everything will has its time dont worry my friend..we just began to truly evolve, i cant imagine what will be after 100, 200, 1000years, we got first plane 120years ago, and got to the moon 50years ago, im afraid i wount be able to see the truly impresive inventions. if first plane-moon is only separated by 70years? its crazy to think
I read your comment, and the latter sentence in the voice of Joey Tribiani: - "It's a moo point. It's like a cow's opinion, you know, it just doesn't matter. It's "moo""
First two questions you need to ask someone when they think they have space elevators figured out: 1. How do you make sure it doesnt break? 2. What do you do when it breaks anyways?
We’ve been building pipelines, bridges and super tall buildings for decades and have not had a single problem with stability. A cable that is light enough and strong enough should be easy. 🤓😉 But seriously, I’d rather have resources mined from the asteroid belt processes and used in space. Most of it can stay up there and some could be brought down with reusable heat shields and parachutes. We are much closer to processing raw materials in space than creating a space elevator.
"...we could have made it ten years ago..." is a bare faced lie. No, we couldn't, and he knows it. Fire whoever does your due diligence, or even better, do it yourself.
Your listening comprehension is quite poor, as he said "started building it ten years ago". Hence, he does _NOT_ indicate when it would be operational or even at what state it would be at now... All he implied is that the foundations and groundwork could have already been set in motion. Bear in mind that most if not all space related projects take years if not decades to complete, so by all means and purposes he _is_ technically correct. Next time don't rush to judge others.
@Nope, you're incorrect You're talking about starting work on a project where the main building material does not yet exist in meaningful quantities, and hoping it will become available by the time you require it. I don't know if you've been a part of many engineering projects, but that's not how you get the project greenlit.
@@dsdy1205 I have not, but I know that e.g. the Apollo program was conceived a full decade before any missions and even though the JWST has only just recently been launched, we already have a concept for the _LUVOIR_ High Definition Space Telescope to be launched in 2039. Space projects take a loooooong time.
@@Nah_nope_not_really "the Apollo program was conceived a full decade before any missions " They didn't make the Apollo spacecraft out of materials that don't exist.
@@TempleGuitars "No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris… [because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping." - Orville Wright The Apollo program overcame many other technological challenges and I bet many in 1960 argued against it because they considered it impossible.
Best spot would be at the equator, preferbly a place with not too many earthquakes like the west coast of Africa. or French Guiana and Suriname. The elevator and counterweight would use conductive material for the cable, shielding, grounding And probably an active charge management system to neutralize the charge on the cable and other components. We can also look into diamagnetic levitation of the elevator to reduce strain on the whole structure. We need stronger material development so all weights and movement of the elevator are supported. Nothing is impossible as long as you don't break the laws of physics. We'll get there...My 2 Cents
You must also consider another variable. A very important one. With the elevator cable you are actually making a short from one side of an immense capacitor/battery to the other. Have you ever seen lightning? Yeah, just like that.
I think this is one of the simplest problems to solve. The cable wouldn't and shouldn't be a single piece of cable. It will be segmented and you'd just use insulating connectors.
"Scientists say", what scientists? The one guy who says we could have started 10 years ago based on an idea in his head with no actual headway made? Clickbait title for a misleading video. Space elevators would be rad, but they need A LOT of things to come together before we can start on them.
Quick question. If the cable needs to be that strong to support it's own weight, then it is also under incredible tension. If the ribbon of a cable fibre is damaged by a micrometeorite, what prevents it from explosively failing an damaging the surrounding cable. Do they plan of braiding it or something to prevent a cascading structural failure?
Nice theory and one of Arthur C Clark's favourites too but the survivability is questionable, not just from collisions with Space junk but weather events could be problematic and it would also be vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
As Neil deGrasse Tyson pointed out recently, the space station, if seen at the scale of a schoolroom earth globe, would be about 3/8 inch from the surface of the globe. What that means is that a space elevator that reached as high as the space station would be slightly less than a thousandth of the way to the moon, and slightly less than a millionth of the way to Mars.
That's why, when you really think about it, it's insane to believe that we actually went to the moon. Especially in such a tiny module. That flimsy looking little module somehow was able to hold enough fuel to get all the way there and back, land smoothly, get through the van Allen belts safely, and then they have the nerve to make the excuse that the reason we haven't gone back is because "we lost the technology". Oh yeah, and somehow Richard Nixon called the moon with a LANDLINE phone and talked to them in real time, yet we can severely even make a cell call from an airplane within the atmosphere. All that, and yet we're the crazy ones if we question any of it.
I think it seems more practical to build a space elevator on the moon or mars. Low atmosphere gravity and whatnot Edit: i also dont see how the rocket could escape with the rope it would be way to heavy
On the moon, it might be easier to just build an electromagnetic mass driver that shoots payloads away from the moon. And then you would have a tiny rocket motor that corrects the orbit a bit.
I think they're making it harder than it needs to be. Just use steel cable. Step 1: Get a satellite in geostationary orbit. Step 2: Rocket spools of steel wire up to it until it has the 35700km worth it needs to reach earth. Fasten each new spool to the last to make one long wire. Step 3: Unroll the completed wire down to earth. Step 4: Use "spider" robots to run new wire threads up to the satellite until you've created a massive steel cable under centrifugal tension. Step 5: Build the space elevator using the cable as your foundation.
Steel won’t be able to withstand all the tension, especially with this length, it won’t fall on earth, it will just break apart… and with carbon nanotubes, well they sort of can withstand that, but how about making a 20 meter one first and then think about 35700 km
So if you built it, how would you get anything up or down it with it getting fried? The atmosphere is charged with electricity. Ordinary radio towers have to be grounded. This thing would be constantly getting struck by lightning and drawing huge static electricity from dragging along the upper atmosphere; there'd be no way to insulate everything from it.
Skyhooks are what humans will end up making. They’re cheaper, far easier to make without resorting to carbon nanotubes as the only suitable material, and not to mention far, FAR safer. A earth grounded space elevator poses to many different problems with safety. There are far to many unknown elements such as microscopic space debris trajectory and environmental disturbances on a grounded tether. Unless an entire earth based space elevator was covered in a force field from sea level to geostationary orbit they simply cannot work. Regardless how much tensile strength your fancy carbon nanotubes can withstand its helpless against being struck but a 2mm pebble flying at 40,000mph.
There is the other option that could be built now. Non geostationary, the hanging cable method. It could give us the experience we need to move forward
Physics of non-geostationary don’t work. LEO orbit moves around the planet very quickly. You can’t hold it in one place. Which also means any LEO junk will eventually hit the tether at some high speed.
@@A31415 Its actually on the board this plan, and may be built before earth bound. You are right though, its a non geostationary comes with its own set of problems, i think the plan might have had a lagrange point non geostationary satellite, with one end in a higher earth orbit and the other end running out to a large counter weight. It does sound unstable but ill try find where it was. The beauty was that it could be built right now with current materials
Once you get to in space mining and construction it seems mostly unnecessary to do the elevator. The starship can bring a few hundred plus people into orbit for under a million
Even if you lifted a spaceship on the space elevator, if you want to get to the moon or Mars you still have to accelerate past escape velocity. There also aren't carbon nanotubes longer than a few millimeters, so....
No matter how light the Cable/Tether Bundle.. believe or not,..the Counter Weight/ Station in scale of 1,xxx tonnes...is way MINOR than Cable, itself (300,000 tonnes).
1:36 Millions per pound to the moon??? Not true. I don't know what this guy thinks we use to go to the moon. It is 40 thousand per pound to the moon with the SLS and it will soon be around $225 per pound with the starship assuming it needs 4 other starship launches to refuel it to go to the moon.
A space elevator needs to be built on the moon before Earth. All of the technology needs to mature first. The cable falling from space is really a tremendous hazard if the cable snaps.
Interestingly, it would be MUCH easier to build a space elevator for Mars than for Earth. Synchronous orbit is much closer to the surface, and the gravity is 37% as strong, meaning that the required tensile strength of the cable is far less. We could build a Mars elevator with existing materials and techniques. Even better, Phobos is just below synchronous orbit; equip it with a mass-driver rocket, and you could shift its orbit to serve as a ready-made counterweight.
even if space elevater can be built from an altitude of 100 km above earth surface to 1000km in space it will change the space travel without facing the heavy winds in upper atmosphere.
If its's possible, I think that a precaution to reduce the risk of damages in cable is a cicle magnetic energy area around the cable. A repelent energy had been could move away any spacial material aiming protect tha cable.
Even if a ribbon could handle the tensile loading, I find it highly improbable that weather could be managed. Ribbons under tension flutter and resonate viciously like the Tacoma Narrows bridge wind induced failure. With no restraint and huge sail area, the instability would be terminal under the best of conditions.
Just think about the physics.. the counterweight has to be in geostationary orbit. To that's 400 miles high. And the cable needs to be that long. And cut through the jet stream
theres no military applications with just making carbon cables and elevators. there's a lot of military applications creating rocket engines for space and missiles
Would've liked to hear some opposing views on this topic seeing as the consensus still seems to be that it's not possible, despite what one physicist claims
I like the part where you say "just press the button, and you are there". Not quite, any trip would take several days. Just think of the fastest train on Earth doing almost a full circuit around the planet (well, 90% of it. Still, a lot). That's how long it would take. And it doesn't get any faster out of the atmosphere as you are still bound to roll over the ribbon. If you want to send people, you have to move a full hotel and supply it for several days.
Could probably travel at highway speeds for an hour, then speed up to several hundred km/hour once you are out of the bulk of the atmosphere. The only limitation would be heat build up on the ribbon, which should easily be able to withstand such speeds.
Atmospheric resistance is not the issue here. Levitating trains can go faster than wheeled trains even at sea level. The fastest train on wheels, a modified French TGV, could do just short of 600kph. The problem is that steel wheels over steel rails, the only kind that can handle such speeds, don't have enough grip. That is why tracks for high speed trains have wide curves and small gradients. There is no wheel that has both enough traction and the ability to sustain high speeds. Traction means friction and frictions means heat. High speed means rotating very fast and it gets to the point that even the best material disintegrates. Just like on the surface of the Earth we have big, slow ships carrying cargo all over the world and fast jets moving people, my feeling is that space elevators will be slow and cheap as ships, able to carry cargo which is not time critical but for passengers, it will still be cheaper to fly them on rockets since you save on the expense to support a passenger confortable and sane for more than a week of travel.
@@stian1236 The top of the elevator would need to be in a geosynchronous orbit to remain above the ground station and that's around 22,000 miles above the earth's surface.
And the elevator would start here at ground level on Earth? Would it be able to withstand earthquakes? Hurricanes? How would it affect air travel? I mean planes would have to fly around it, needless to say.
This didn’t explain anything. Why is this cheaper than present methods? How does the tension/counterweight system work? ELI5 “I don’t see why this isn’t being built” - Space debris, within the video, is accepted as a problem without a solution 🥴
If it is possible to clean up our own space debris from orbit how can this idea of a space elevator possibly work when we can’t protect it from micro meteorites… the idea is ridiculous!
Is basic math/science/critical thinking even addressed in school these days? Obviously, not... A circular geosynchronous orbit around 35,786 km out. Now, how fast is your space elevator going to travel and how long is it going to take to cover that distance? For reference the fastest elevator in the U.S. travels at around 25mph.
I guess they have no clue about the potential difference between the ionosphere and the ground. There is no way they could do an elevator without it discharging our ionosphere and ruining our atmosphere.
We're really far off making any tube of carbon nanotube long enough for this purpose. Never mind the kind of damage that could occur if the cable snapped away from the ground or the platform in space is destroyed or malfunctions. Saying this technology will happen soon is deceptive.
I remember reading about alternating superatomic lattices of Graphene/Platinum where the permanent Magnetic Field strength is on the order of 200-400 Teslas. One could ride the Earth's Magnetic Field from the ground to orbit without the requirement of any permanent structure.
Pelted by meteors going 25k km per hr, bombarded by continual radiation, subject to terrorism and greedy criminals, expensive maintenance, malfunctions, material fatigue, crazy stuff falling back to Earth onto civilized areas, junk floating in orbit around earth…what could possibly go wrong? It’s a nice dream tho.
For reasons others in the comments have described, an Earth based space elevator will currently not work. But one on the Moon would. Building a space elevator on the Moon is achievable TODAY, with nothing more than Kevlar fibres, which we already make mile and miles of for bulletproof vests (military funding go brr). It wouldn't be as intuitive as an Earth elevator in increasing access to space, but it would allow cheap exploitation of Moon materials to build up a space economy in Low Earth Orbit.
This video is a shortened version of another video that Bloomberg posted 11 months ago. I thought the whole thing looked very familiar. But what is it? Two guys who are proponents of space elevators, they believe in it, it's their thing, and they talk about how "it's possible now". Well, let's see. I'm skeptical.
We could supply the current space station, supply fuel to spaceships traveling to Mars and beyond, additional space stations, etc. Lots of benefits if this could be built. Space has resources to help improve mankinds life on earth
Space elevator, If we can secure a cable that can stay attached to the earth with a large weight at the other end, what effect will it have on the stability of the earth's rotation and the moon, surely this will cause an out-of-balance wobble. ???????
Federal Reserve pumped $120 Billion A MONTH, to prop up bond and stock prices. All the other budgets for science and education are so puny in comparison. Puts things into perspective how America squandered their great privilege of reserve currency to make sure Billionaires stay wealthy.
If we had the material and resources. Someone smarter than me just tell me if it would go ka-boom because of atmospheric electrical discharge because it's literally a ground rod to space.
Spare elevators will be cheap, because the unobtanium the cable will have to be made of will be cheap. Since its imaginary it doesn’t have to cost real dollars. Also there will be no maintenance cost because maintenance cost is for real things. And you’ll never have space junk or bird strike or radiation degradation causing the cable to snap and come crashing down, killing people on the ground because those only happen to real things. All in all it’s a great solution if you’re looking for a technology that sounds amazing yet maybe just about achievable 20 years from now and you want to scam people today. The story about space elevators is always “The will introduce a new paradigm of cheap space travel/cargo deployment. They’re closer than you think!”
I was kind of hoping that before we work on this,we come up with a longer,more flexible and all around less sucky shop vac hose. But I guess I'm just a dreamer with my head in the clouds.
Apparently these guys forgot that space debris exists. A cable, even thin, from ground to orbit has a very high chance of getting hit by some random fast-moving cosmic dust and rip completely apart.
it would never work. Even if it was created and operational, that cable would snap from all sorts of things, gravity being on of them. What if its tidal sing is stronger than the cable can support. It's anchored to earth sure, but what if shifts in gravity cause it to float a few meters away for a time? And don't get me started with debris.
No they're not, unless you're talking about better renderings. I haven't heard of any testing of a single cable. If your talking about in the near future maybe in 30 years.
Elevator has to take own Energy with it. Then the tube is big at earth and smaller at space. And it’s not quick. And the tube must be strong always. Quite a challenge also when carbon nano tube exists. But it isn‘t that cheap as told.
I’m excited about the idea of a space elevator, but Edwards lost me at “millions of dollars per pound.” The cost used to be closer to $10,000-$30,000/pound to put stuff in orvit, but are now closer to $1k, thanks in large part to SpaceX and their reusable rocket tech. ~Trav
He didn't say to orbit though. He said to the moon or to Mars. It is about 100k to send a pound to the moon. About 1 million dollars to send a pound to Mars.
beanstalk elevator would need to be built first around the moon, later other planets as the sheer potential energy could be cataclysmic in critical failure.
I'm curious to know what sort of reinforced cable could actually be used to keep the object tethered. What If the tether snapped!? What sort of safety precautions would be in place? I wouldn't ride it. Edit: we should focus on sending shorted stocks to the moon instead.
There was originally a proposal for a steel-composite cable but it created tons of problems, and no known composite would be strong enough, mostly due to having to lift its own weight. The only known material that can currently withstand the 'pull' is a carbon nanotube, which can easily handle its own weight, but we can't make them long enough yet to make a space elevator. If a carbon nanotube snapped it would largely drift back down to Earth slowly, or more likely, it would fling off into space: depending on where it was cut. A single nanotube would not only be strong enough to hold the tether in orbit, but also lift about 20 tons at a time into orbit, and we would likely want to braid 3+ tubes together, increasing that load, but also redundancy.
as mentioned, carbon nanotubes could be used to keep the object tethered. as for if the tether snaps - the problem isn't it falling back to earth, but it is a problem for the people on the space lift who are, say, halfway up. it is also potentially a problem if the cut tether becomes a long flying ribbon of space debris that might hit other important objects in orbit. for the people on the lift... they might have a way to detach from the tether and have the lift reenter the atmosphere and glide safely to landing - which is quite possible with current tech. the problem of the tether becoming (even if temporary) deadly space junk is less obvious to solve, but I'm interested if anyone has any ideas.
Problem is it take 4 days at 200mph to get to space using the elevator. Rocket gets there fast. So far material science needs to solve the carbon nano tubes and graphene problem.
This researcher says there isn't any reason we can't build a space elevator. Except there is. And more than one. Google X researched this a few years ago. After something like 5 years of research, the team determined it isn't possible currently. The longest carbon nanotube strand to date is not much more than one meter in length.
Why would you narrate the "what if it was severed" scenario than segue right back to "we should build a space elevator"? Maybe we should first clean up orbiting debris?
Let's see if we're capable of building a carbon nanotube cable that's 10m long, before thinking about one that's 35700km long.
Lol bump
Yup. Very poorly researched video. Disappointed
omg I don't think we can make a meter lol
Exactly
@@StevenHuangCA Think the guy is just trying to attract funding by sell the dream. One day it should happen, once crazy hurdles are overcome.
You’d need a lot of small talk in the space elevator.
The '60 mile high' club.
You wouldnt hear it over the sound of my constant shrieking.
Just take a pill
check out the new simulator. the time has come.
And hopefully nobody with gas
The problem is that nanotubes can’t be made hundreds of kilometers long with current technologies. So it’s sort of a moot point.
everything will has its time dont worry my friend..we just began to truly evolve, i cant imagine what will be after 100, 200, 1000years, we got first plane 120years ago, and got to the moon 50years ago, im afraid i wount be able to see the truly impresive inventions. if first plane-moon is only separated by 70years? its crazy to think
I read your comment, and the latter sentence in the voice of Joey Tribiani:
- "It's a moo point. It's like a cow's opinion, you know, it just doesn't matter. It's "moo""
Also last estimations of tensile strengh make it look very very hard t o make a space elevator even with the purest nanotube cables.
@@khenricx they will figure out something like they always do
Everything changes when we develop dark matter receptors and dark energy focal points. Creating points of gravity that draw you towards that point.
First two questions you need to ask someone when they think they have space elevators figured out:
1. How do you make sure it doesnt break?
2. What do you do when it breaks anyways?
We’ve been building pipelines, bridges and super tall buildings for decades and have not had a single problem with stability. A cable that is light enough and strong enough should be easy. 🤓😉
But seriously, I’d rather have resources mined from the asteroid belt processes and used in space. Most of it can stay up there and some could be brought down with reusable heat shields and parachutes. We are much closer to processing raw materials in space than creating a space elevator.
What are you worried about? A nanotube ribbon falling to earth?
@@thecasterkid and everyone who's on it dying.
@@offwhitemke do bridges also get bombarded by space debris flying 10 times the speed of a bullet?
@@ahabkapitany You could buy chutes on it. And people can die in airplane crashes and still fly constantly.
I dont think we are nearly as close as this video suggests
"...we could have made it ten years ago..." is a bare faced lie. No, we couldn't, and he knows it. Fire whoever does your due diligence, or even better, do it yourself.
Your listening comprehension is quite poor, as he said "started building it ten years ago". Hence, he does _NOT_ indicate when it would be operational or even at what state it would be at now... All he implied is that the foundations and groundwork could have already been set in motion. Bear in mind that most if not all space related projects take years if not decades to complete, so by all means and purposes he _is_ technically correct.
Next time don't rush to judge others.
@Nope, you're incorrect You're talking about starting work on a project where the main building material does not yet exist in meaningful quantities, and hoping it will become available by the time you require it. I don't know if you've been a part of many engineering projects, but that's not how you get the project greenlit.
@@dsdy1205 I have not, but I know that e.g. the Apollo program was conceived a full decade before any missions and even though the JWST has only just recently been launched, we already have a concept for the _LUVOIR_ High Definition Space Telescope to be launched in 2039.
Space projects take a loooooong time.
@@Nah_nope_not_really "the Apollo program was conceived a full decade before any missions " They didn't make the Apollo spacecraft out of materials that don't exist.
@@TempleGuitars "No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris… [because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping."
- Orville Wright
The Apollo program overcame many other technological challenges and I bet many in 1960 argued against it because they considered it impossible.
I'm still waiting to hear how they intend to deal with the charge differentiation between the surface and the tethered station.
Best spot would be at the equator, preferbly a place with not too many earthquakes like the west coast of Africa. or French Guiana and Suriname. The elevator and counterweight would use conductive material for the cable, shielding, grounding And probably an active charge management system to neutralize the charge on the cable and other components. We can also look into diamagnetic levitation of the elevator to reduce strain on the whole structure. We need stronger material development so all weights and movement of the elevator are supported. Nothing is impossible as long as you don't break the laws of physics. We'll get there...My 2 Cents
Isn't it still orbiting earth's gravity?
@@DenisDamulira23 It has to be the equator, it won't work anywhere else
Oh, yeah. Think of the permanent lightning storm that thing would create! Carbon nanotubes are great conductors.
You must also consider another variable. A very important one. With the elevator cable you are actually making a short from one side of an immense capacitor/battery to the other. Have you ever seen lightning? Yeah, just like that.
😂. Longest lightning arrester gets pulverized
I think this is one of the simplest problems to solve. The cable wouldn't and shouldn't be a single piece of cable. It will be segmented and you'd just use insulating connectors.
@@ranchan1111 I doubt that very seriously given the energy involed. Have you ever seen a lightning bolt? You're not going to stop that. LOL.
@@DavoY2K Maybe harness the energy to power the elevator??
"Scientists say", what scientists? The one guy who says we could have started 10 years ago based on an idea in his head with no actual headway made? Clickbait title for a misleading video.
Space elevators would be rad, but they need A LOT of things to come together before we can start on them.
This video is the equivalent to someone telling you a party is an hour earlier than it is because they assume you'll be late.
Quick question. If the cable needs to be that strong to support it's own weight, then it is also under incredible tension. If the ribbon of a cable fibre is damaged by a micrometeorite, what prevents it from explosively failing an damaging the surrounding cable. Do they plan of braiding it or something to prevent a cascading structural failure?
Use the anti-gravity generator.
Nice theory and one of Arthur C Clark's favourites too but the survivability is questionable, not just from collisions with Space junk but weather events could be problematic and it would also be vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
If only we could build it out of used toner cartridges. We'd have thousands of them!
I'm not sure about the last one, even if you crashed a jet into it wouldn't it just slice through like a hot knife through butter?
Flat earth terrorists?
🤣@@Revelation6_7-8
There is an annual space elevator conference that started over 10 years ago.
Run by the flat earthers 🤓🤦♂️
And where do they hold these conferences, oh ya at the top of the space elevator.
@@deanmason5827 at the major tech companies.
وَقَالَ فِرْعَوْنُ يَا هَامَانُ ابْنِ لِي صَرْحًا لَّعَلِّي أَبْلُغُ الْأَسْبَابَ
As Neil deGrasse Tyson pointed out recently, the space station, if seen at the scale of a schoolroom earth globe, would be about 3/8 inch from the surface of the globe. What that means is that a space elevator that reached as high as the space station would be slightly less than a thousandth of the way to the moon, and slightly less than a millionth of the way to Mars.
That's why, when you really think about it, it's insane to believe that we actually went to the moon. Especially in such a tiny module. That flimsy looking little module somehow was able to hold enough fuel to get all the way there and back, land smoothly, get through the van Allen belts safely, and then they have the nerve to make the excuse that the reason we haven't gone back is because "we lost the technology". Oh yeah, and somehow Richard Nixon called the moon with a LANDLINE phone and talked to them in real time, yet we can severely even make a cell call from an airplane within the atmosphere. All that, and yet we're the crazy ones if we question any of it.
I think it seems more practical to build a space elevator on the moon or mars. Low atmosphere gravity and whatnot
Edit: i also dont see how the rocket could escape with the rope it would be way to heavy
YO MAMA GOING TO MOON AND MAR ?
I pictured rope stationed on earth with a rocket sorta pulling just one end upwards
@@0endofsilence YO MAMA WILL BE THAT ROCKET?
moon has no rotation, but mars would be quite possible
On the moon, it might be easier to just build an electromagnetic mass driver that shoots payloads away from the moon. And then you would have a tiny rocket motor that corrects the orbit a bit.
I think they're making it harder than it needs to be. Just use steel cable.
Step 1: Get a satellite in geostationary orbit.
Step 2: Rocket spools of steel wire up to it until it has the 35700km worth it needs to reach earth. Fasten each new spool to the last to make one long wire.
Step 3: Unroll the completed wire down to earth.
Step 4: Use "spider" robots to run new wire threads up to the satellite until you've created a massive steel cable under centrifugal tension.
Step 5: Build the space elevator using the cable as your foundation.
Steel won’t be able to withstand all the tension, especially with this length, it won’t fall on earth, it will just break apart… and with carbon nanotubes, well they sort of can withstand that, but how about making a 20 meter one first and then think about 35700 km
So if you built it, how would you get anything up or down it with it getting fried? The atmosphere is charged with electricity. Ordinary radio towers have to be grounded. This thing would be constantly getting struck by lightning and drawing huge static electricity from dragging along the upper atmosphere; there'd be no way to insulate everything from it.
How dumb do you think we are ?
Skyhooks are what humans will end up making. They’re cheaper, far easier to make without resorting to carbon nanotubes as the only suitable material, and not to mention far, FAR safer.
A earth grounded space elevator poses to many different problems with safety. There are far to many unknown elements such as microscopic space debris trajectory and environmental disturbances on a grounded tether. Unless an entire earth based space elevator was covered in a force field from sea level to geostationary orbit they simply cannot work.
Regardless how much tensile strength your fancy carbon nanotubes can withstand its helpless against being struck but a 2mm pebble flying at 40,000mph.
There is the other option that could be built now. Non geostationary, the hanging cable method. It could give us the experience we need to move forward
Are you referring to a skyhook?
May want to consider drag and the fuel it would cost to stay in orbit
Physics of non-geostationary don’t work. LEO orbit moves around the planet very quickly. You can’t hold it in one place. Which also means any LEO junk will eventually hit the tether at some high speed.
@@A31415 Its actually on the board this plan, and may be built before earth bound. You are right though, its a non geostationary comes with its own set of problems, i think the plan might have had a lagrange point non geostationary satellite, with one end in a higher earth orbit and the other end running out to a large counter weight. It does sound unstable but ill try find where it was. The beauty was that it could be built right now with current materials
Once you get to in space mining and construction it seems mostly unnecessary to do the elevator. The starship can bring a few hundred plus people into orbit for under a million
Even if you lifted a spaceship on the space elevator, if you want to get to the moon or Mars you still have to accelerate past escape velocity. There also aren't carbon nanotubes longer than a few millimeters, so....
Gotta start somewhere 🙃
@@joergkalisch7749 it's like trying to get from New York to London by climbing a tree
No matter how light the Cable/Tether Bundle.. believe or not,..the Counter Weight/ Station in scale of 1,xxx tonnes...is way MINOR than Cable, itself (300,000 tonnes).
1:36 Millions per pound to the moon??? Not true. I don't know what this guy thinks we use to go to the moon. It is 40 thousand per pound to the moon with the SLS and it will soon be around $225 per pound with the starship assuming it needs 4 other starship launches to refuel it to go to the moon.
YO MAMA COST EVEN MORE TO SHIP
225 is so cheap thats crazy
@@yaad2226 Bruh 💀
Show us a sample of the ribbon under load....🧐
A space elevator needs to be built on the moon before Earth. All of the technology needs to mature first. The cable falling from space is really a tremendous hazard if the cable snaps.
The force of the earth rotation,wind force at DIFFERENT altitudes, gravity fluctuations moon tides, total weight
Interestingly, it would be MUCH easier to build a space elevator for Mars than for Earth. Synchronous orbit is much closer to the surface, and the gravity is 37% as strong, meaning that the required tensile strength of the cable is far less. We could build a Mars elevator with existing materials and techniques. Even better, Phobos is just below synchronous orbit; equip it with a mass-driver rocket, and you could shift its orbit to serve as a ready-made counterweight.
For safety from collision they should use 3 ribbons connected to payload in a triangle shape
even if space elevater can be built from an altitude of 100 km above earth surface to 1000km in space it will change the space travel without facing the heavy winds in upper atmosphere.
I think the first test of concept should be one for the moon, then perhaps Mars. Both would be FAR easier than building one for earth.
There is a few *small* issues they missed. Wind, planes, debris, natural disasters, and also Earths rotation.
If its's possible, I think that a precaution to reduce the risk of damages in cable is a cicle magnetic energy area around the cable. A repelent energy had been could move away any spacial material aiming protect tha cable.
Even if a ribbon could handle the tensile loading, I find it highly improbable that weather could be managed. Ribbons under tension flutter and resonate viciously like the Tacoma Narrows bridge wind induced failure. With no restraint and huge sail area, the instability would be terminal under the best of conditions.
Wind speeds can reach up to 155 miles per hour in some layer, you're saying that a ribbon will constantly be able to survive this?
Having that would allow for heat generating industries to be put into orbit or on the moon, which would remove a detrimental effect of fusion energy.
I think the Shuttle did a test by reeling down a coffee can sized weight from the cargo bay. The wire was 10km long?
Just think about the physics.. the counterweight has to be in geostationary orbit. To that's 400 miles high. And the cable needs to be that long. And cut through the jet stream
theres no military applications with just making carbon cables and elevators. there's a lot of military applications creating rocket engines for space and missiles
Would've liked to hear some opposing views on this topic seeing as the consensus still seems to be that it's not possible, despite what one physicist claims
You should search "foundation space elevator crash scene" after watching this video.
I like the part where you say "just press the button, and you are there". Not quite, any trip would take several days. Just think of the fastest train on Earth doing almost a full circuit around the planet (well, 90% of it. Still, a lot). That's how long it would take. And it doesn't get any faster out of the atmosphere as you are still bound to roll over the ribbon. If you want to send people, you have to move a full hotel and supply it for several days.
Not really, space begins as low as 62 miles up
Could probably travel at highway speeds for an hour, then speed up to several hundred km/hour once you are out of the bulk of the atmosphere. The only limitation would be heat build up on the ribbon, which should easily be able to withstand such speeds.
If you travel at 100 kmp/h you are out of the thickest of athmosphere withion 1 hour. Without an atmosphere you can accelerate to thousands of kmp/h.
Atmospheric resistance is not the issue here. Levitating trains can go faster than wheeled trains even at sea level. The fastest train on wheels, a modified French TGV, could do just short of 600kph. The problem is that steel wheels over steel rails, the only kind that can handle such speeds, don't have enough grip. That is why tracks for high speed trains have wide curves and small gradients. There is no wheel that has both enough traction and the ability to sustain high speeds. Traction means friction and frictions means heat. High speed means rotating very fast and it gets to the point that even the best material disintegrates. Just like on the surface of the Earth we have big, slow ships carrying cargo all over the world and fast jets moving people, my feeling is that space elevators will be slow and cheap as ships, able to carry cargo which is not time critical but for passengers, it will still be cheaper to fly them on rockets since you save on the expense to support a passenger confortable and sane for more than a week of travel.
@@stian1236 The top of the elevator would need to be in a geosynchronous orbit to remain above the ground station and that's around 22,000 miles above the earth's surface.
Yup, it’ll be ready to take stuff to near Earth orbit about the same time as commercial fusion power.
Which is never. 😆
Elevator wait times would be out of this world 💀
Liberally
Not the Bloomberg Quicktake quality I expect, sorry. It is too short, too superficial and not really new.
And the elevator would start here at ground level on Earth? Would it be able to withstand earthquakes? Hurricanes? How would it affect air travel? I mean planes would have to fly around it, needless to say.
There's too much space debris orbiting Earth. It would just be a matter of time until something severed the tether.
This didn’t explain anything.
Why is this cheaper than present methods? How does the tension/counterweight system work? ELI5
“I don’t see why this isn’t being built” - Space debris, within the video, is accepted as a problem without a solution 🥴
If it is possible to clean up our own space debris from orbit how can this idea of a space elevator possibly work when we can’t protect it from micro meteorites… the idea is ridiculous!
Is basic math/science/critical thinking even addressed in school these days? Obviously, not...
A circular geosynchronous orbit around 35,786 km out.
Now, how fast is your space elevator going to travel and how long is it going to take to cover that distance?
For reference the fastest elevator in the U.S. travels at around 25mph.
I saw this in the Apple TV show "Foundation" fantastic affordable idea to cheaply get people into space and save on energy to get to space
I guess they have no clue about the potential difference between the ionosphere and the ground. There is no way they could do an elevator without it discharging our ionosphere and ruining our atmosphere.
Gee, wouldn't it make more sense to start addressing the problem of space junk, since it would wipe out any space elevator attempt we make?
We're really far off making any tube of carbon nanotube long enough for this purpose. Never mind the kind of damage that could occur if the cable snapped away from the ground or the platform in space is destroyed or malfunctions.
Saying this technology will happen soon is deceptive.
I remember reading about alternating superatomic lattices of Graphene/Platinum where the permanent Magnetic Field strength is on the order of 200-400 Teslas. One could ride the Earth's Magnetic Field from the ground to orbit without the requirement of any permanent structure.
Pelted by meteors going 25k km per hr, bombarded by continual radiation, subject to terrorism and greedy criminals, expensive maintenance, malfunctions, material fatigue, crazy stuff falling back to Earth onto civilized areas, junk floating in orbit around earth…what could possibly go wrong? It’s a nice dream tho.
There is no doubt that an elevator could change all of mankind as it would open the door to space travel and unlimited energy.
For reasons others in the comments have described, an Earth based space elevator will currently not work. But one on the Moon would. Building a space elevator on the Moon is achievable TODAY, with nothing more than Kevlar fibres, which we already make mile and miles of for bulletproof vests (military funding go brr). It wouldn't be as intuitive as an Earth elevator in increasing access to space, but it would allow cheap exploitation of Moon materials to build up a space economy in Low Earth Orbit.
What about the hight wind, and changes of temperature.. how would that affect this design?....
This video is a shortened version of another video that Bloomberg posted 11 months ago. I thought the whole thing looked very familiar. But what is it? Two guys who are proponents of space elevators, they believe in it, it's their thing, and they talk about how "it's possible now". Well, let's see. I'm skeptical.
"what floor?"
"2,786 please."
Space elevator would be amazing for space mining
Railroad breaks anywhere: Get it fixed
Space cable breaks anywhere: . . . .
Time to build and launch a new space elevator.
We could supply the current space station, supply fuel to spaceships traveling to Mars and beyond, additional space stations, etc. Lots of benefits if this could be built. Space has resources to help improve mankinds life on earth
Space elevator, If we can secure a cable that can stay attached to the earth with a large weight at the other end, what effect will it
have on the stability of the earth's rotation and the moon, surely this will cause an out-of-balance wobble.
???????
counterweight? Without adding power, It will loose energy inevitably and falls down. Don’t you know 3-rd Newton’s law?
This guy is living in la la land if he think this will cost $82b dollars.
you're mistaken. the 'space elevator' is estimated to cost about 8 Billion; 10x less than the 82.5 Billion spent on the global space program in 2020.
You posted this last year too. And the year before.
Federal Reserve pumped $120 Billion A MONTH, to prop up bond and stock prices. All the other budgets for science and education are so puny in comparison. Puts things into perspective how America squandered their great privilege of reserve currency to make sure Billionaires stay wealthy.
If we had the material and resources. Someone smarter than me just tell me if it would go ka-boom because of atmospheric electrical discharge because it's literally a ground rod to space.
Spare elevators will be cheap, because the unobtanium the cable will have to be made of will be cheap. Since its imaginary it doesn’t have to cost real dollars. Also there will be no maintenance cost because maintenance cost is for real things. And you’ll never have space junk or bird strike or radiation degradation causing the cable to snap and come crashing down, killing people on the ground because those only happen to real things. All in all it’s a great solution if you’re looking for a technology that sounds amazing yet maybe just about achievable 20 years from now and you want to scam people today. The story about space elevators is always “The will introduce a new paradigm of cheap space travel/cargo deployment. They’re closer than you think!”
why do they worry about money? Every nation should contribute to this !
the cable would form a curved path, not straight.
bloomberg is it slow in the news lately?
I was kind of hoping that before we work on this,we come up with a longer,more flexible and all around less sucky shop vac hose. But I guess I'm just a dreamer with my head in the clouds.
so you think you will go up and push out a satellite ? It would simply fall and smash into the ground. ! It lacks orbital velocity.
It reminds me a thriller book written by Schätzing, I think it is called "limit"
Every time we pass through the ozone does it cause damage?
Apparently these guys forgot that space debris exists. A cable, even thin, from ground to orbit has a very high chance of getting hit by some random fast-moving cosmic dust and rip completely apart.
They talked about it in the video.
How much would it reduce the rotation of the Earth? We keep spinning through the conservation of momentum and gravity,
it would never work. Even if it was created and operational, that cable would snap from all sorts of things, gravity being on of them. What if its tidal sing is stronger than the cable can support. It's anchored to earth sure, but what if shifts in gravity cause it to float a few meters away for a time?
And don't get me started with debris.
No they're not, unless you're talking about better renderings. I haven't heard of any testing of a single cable. If your talking about in the near future maybe in 30 years.
After watching the wandering earth 2, I just want my son can see the real one.
Elevator has to take own Energy with it. Then the tube is big at earth and smaller at space. And it’s not quick. And the tube must be strong always. Quite a challenge also when carbon nano tube exists. But it isn‘t that cheap as told.
I’m excited about the idea of a space elevator, but Edwards lost me at “millions of dollars per pound.” The cost used to be closer to $10,000-$30,000/pound to put stuff in orvit, but are now closer to $1k, thanks in large part to SpaceX and their reusable rocket tech.
~Trav
You forget the cost of the object going to space ie James Webb 10 BILLION (yes BILLION) so he is correct per pound these items can run into millions .
@@ntal5859 The cost of developing and building the satellite and its technology has nothing to do with teh cost of putting it into orbit
He didn't say to orbit though. He said to the moon or to Mars. It is about 100k to send a pound to the moon. About 1 million dollars to send a pound to Mars.
beanstalk elevator would need to be built first around the moon, later other planets as the sheer potential energy could be cataclysmic in critical failure.
I'm curious to know what sort of reinforced cable could actually be used to keep the object tethered. What If the tether snapped!? What sort of safety precautions would be in place? I wouldn't ride it.
Edit: we should focus on sending shorted stocks to the moon instead.
There was originally a proposal for a steel-composite cable but it created tons of problems, and no known composite would be strong enough, mostly due to having to lift its own weight. The only known material that can currently withstand the 'pull' is a carbon nanotube, which can easily handle its own weight, but we can't make them long enough yet to make a space elevator. If a carbon nanotube snapped it would largely drift back down to Earth slowly, or more likely, it would fling off into space: depending on where it was cut.
A single nanotube would not only be strong enough to hold the tether in orbit, but also lift about 20 tons at a time into orbit, and we would likely want to braid 3+ tubes together, increasing that load, but also redundancy.
as mentioned, carbon nanotubes could be used to keep the object tethered.
as for if the tether snaps - the problem isn't it falling back to earth, but it is a problem for the people on the space lift who are, say, halfway up.
it is also potentially a problem if the cut tether becomes a long flying ribbon of space debris that might hit other important objects in orbit.
for the people on the lift... they might have a way to detach from the tether and have the lift reenter the atmosphere and glide safely to landing - which is quite possible with current tech.
the problem of the tether becoming (even if temporary) deadly space junk is less obvious to solve, but I'm interested if anyone has any ideas.
Little emergency boosters at 10km intervals along the ribbon to guide it should the ribbon tear?
Use parachute
Problem is it take 4 days at 200mph to get to space using the elevator. Rocket gets there fast. So far material science needs to solve the carbon nano tubes and graphene problem.
I can’t see how these things would be even remotely safe
Ah yes I remember sketching up a design for one in highschool lol
2045-2050 The Wandering Earth 2
So my doubt is why use a single thread base, make 4 together nd join them together in space ..
Here we go giving them flat earthers existential crisis 😎😎😎
hes so optimistic its almost delusional
This is a reupload. Pretty sure it was debunked last time it was uploaded too.
This researcher says there isn't any reason we can't build a space elevator. Except there is. And more than one. Google X researched this a few years ago. After something like 5 years of research, the team determined it isn't possible currently. The longest carbon nanotube strand to date is not much more than one meter in length.
No, they aren’t. It won’t ever happen.
Why would you narrate the "what if it was severed" scenario than segue right back to "we should build a space elevator"? Maybe we should first clean up orbiting debris?
I hope it can handle the air pressure.
If a space elevator gets created it will require an understanding of gravity and how to manipulate it.