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Research / The Lifter / Re: Obvious Practical Problem.
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on: May 28, 2008, 09:32:33 AM
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The ribbon is a small object (side to side) making it hard to hit. There are plans to paint it in warning colours and light up the ribbon at night. Being several hundred miles from land will help as well. The radar and air traffic control used to land helicopters can instruct the aircraft which direction to fly.
One thought since the ribbon is made of the strongest substance in the world any aircraft flying into the side will be cut in two like a knife through cheese.
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7
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Research / The Lifter / Re: magnetic propulsion
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on: May 16, 2008, 06:43:26 AM
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Do electro magnets react in the same way the permeant magnets do with a super conductor?
Which is to say if one had a large enough super conductor couldn't you use it to make the climber go up if it had an electro magnet on it?
let me know if that needs re wording.
EDIT:
In short would it do this
Magnetism is magnetism, so the effects are the same irrespective of how it is made. Note: in the picture the magnet is hovering rather than going up. They are related but different effects. |
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11
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Research / The Ribbon / Re: How do you get the 22000 mile long ribbon into space?
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on: April 21, 2008, 06:23:20 AM
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- 4. The Earth end of the ribbon would be attached to a sub-space, solar powered, automated floating balloon.
You have totally ignored the point I made above that the problem is speed not height. To keep up with the ISS the balloon would have to fly 20 times as fast as Concorde. Balloons do not fly that fast - the atmosphere gets in the way. |
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Research / The Ribbon / Re: How do you get the 22000 mile long ribbon into space?
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on: April 14, 2008, 09:31:16 AM
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Items in Low Earth Orbit have a minimum speed of about 7.5 km/s (16 800 mph). When they drop below that speed they drop out of the sky. The big problem with launching satellites is not lifting them 100 mile straight up (although that is hard) but accelerating them to nearly 17 thousand miles per hour. Any launch system has to solve both.
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14
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Research / The Lifter / Re: magnetic propulsion
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on: April 10, 2008, 12:29:24 PM
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Redoing the vehicle calculations when constrained by energy.
Start with a 100 kW electric motor.
Solar panels required
Area of 30% solar arrays @ 1,366 W/m/m is (100,000/1366)*(100/30) = 244 square metre
The solar array can be a square with 15.7 metre sides
Mass of solar cells @ 100 W/kg is 100,000 / 100 = 1,000 kg or 1 metric ton
Estimated mass of car = 2,461 kg + 100 kg + 48 kg + 25 Kg + 1,000 kg + 3,520 kg = 7,154 kg
Rounding this up to 7.2 metric tons.
Time to 60 mph = 26.82 m/s
Using t = (m v2) / (2 P) = (7,200 * 26.822) / (2 * 100,000) = 25.9 seconds
(The much more powerful motor and larger solar panels are being used to produce a similar time.)
Time to 1,000 km/h = 278 m/s
t = (7,200 * 2782) / (2 * 100,000) = 2,782 seconds or 46.4 minutes
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15
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Achieving the Space Elevator / Science & Technology / Re: New solution: flywheel energy storage
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on: March 30, 2008, 11:35:44 AM
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{snip}
But it now seems to me that there are more efficiencies to be had through flywheel energy caching. First, rather than recharging some onboard flywheel, you could lift the payload with one flywheel to the next one, then attach the payload to the next flywheel unit, detaching from the old one. Send the first flywheel back down, and it can pick up much of its expended energy as it descends by reversing the appropriate gears. Hence the size of the solar panels you need at each flywheel station is much smaller than you would otherwise need, you're just restoring energy lost through inefficiencies not the total lifting power needed at each stage.
The descending flywheels can be used to lower people down the space elevator. |
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