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altha2008 (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
It would be nice to make them big enough to haul, supplies and ships as well as people
UniteForgetLeftRight (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
@gasdive i never thought about smelting metals in space, without reactive gasses there isnt much need for fluxing agents
gasdive (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
The reason I'm saying it's a dumb idea is that by using much the same things arranged differently you can get a better result for less effort. It's like arranging us, houses, roads and cars. Right now the houses are next to the roads, the cars run on the roads. We could be beside the road, the houses on the road, the cars under the road. Cars could move the road with the houses on it so we could get from one house to another. It would work but it would be dumb.
gasdive (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
@UniteForgetLeftRight I think it's a huge opportunity. Cheap mass to orbit makes solar power practical. Rotating tethers put the Moon surface as close as a quick sub orbital flight so all that raw material is just waiting. Big tethers make shifting around asteroids practical. One nickle-iron asteroid covers 90% of the earth's mineral needs for the next 1000 years. Solar vacuum smelters make raw materials cheap to refine. Titanium, aluminium and iron from the moon...
UniteForgetLeftRight (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
@gasdive im no astrophysicist, i do know there would be massive recreational and commercial demand for cheap space travel
gasdive (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
@UniteForgetLeftRight I don't think rockets (of any sort) are the answer. The space elevator is along the right lines, but misses the opportunities of a rotating tether. Imagine a braided rope perhaps 1000 km long (not 70000 km). Put it in low earth orbit. Have it rotate end over end. Arrange it so the tip closest to the ground is going against the direction of orbit. Fly a hypersonic aircraft up, grapple with the tip. Hold for half a rotation and you're in orbit.
UniteForgetLeftRight (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
@gasdive so should we go back to the shuttle? ive heard of launch pad theories using super powerful magnets
gasdive (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
@UniteForgetLeftRight Maybe deeply stupid is harsh. Still, for a space elevator you have to lift about a million tonnes to GEO and it would take around 400 years for that elevator to lift a million tonnes of payload in total. In the end it would be a two week trip to orbit. With a rotating tether you'd need to lift 300 tonnes to orbit then spend around a year building it up. In the end it would be a 30 minute trip to orbit repeatable every 90 minutes.
UniteForgetLeftRight (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
@gasdive wait deeply stupid? your talking a little over my head here ill have to reread lol
gasdive (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)
@UniteForgetLeftRight So with a rotating tether you can double the capacity every 4 weeks (given lifting is the limiting factor) because you can lift about 1/300th of the mass every 90 minutes. That makes starting small and working up to a large system practical. A space elevator can only lift perhaps 1/10000th of it's mass every 15 days. So capacity would double every 400 years. It's a deeply stupid idea. |
