Space elevator

[haxartus]

There has to be a better way to get stuff in to space.
Vertical launch rockets are ridiculously expensive, a space elevator is currently too much of an engineering challenge...
What about horizontal launch vehicles ? Something like this. You don't have to use a rocket so the cost is greatly reduced. $12 billion cost for development, then a price of $300 million per unit, each unit usable over 200 times.
If the whole thing gets popular, the unit cost will get down and soon a lot of people will have privately own spaceplanes capable of reaching stations in lower orbit, which could enable building private space stations and hotels.

[frogger237]

The only 2 things really determining when this is will happen if at all is politics and fear.(the 2 reasons we got to the moon.)

If we actually put money into space travel and stuff we would have it defiantly in 50 years.

If scientists said the world would be uninhabitable in 200 years we would have a colony on mars and the moon and a space elevator in 20-30.

[Howard Moon]

I don't think we'll have a space elevator within the next 100 years. There are still some huge, massive technical challenges to overcome.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

People could do this. We could do a lot more. The problem is humanity isn't at the point of which we apply things to make us, humans, better but rather the whole motivation is to simply profit. Things like this better humanity and push us closer to the stars and space exploration. But it costs money and if you can have a 24k gold shower curtain you are to busy trying to take food stamps away from the hungry rather then making the world a better place.

[Wikiy]

Once we learn how to mass produce carbon nanotubes, a space elevator might become more of a realistic option, for now though, we are quite a ways away.

Graphene can be found in a pen. But that's still a problem, hasn't really been figured out how to properly make materials out of it yet. I heard that if you put 1 atomic sheet of it over a cup, the cup (or, well, graphene) could hold the weight of an entire car without braking.

As of 2009, graphene appears to be one of the strongest materials ever tested. Measurements have shown that graphene has a breaking strength 200 times greater than steel, with a tensile modulus (stiffness) of 1 TPa (150,000,000 psi). However, the process of separating it from graphite, where it occurs naturally, will require some technological development before it is economical enough to be used in industrial processes, though this may be changing soon.

[Deleted]

around 7 mins onwards, pretty interesting stuff

[haxartus]

Graphene can be found in a pen.

That's graphite. It's quite difficult to make graphene out of it.

[Wikiy]

That's graphite. It's quite difficult to make graphene out of it.

Graphite is made of layers of graphene. The problem is separating and putting it back properly to make some sort of material which can't brake. The reason graphite (or should i say bundles of graphene) doesn't seem that thick when you, for example, write with it, is because you aren't actually braking the graphene layers themselves (which are far stronger than diamond), you're simply braking the van der Waals bonds between the layers themselves, and not the covalent bonds between carbon atoms.

[cubby]

/raises hand

I have a question. If the Space Elevator from earth is based upon centrifugal force from the Earth's rotation holding it up, how does the Moon version work?