Anyone considered the problem of static discharge with a space elevator?
After all, building one, you effectively earth the ionosphere.
Venturing in to space useless?
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Meh, i've never been a fan of the whole elevator idea. If you ask me, it doesn't really matter what we are trying come up with now, because by the time we have the resources to construct one, we will probably already have a more efficient method anyways.
Anti-Grav generators ftw. Or some other crazy shit that we can't even imagine right now. Trust me, in 200 years when people look back on some of the dumb crazy stuff scientists have been tinkering with, they'll laugh at the idea of space elevators.
Sort of like how we laugh at how everyone in the 1920s thought that the 21st century would have mail sent with a bunch of pneumatic tubes. And crazy tin robots that serve our tea for us :D
Anti-Grav generators ftw. Or some other crazy shit that we can't even imagine right now. Trust me, in 200 years when people look back on some of the dumb crazy stuff scientists have been tinkering with, they'll laugh at the idea of space elevators.
Sort of like how we laugh at how everyone in the 1920s thought that the 21st century would have mail sent with a bunch of pneumatic tubes. And crazy tin robots that serve our tea for us :D
I think, in a hundred years, most people are going to forget all the reservations people now had about going into space. Most people forget that the world before their time was as horrendously complex and confusing as their time.
It's really just the names change. Small pox to aids. Eugenics to Environmentalists. It's amazing how quickly these things lose importance. Or gain importance. I be no one, at the time, would have thought that Eugenics would lead to the Nazis racial purification laws which were just paraphrases of proposed Eugenic laws that were proposed in the U.S a decade before. Funny how that works.
Really, the point of this rambling post is to point out that the future is horrendously hard.
But those who get it right normally are very very rich.
It's really just the names change. Small pox to aids. Eugenics to Environmentalists. It's amazing how quickly these things lose importance. Or gain importance. I be no one, at the time, would have thought that Eugenics would lead to the Nazis racial purification laws which were just paraphrases of proposed Eugenic laws that were proposed in the U.S a decade before. Funny how that works.
Really, the point of this rambling post is to point out that the future is horrendously hard.
But those who get it right normally are very very rich.
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Doombringer
- Posts: 68
- Joined: 20 Jan 2007, 20:11
Seriously, can you explain in other words, :$. I am not that good in English.Zoombie wrote:I think, in a hundred years, most people are going to forget all the reservations people now had about going into space. Most people forget that the world before their time was as horrendously complex and confusing as their time.
It's really just the names change. Small pox to aids. Eugenics to Environmentalists. It's amazing how quickly these things lose importance. Or gain importance. I be no one, at the time, would have thought that Eugenics would lead to the Nazis racial purification laws which were just paraphrases of proposed Eugenic laws that were proposed in the U.S a decade before. Funny how that works.
Really, the point of this rambling post is to point out that the future is horrendously hard.
But those who get it right normally are very very rich.
-
maverick256
- Posts: 115
- Joined: 21 Sep 2004, 19:41
Anyone read Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson? He talks quite a bit about the space elevator in there. But yeah, the material (weight/strength ratio) required for space elevator is entirely beyond what we are capable of currently.
In the foreseeable future cheap space travel probably will come from aircraft/rocket hybrids (not the space shuttle) that can fly to a high altitude and then boost into space. But the goal is to bring as little on board fuel as possible for going into space, and waste as little energy (generated by that on board fuel) as possible on air friction. Something like a mother aircraft flying up to say 20km and releasing another aircraft/rocket to boost out of the atmosphere (something of the sort on a smaller scale already is used to launch payloads of a few hundred kgs into low orbit).
Another interesting concept is laser generated plasma assisted take off. There should be a site somewhere, but the research team demonstrated a (pretty small) prototype where high powered lasers aim at the bottom of a fast spinning shuttle thing (a few thousand rpm for stability). The laser heats the air on the bottom of the shuttle to plasma temperature (10k K, or something like that), the plasma expands, the shuttle shoots off into the air, and keeps accelerating as long as the laser tracks on the bottom and the shuttle remains in the atmosphere (so it'll probably still require some fuel to boost out). The demonstration attained a height of a few hundred feet I think, don't remember. It's not some new concept either, and seems promising maybe 40-100 years in the future.
In the foreseeable future cheap space travel probably will come from aircraft/rocket hybrids (not the space shuttle) that can fly to a high altitude and then boost into space. But the goal is to bring as little on board fuel as possible for going into space, and waste as little energy (generated by that on board fuel) as possible on air friction. Something like a mother aircraft flying up to say 20km and releasing another aircraft/rocket to boost out of the atmosphere (something of the sort on a smaller scale already is used to launch payloads of a few hundred kgs into low orbit).
Another interesting concept is laser generated plasma assisted take off. There should be a site somewhere, but the research team demonstrated a (pretty small) prototype where high powered lasers aim at the bottom of a fast spinning shuttle thing (a few thousand rpm for stability). The laser heats the air on the bottom of the shuttle to plasma temperature (10k K, or something like that), the plasma expands, the shuttle shoots off into the air, and keeps accelerating as long as the laser tracks on the bottom and the shuttle remains in the atmosphere (so it'll probably still require some fuel to boost out). The demonstration attained a height of a few hundred feet I think, don't remember. It's not some new concept either, and seems promising maybe 40-100 years in the future.
There have been some attempts at launching stuff to orbit using a cannon. The most successfull of them was orchestrated by Gerard Bull. He and his crew shot an object weighing a couple hundred kilograms into a height of 180km, which is the record for orbital cannoneering. If they'd shot it from the moon, it would have traveled faster than the escape velocity.
However, the project was destroyed before it was finished (by Bull's political enemies), and Bull himself was assassinated while working on a very large cannon in Iraq.
Would you like to know more?
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/abroject.htm
However, the project was destroyed before it was finished (by Bull's political enemies), and Bull himself was assassinated while working on a very large cannon in Iraq.
Would you like to know more?
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/abroject.htm
The V1 and V2 werent the only Victory weapons the Nazis tried to use.
The V3 was a large artillery cannon in france intended to shell southern england and possibly beyond. It was embedded in a concrete bunker producing V2 rockets on the northern coast of france.
Before it was finished the allied forces dropped bombs down its main opening and blew it up from the inside out.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/v3.htm
It would fire volleys of explosives in long dart like projectiles through one of 5 outlets, with a fire rate of 600 per minute.
The V3 was a large artillery cannon in france intended to shell southern england and possibly beyond. It was embedded in a concrete bunker producing V2 rockets on the northern coast of france.
Before it was finished the allied forces dropped bombs down its main opening and blew it up from the inside out.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/v3.htm
It would fire volleys of explosives in long dart like projectiles through one of 5 outlets, with a fire rate of 600 per minute.
Edit: I think I was wrong >__>
Norway
In 1934, Norsk Hydro built the first commercial heavy water plant at Vemork, Tinn, with a capacity of 12 tonnes per year. From 1940 and throughout World War II, the plant was under German control and the allies decided to destroy the plant and its heavy water to inhibit German development of nuclear weapons. In late 1942, a raid by British paratroopers failed when the gliders they were in crashed. All the raiders were killed in the crash or shot by German army troops. But in the night of February 27-28 Operation Gunnerside succeeded. Norwegian commandos managed to demolish small but key bits of the electrolytic cells, dumping the accumulated heavy water down the factory drains. Arguably (see below) this prevented Germany from building a nuclear reactor (German nuclear weapons would not have automatically followed the reactor for many reasons). The Norsk Hydro operation is one of the great commando/sabotage operations of the war.
On 16 November 1943, the allied air forces dropped more than 400 bombs on the site. The allied air raid prompted the Nazi government to move all available heavy water to Germany for safekeeping. On 20 February 1944, a Norwegian partisan sank the ferry M/F Hydro carrying the heavy water across Lake Tinn, at the cost of 14 Norwegian civilians, and most of the heavy water was presumably lost. A few of the barrels were only half full, and therefore could float, and may have been salvaged and transported to Germany. (These events were dramatized in the 1965 movie, The Heroes of Telemark.)
'Twas Norwegian commandos, not polish.. I had the wrong place, thus giving me the wrong commandos >__<
Norway
In 1934, Norsk Hydro built the first commercial heavy water plant at Vemork, Tinn, with a capacity of 12 tonnes per year. From 1940 and throughout World War II, the plant was under German control and the allies decided to destroy the plant and its heavy water to inhibit German development of nuclear weapons. In late 1942, a raid by British paratroopers failed when the gliders they were in crashed. All the raiders were killed in the crash or shot by German army troops. But in the night of February 27-28 Operation Gunnerside succeeded. Norwegian commandos managed to demolish small but key bits of the electrolytic cells, dumping the accumulated heavy water down the factory drains. Arguably (see below) this prevented Germany from building a nuclear reactor (German nuclear weapons would not have automatically followed the reactor for many reasons). The Norsk Hydro operation is one of the great commando/sabotage operations of the war.
On 16 November 1943, the allied air forces dropped more than 400 bombs on the site. The allied air raid prompted the Nazi government to move all available heavy water to Germany for safekeeping. On 20 February 1944, a Norwegian partisan sank the ferry M/F Hydro carrying the heavy water across Lake Tinn, at the cost of 14 Norwegian civilians, and most of the heavy water was presumably lost. A few of the barrels were only half full, and therefore could float, and may have been salvaged and transported to Germany. (These events were dramatized in the 1965 movie, The Heroes of Telemark.)
'Twas Norwegian commandos, not polish.. I had the wrong place, thus giving me the wrong commandos >__<