promising as a space elevator) on Wikipedia alone when researching the following category:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch

The one I found to be the most intriguing is the Launch Loop, which basically simply serves to allow for an orbital launch at relatively low altitude (~8 km) with an acceleration that would also be suitable for manned spacecraft (3g).

I think the Space Shaft is interesting. Just make a large structure that's atmospherically buoyant and tether it to the ground, then set up a climber the can take people and goods to the top, near the edge of space, and have a launch platform up there.

[McSpriest]

Yeah, you are right. I changed it. Everything else in my post is correct, though. I am a bit dyslexic, and I have trouble differentiating words that are very similar in meaning and spelling.

no its not just you and like i said don't mean to call you out, just wanted to correct that since many people forget that centripetal means a force directed perpendicular to the circle (or sphere) and centrifugal is tangent to it.

[Sorrior]

Talking about Gundam, how bout mass drivers from Gundam seed? xD
No idea how to make them work though..

And elevator, nah the whole world would have to work towards such a plan, and seeing our current situation its highly unlikely, and would create a nice tasty target for terrorists :>

Mass drivers are a fairly old concept even in the gundam metaverse one was also seen in Turn A for instance.

But yeah was just gonna ask myself.

[Euq]

Japan, please do this now!

[Synthaxx]

NASA is currently running a "competition" for the most viable solution to a space elevator with a $1million reward for the best... pity america doesn't like space enough to invest in it anymore. Not that I can talk, Britain doesn't even have a space programme...

Indeed, we just get to make the robots that make it almost to the surface before farting once and dieing.

Also;


Portal Gun is the answer. Aim at the moon, aim at the wall, voila! SPAAAAAAAAAACEEE!