LiftPort Group - The Space Elevator Companies

cdnprodigy

Full Member

Offline

Posts: 147

Analysis of Liftport’s Space Elevator Roadmap

« Reply #15 on: October 17, 2006, 09:57:51 AM »

I doubt any non-SE interests will research the tensile strength gap between 29 GPa (the limit of what present CNTs will reach) and 40 GPa (about what the SE needs) CNTs.
I'm only aware of two papers penned about sidewall defect healing methods.

AFAIK, the only resource allocations that will accelerate a 40 GPa CNT ribbon (assuming it is feasible) are those devoted towards the various pathways to a 40 GPa ribbon; a Roadmap if you will. If Liftport won't attempt to draft such a document at some point, that is fine. But assuming someone else will is a strategic error.

Anyone can buy existing products such as a 40 GPa ribbon. Surely NASA would.


	Logged

tjnugent

Administrator
Full Member

Offline

Posts: 232

Analysis of Liftport’s Space Elevator Roadmap

« Reply #16 on: October 17, 2006, 10:28:44 PM »

Quote from: A_M_SWallow

You are now in the same category as the Manhattan Project and Apollo moon landings. The estimates are about 8 times as long as the atomic bomb and 3 times as long as the other project.

The funny thing about the space elevator is that it's a combination of science (like the A-bomb) and engineering (like Apollo). I think that drives it to a longer time frame.

Another point to cosider is that going to the moon wasn't just the Apollo project. You could start the clock back at Goddard's first experiments, or perhaps earlier. That's about where we are with the space elevator right now, in some ways.

Quote from: A_M_SWallow

The big delay appears to be the 13 years used on tether research (ID48+). Can the same outcome be produced a different way?

Perhaps, but it wasn't clear to us on the first pass. The longest tether ever deployed in space was 20km, and space tether experiments have had a number of problems. Increasing the length by much more than a factor of ten in any successive test seems audacious at best, and foolish at worst. So we planned to go from 20km to 200km (10x increase in length) to 2,500km (12.5x incr. in length, really questionable) to 30,000km (another 12x increase) to the final SE ("only" a 3.5x increase). We think it's too dangerous to jump any further.


	Logged

Tom Nugent
Bellevue, WA

tjnugent

Administrator
Full Member

Offline

Posts: 232

Analysis of Liftport’s Space Elevator Roadmap

« Reply #17 on: October 17, 2006, 10:33:18 PM »

Quote from: colonyworlds

As far as shortening time frames goes, would it be possible to simply divide up the tasks?

I guess we weren't clear in the text of the roadmap, but we don't assume that LiftPort is going to be doing all of the tasks listed in it. The items listed in the roadmap are a list of what we think needs to be done by someone before the SE will be allowed to be built. I'd bet that someone else would do a tether experiment first, and some of the atmospheric ribbon-climbing and power-beaming results may come out of the Elevator:2010 competition.

Quote from: colonyworlds

Questions for the LiftPort team (or any other SE experts out there). If LiftPort has to build the SE by themselves because everyone else is too lazy/inept to do it, when will humans be able to ride in the SE? By 2040? 2045?

The roadmap assumed that there was adequate funding throughout the entire program, and that there were no technical setbacks. So the target date of 2031 is still very optimistic. Even if the requisite materials are developed in plenty of time, it could still be 2040 before you see commercial operation of the SE, and humans won't be able to ride it until later (because of needing to deal with radiation).


	Logged

Tom Nugent
Bellevue, WA

Pages: 1 [2]

« previous next »

Main Menu

Companies

Login Form