Japanese Begin Working On Space Elevator 696
thebryce writes "From cyborg housemaids and waterpowered cars to dog translators and rocket boots, Japanese boffins have racked up plenty of near-misses in the quest to turn science fiction into reality. Now the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Man has so far conquered space by painfully and inefficiently blasting himself out of the atmosphere but the 21st century should bring a more leisurely ride to the final frontier. Japan is increasingly confident that its sprawling academic and industrial base can solve those issues, and has even put the astonishingly low price tag of a trillion yen (£5 billion) on building the elevator. Japan is renowned as a global leader in the precision engineering and high-quality material production without which the idea could never be possible."
call me when they have something (Score:2, Insightful)
Absent any stunning advances in material sciences, the space elevator is still in pipe dream territory along with FTL drives, AI, androids indistinguishable from people, and world peace.
This is just a Popular Science article, i.e. "hey wouldn't it be neat if but it ain't happening so we're really just jerking your chain."
Equal and opposite? (Score:2, Insightful)
1.) Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
2.) Metal is stronger when being pulled then pushed.
3.) If we make a space elevator, the elevator will need to move vertically, which will cause downward force. This will either be absorbed by the bottom (very unlikely), the top (Seems possible, but improbable since the top will need fuel to pull the item upward), or using boosters (not very different from the current method).
Is there an advantage that I am not seeing? Every method requires fuel unless all of the weight is absorbed by the bottom, which is unlikely if they use metal.
Re:call me when they have something (Score:2, Insightful)
From TFA:
"Japan is hosting an international conference in November to draw up a timetable for the machine."
and a favorite quote of mine:
"We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
-Oscar Wilde
a disaster waiting to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Engineering efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
A practical space elevator could use vehicles powered by electric motors, which would get about 70-80% efficiency. On the way down, the motors could be used as generators, getting back probably around 30-50% of the original energy supplied. The total energy consumption might only be a percent or so of that needed for a rocket. The design of the cable with electrical conductors on either side reaching all the way up to geostationary orbit is, of course, left as an exercise to the reader.
Re:No I didn't Read TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Technically, a weight in geosynchronous orbit would remain at the same altitude indefinitely with no other forces in effect. A space elevator will require a weight placed in an orbit which will supply tension â" otherwise it'd be pulled out of orbit. It would probably be close to geosynchronous, but not quite.
Couldn' this be achieved by moving a counter-weight downwards from space while the elevator moves up?
The total force on the weight in orbit would remain constant wouldn't it?
Re:call me when they have something (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought a millionfold increase in length was also required?
Does not matter how strong they are if you cannot make them long enough.
No kidding. Great, but not greatest. (Score:3, Insightful)
Greatest, in terms of biggest, would have to be a Dyson sphere. I see the Japanese haven't started on THAT one yet.
Re:call me when they have something (Score:3, Insightful)
And FTL drives are prohibited by currently accepted physical theory.
They aren't needed either. Nothing about relativity forbids me from travelling to Alpha Centaury in an hour (ok, the acceleration would kill me, but other than that...)
Re:a disaster waiting to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stuck in space - rescue plan? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I love it... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's even worse, damn it. I can't stand it when people directly copy something and then act like it's a paraphrase. If it's a direct copy, it needs to be clearly quoted and sourced. If it's not in quotes or set out in a blockquote, you shouldn't be using the exact wording given (except in the rare case that it's so short that it's relatively impossible to paraphrase). If you don't put it in quotes, blockquotes, or paraphrase it, you're plagiarizing (even if you've linked to the source).
Yeah, I'm pedantic at times. This pet peeve, however, is something I feel justified in detesting.
Only the Japanese or Chinese could pull it off (Score:2, Insightful)
The Japanese giving the best chance because of their technological superiority over the Chinese.
Why those two cultures? Because of how they work. The US effort would be bogged down by politically expedient (read correct) requirements that would doom it before it got off the ground. Look at the last really major undertaking in this country too see how government control by special interest groups kills any chance for the large scale projects to work (ref: The Big Dig). Hell we can't even agree on a good BDB design because we are too busy appeasing groups not even related to the real task at hand
Europe, too busy trying to hide the fact immigrants are causing a drag on them and certain SI groups are also showing dominance one way or another.
Russia? To busy trying to the USSR again with Emperor for Life Putin. Too broke to do anything but sail rusty ships around and dig itself financially into a hole trying to buy non-rusty stuff.
No, either China or Japan who both can conjure up real nationalistic pride. Hell Japan recently elected a budget cutting tax cutting nationalist. Both compete fiercely with each other while other countries rattle broken sabers all day or just trade insults.
Japan could do it. I hope they do. They always feel the need to be better than the rest of us, just be glad their society was able to adapt this need and energy into peaceful outcomes.
Re:call me when they have something (Score:5, Insightful)
A space elevator essentially just needs certain advances in materials science. It's a big engineering project, but nothing more than that.
AI, on the other hand, is something that nobody in the world has any clue how to achieve. They're simply not comparable. We may very well see AI before a space elevator, but it will be because computer technology advances vastly more quickly than space technology.
And just for the record, I did not claim that FTL is impossible, merely that it's impossible according to accepted physical theory. And that statement is absolutely true.
To put the cost into perspective... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No I didn't Read TFA (Score:3, Insightful)
It'd probably be relatively easy to design such a system if it didn't move. However, the car ruins the Statics solution and you then have a dynamic problem... you've got acceleration (which means a varying force on the anchor), you've got a COG that isn't stationary, the second moment isn't constant, and it's a lot more difficult.
Re:Just as a subnote... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not everyone here is a yank... (Score:3, Insightful)
converted to USD instead.
Well...
Slashdot is run by Americans, after all, and the vast majority of our readership is in the U.S.
Not that you'd ever want to do things just to benefit the vast majority of your readership, but it's an idea.
Re:Space Elevator Music (Score:3, Insightful)
I heard a snippet of a speech by Reagan today about SDI and how we now finally have the missile defense stuff he proposed. They talked about him not realizing the difficulties and state of the art, at which I laughed a bit when, in the speech, he talked about it possibly taking 'into the next century'.
So, he was right? What's your point?
Re:Space Elevator Music (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I'm hoping they force all occupants to wear airtight space-suits. With any luck this will then become a trend adopted by wider society, and the flatulence that so often plagues the elevator at my work will become a thing of the past...
Re:No I didn't Read TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
If you bring net mass down from orbit, you can actually make an energy profit (just on the elevator, I'm not saying that it would offset the costs of hauling propellant, etc, for asteroid miners and such).
Yeah of course you can't win overall, but nevertheless wouldn't it be totally awesome to bring back a load of minerals from an asteroid and get a "free" lift of your next load of fuel and supplies?
Re:That's Cheap! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not clear that the costs will be greatly reduced. There simply isn't that much demand (or foreseeable need for) "sending small unmanned craft to do [unspecified] things". Even with tourism (the likely largest market in the near term), you'll have a hard time charging enough to recoup your costs as well as operating expenses.
Not to mention that cost specified is almost certainly laughably low.
Over-Hyped (Score:3, Insightful)
A space elevator is hardly the greatest sci-fi vision of all. The greatest sci-fi vision of all (aside from higher ratings for the SciFi Channel allowing them to produce more original features) is faster than light interstellar travel. A space elevator to nowhere pales compared to that.
Re:No I didn't Read TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
He left out the base assumption there, that everyone leaves out.
Once you pay for the space elevator, the incremental cost for sending a KG of cargo into space is cheap.
This is the same statement, less clearly made, as the comment somewhere above here that talks about costs of a space shuttle flight. It says, looking at total program costs, the space shuttle costs $1.3 billion per flight as of 2006, but looking at incremental costs, it is only $60 million per flight.
The unobtanium is, of course, part of the initial cost, and which most people on here seem to think is underestimated in the Japanese announcement.
Re:Just as a subnote... (Score:2, Insightful)
You make a good point. If I have a $10,000 and I spend it all on hookers and booze I can't, later, go and spend it on a post-graduate engineering classwork even if that would be an arguably better use of my funds.
On the other hand, I think it's worthwhile to remind people what could be purchased in lieu of what we (i.e. the current administration) have decided our priorities are. I'd love it if the news coverage of the current bailouts actually did a cost-benefit analysis of an AIG bailout versus fundamental science research or early education or medical research or distributed energy generation or mass transit etc..
So just because the bailout may be fait accompli doesn't mean that we shouldn't have the conversation. Maybe next time we'll make better choices.
Re:call me when they have something (Score:3, Insightful)
it would take a guy in the spacecraft a minimum of 4.3 years to arrive at Alpha Centauri
The ggp's point is that it would not. If you accelerated quickly enough, time would contract enough so that, in the spaceship's reference frame, the trip would take well under 4.3 light years. In fact, it could take an hour ( if the acceleration didn't kill you ).
What you mean is that, in Earth's reference frame, the trip would have to take at least 4.3 years.
Re:No I didn't Read TFA (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, figuring out how to mass produce extra strong carbon nanotube ribbons would be very useful for things other than building a space elevator.
Sure, that research might cost billions but the benefit is not just the ability to build a space elevator. By all rights the cost to develop such technology should be divided over all of the gains that the technology brings.
Consider the difference between 100% and 0-99% (Score:3, Insightful)
SDI doesn't need to be 100% effective to change the way a rational enemy with a few missiles will behave.
Besides it's really a first generation flying saucer defense system. You've got to crawl before you walk and walk before you run.