TenTailedCat on 5/3/2006 at 10:18
Quote Posted by Komag
What happened to that magnetic/solar/asteroid space elevator thingy? It was supposed to be ready by 2005 or something! :rolleyes:
But seriously, any major moon or mars base settlements will have to start with a very much cheaper way to get lots of material weight into space. The space elevator idea has potential to reduce costs per ton around 1/10, then eventually even 1/100.
The latest version of the idea I read about a while ago was a nano-carbon ribbon thing that would have a small asteriod strapped to the other end to keep it taut, then a machine would "crawl" up the ribbon carrying the load
They had a minor success with the space elevator recently, making a robot scuttle up a 1000 meter carbon nanotube cable. This is somewhat short of the 62,000miles they actually need however.
Komag on 5/3/2006 at 18:42
actually, the edge of space is 62 miles, not 62,000 miles. So that's like 100 kilometers, or just 100 times that test of 1 kilometer. Perhaps it would need to go higher than just the edge of space though, maybe up to something like 250 miles, not sure
mopgoblin on 5/3/2006 at 20:00
A space elevator would need a satellite in a geostationary orbit (roughly 35000 km above the equator). A satellite closer to the earth will orbit faster, so you couldn't run a cable down to a fixed point on the surface.
Somnus on 6/3/2006 at 05:52
Quote Posted by TenTailedCat
Are there enough resources on the Moon that the involved parties (US, Russia and maybe China) would be willing to share with each other, or will they be looking to grab everthing they can possibly lay their hands on at all costs?
Is this rhetorical? There aren't enough resources on the
Earth to get humans to share with each other. We need to go to preschool.
It's such a shame that one of the first things space pioneers will bring to the solar system is war.
adamg32 on 6/3/2006 at 06:01
As to the idea of a war in space, I doubt that will happen. The US, Britain and the Soviet Union signed a treaty in January of 1967 that provided for the demilitarization of outer space. Hopefully that is still around! Besides, I would imagine that the costs of space warfare R&D would be too high to make it a feasable option. Not to mention that we have too many troubles on the ground. Who needs another battlefield?
Scots Taffer on 6/3/2006 at 06:21
I'm reading a Clive Cussler novel just now that has a space war set on the Moon and it's just part of a random subplot. Lollin.
Drunken Cricket on 6/3/2006 at 10:59
Live in space, hunt aliens... Sounds feasible...
I just hope aliens don't taste like chicken! We got enough of that here on Earth.
Rogue Keeper on 6/3/2006 at 11:34
Right, the keyword in this case is: Money. There always will be more issues down on the Earth to put money into. The US have given up the project of Freedom Space Station because it was too expensive, is that right? So we have an international space station financed by more countries, and even this project is behind schedule, as it usually is - because of lack of money.
If even such economically powerful country as the US is can't afford its own big orbital space station, could it afford such expensive project as colonization of the Moon? How many percent of their total budget it would drain?
Besides, we still don't know precisely how the global economical situation will look by 2020.
This just isn't realistic, and it smells like cheap propaganda blahblah in the first place. Something to cheer up the nation with during dark times...
(And OMG I forgot, there is no oil on the Moon, is it?)
TenTailedCat on 6/3/2006 at 11:51
Did you even read the article?
The whole purpose was to illustrate the fact that the US is looking to the private corporate secotor to fund these things.
