Previous thread got archived prematurely so I decided to make one last one.
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We can build an Orbital Ring Space Elevator today, using steel and kevlar. The Orbital Ring goes to low earth orbit, so it does not need advanced materials. youtube.com/watch?v=0qezLhypA0Y
Why build the Orbital Ring? It would cut our costs of going to orbit from about $2000/kg to about $1/kg. There are individual asteroids that have tens of trillions of dollars in materials on them that could be mined. One mission could easily pay for the cost of building the Orbital Ring.
We could then deploy solar power satellites in orbit above cloud cover and return the power back to the surface with near zero loss by running power transmission cables down the elevator, and sell the power at a profit.
With increased luminosity in space, enhanced exposure time, and the ability to deliver base loads, solar panels pay for themselves in only 1-2 years while having a 20 year life time.
In other words, if you put $5 trillion of solar panels into space, you get your $5 trillion back by the end of year two and a $5 trillion income stream each year thereafter.
In other words, the US could cut everyone's taxes, both personal and business, income, capital, death, or otherwise, all to 0%, not even cut any benefits or current spending, and pay off the national debt within a decade.
Sustainable colonization of space is the only guaranteed way to ensure the long-run survival of the human race.
Evan Ramirez
Our technical ability to create space elevators and these advanced engineering projects is less of a constraint than the political and coordination problems involved.
Therefore, we should emphasize a more incremental, less sci-fi approach that will also lead to the development of advanced space technology.
The best way to do this is to support the development of a robust asteroid mining economy, and perhaps other space-related commercial ventures like satellite internet and microsatellites. Once people see that money can be made off of space technology, the machinery of financial capitalism will do the rest.
Brayden Wood
>tfw you thought this was a real space elevator thread
Jack Diaz
So where do you get the cash for all those launches required to build that thing?
Elijah Garcia
>Implode you have lost all privileges in this thread.
Lincoln James
It IS real.
Ask for more and you shall receive more.
AMA
Luke Sanchez
--->
Nolan Williams
Obvious larper wants to larp some more. There has got to be a better thread somewhere.
Angel Brooks
> Concrete concept being presented with hard facts and science. > LARP
William Davis
Any and all support and interest towards the development of advanced space technologies is welcomed. It doesn't matter if you're a larper or PhD scientist of businessman or policymaker or curious internet kid. The only way we can assemble political support for pro-space policies is to increase the awareness of the issue. The more people see it and talk about it, the better.
Jaxson Walker
Did you try asking /sci/?
Alexander Williams
One step at a time ok?
William Scott
But you need a space elevator to start mining asteroids effecively. And you don't need it for satellites. How is this gonna work?
Nicholas Taylor
Show us a peer-reviewed description of the system.
Chase Anderson
A good point but the creation of the space elevator has enormous political implications which is why I would rather make this post here as opposed to /sci/.
The science is fairly straight-forward. What is needed is a breed of individuals who have knowledge of politics that can meme the elevator into existence.
This is not dissimilar to the space race that happened in the 60s. Think of all of the political implications of the Apollo space missions and the effects that they had on society as a whole.
Isaiah Edwards
It's not my understanding that space elevators are *necessary* for asteroid mining, especially if much of the extracted resources remain in space to be utilized there. Would it help? Sure. But Unless we have some breakthrough in materials science, it seems likely that asteroid mining will be the "stepping-stone technology" that will be the most viable and will arrive soonest given current science and politics. So we should emphasize that path, without necessarily discouraging blue-sky (black sky?) thinking about space elevators and other awesome sci-fi stuff.
Jaxson Johnson
A commercial operation to do space cleanup is exactly the sort of incremental thing that will lead to greater interest and financial investment in spac technology. Show that there's money to be made doing space stuff.
Luke Rivera
Space debris is an issue that can be overcome.
> "...making the anchor mobile we can avoid collisions with satellites and debris in orbit"
The way to overcome this is by stationing the earth-end of the elevator to be on a moving sea platform.
In this fashion you can slightly shift the position of the elevator to avoid with any detected nearby space objects/debris.
Easton Parker
>No and we have had the capability to build it for quite some time with materials such as Kevlar. No, fuck off with this garbage. We have the technology and capabilities of building colonies in space or even a fucking Dyson swarm. The difference is that we have no current feasible way to design and build the damn thing.
Xavier Taylor
Read the Paul Birch papers before you decide to open your mouth.
Matthew Miller
>Asteroid mining Why would we need to do this? There are plenty of mines on earth, pulling out resources at the cost of dollars / ton.
Jason Morris
I fucking love this. I have studied this concept for over 15 years. The space ribbon will happen. The first nation to accomplish this feat, will gain overlord status.
Jonathan Thompson
I've got a hard fact for ((you)) right here.
>insinuates that kevlar can be used around the earth to produce space elevator. kevlar seems only viable as a material used in a lunar elevator because the gravity is much smaller than earth's. Carbon nanofibers is the only material that even reaches the necessary tensile strength without sheering itself at the height necessary for an elevator to operate and we are not able to perfectly manufacture these fibers at lengths require for this endeavor. >Throws out shipment pricing for space as if they are viable. Kek >Solar power in space...send trillions of dollars in materials to space. Solar panels in space are a terrible idea because unless you plan to deliver the energy locally there is no way to bring it back to earth. No material exists that would be able to transmit the energy back to earth from the height of an elevator (inb4 but muh microwave emitters an' sheeit, shut up)
Currently, a space elevator is not viable nor do we have any purpose in space. Having a space elevator is a waist of materials and will not provide anything valuable. We have technology that may allow us to produce a space elevator but it has not matured or propagated itself and again, there is no concrete reason for us to go to space. We have gone to the moon and have done what we can and other than political reasons, we have no reason to expend significant economic energy towards this since the ROI will be nearly zero.
There is however plenty that we can do on earth to promote outerspace exploration. For example, the development of safe, small, modular, low pressure nuclear power. We can develop habitats in Antarctica or city platforms on the ocean or deep sea exploration rig. All of these would allow us to develop habitat technology which will be required if we want to significantly reach outer-space and require a space elevator or more likely a high orbit geo-static space station with a low orbit sky hook.
Charles Perez
To mine Iridium, among other things. Some stuff is a lot more abundant in asteroids than it is in the Earth's crust.
Nolan Green
Also,
>Invest money >BREAK EVEN in 20 years You realize this is a horrendous investment?
Your solar panel idea is retarded. If it were feasible, every single house in America would be running on them. Solar is a more primitive technology than petroleum; people only think it's advanced because spacecraft have no choice given weight constraints.
Parker Rodriguez
>Indium is more abundant on asteroids >Indium is on earth >Earth is orders of magnitude larger than an asteroid What is the cost per ton of indium on earth?
Colton Hernandez
>Solar panels in space are a terrible idea because unless you plan to deliver the energy locally there is no way to bring it back to earth. No material exists that would be able to transmit the energy back to earth from the height of an elevator (inb4 but muh microwave emitters an' sheeit, shut up)
We don't really *need* to do it in the sense that we need the extra resources right now, but the idea is that we *can* do it using traditional financing institutions like profit/loss, selling equity (i.e. a business model exists where you can find so much of the resource in a single asteroid that it makes the extreme cost worthwhile).
The subtle point is that since we *can* do it, we *should*, because developing a robust economic presence in space will have massive positive spillover benefits that will help us long-term. In other words, we can harness financial capitalism to divert resources towards space development and expertise, which is what we really want. It's a means to an end.
Matthew Cruz
Won't work. Electrical discharge will BTFO.
Jaxon Butler
Sure, the concept is interesting but it is not grounded in reality as we know it. You cannot advocate for faeries and have any kind of material success. If you want to gather political support for space exploration, it would be important to know what to support now and why. Space exploration is a very long term goal that has been stalled for lack of development in nuclear power and there are many milestones even before you start dealing with cheap orbiting solutions.
Bentley Torres
>1970s >20 million on feasibility studies Notice they DID NOT pursue this technology any further?
>No fundamental technological barriers to make this work in coming decades Read: The author can't think of any reason why someone else might figure this at some future unspecified time with currently unknown technology.
The rest is just weaselly phrases like "have made investment in" that don't suggest anything concrete.
Josiah Allen
Great choice in weaponry. Practical in every way.
Thomas Russell
DAARPA The thread.
Logan Ward
>Find way more resource than the market needs with ungodly shipment costs vs earth >Get rich That's not how the commodity market works, user.
Bentley Parker
Just build the fucking thing with your own money and shut up.
Justin Ramirez
Such large scale projects cannot be funded by a single individual.
Landon Cooper
>cut our costs of going to orbit from about $2000/kg to about $1/kg. There are individual asteroids
Huh. I wasn't aware there are asteroids in LEO.
Jaxon Davis
>for safe operation, a frequency would need to be chosen that would not damage plants, animals or machines. Have you ever put a hamster in a microwave and see the result? Well, i;m not an asshole so I haven't but I hear it's a bitch to clean up. I don't need a youtube video to tell me about "science". thanks.
Lincoln Reed
You have no idea what the market needs, you're assuming equilibrium between supply and demand and that isn't how the commodity market works either.
Liam Howard
Iridium is about a thousand bucks per troy oz these days. Much like platinum and palladium, it'd be a hell of a lot more useful if it was more abundant. It really is very low abundance.
From cuckipedia:
>Iridium is one of the nine least abundant stable elements in Earth's crust, having an average mass fraction of 0.001 ppm in crustal rock; gold is 40 times more abundant, platinum is 10 times more abundant, and silver and mercury are 80 times more abundant.[6] Tellurium is about as abundant as iridium.[6] In contrast to its low abundance in crustal rock, iridium is relatively common in meteorites, with concentrations of 0.5 ppm or more.
Caleb Harris
>peer-review Notice the absolute silence...
Parker Carter
You seem to have a clear understanding of the situation. I think I see more opportunities for doing actual in-space things like asteroid mining, space cleanup, space internet, etc, but fundamentally it's true that progress in energy production and closed biospheres are necessary hurdles that we can work on now without doing anything explicitly space-related.
I understand that if you actually did succeed in bringing a huge amount of resource to earth the price might crash (and if you tried to hoard the gov't would take it). But I also understand that real companies today are raising real money trying to do this, so who's to say some idiots investors won't bankroll the entire operation? I suspect the promise of glory and pride are driving some of this, and not a rational expectation of huge profits. At the end of the day, even if this successful company goes bankrupt or is nationalized, humanity will be richer in real terms and will have developed better technology and expertise that helps us.
Asher Gonzalez
>Solar panels in space are a terrible idea because unless you plan to deliver the energy locally there is no way to bring it back to earth. Space Based Solar Power is the real deal for clean, efficient energy. Making panels in space is nice but it can be done on Earth. There's decades of research that have gone into it.
Mason Cox
Now how much would it cost if you factor into the price the fuel taken to reach it in space and bring it safely back to earth? I'm mad as fuck, OP needs to fuck off with this pop-sci bullshit. If you want to larp as space elevator then bring us some neat science that is happening now.
Aaron Parker
I sometimes think about picking up where space elevator left off but I'm too lazy.
Oliver Mitchell
>Have you ever put a hamster in a microwave and see the result? Wrong frequency and wrong wattage. >WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?
Parker Taylor
>decades of research See here
David Powell
If you talk with friends and coworkers and powerful people a little more often about these issues, you'll be doing your part.
Carson Nelson
Don't be user.
Take the future in your own hands. Start your own threads.
The future is yours to meme.
Kayden Carter
Learn how this one copper strand beat microwave transmission with this one simple trick!
Daniel Wood
>OP needs to fuck off with his pop-sci bullshit.
There are other ways to launch materials into space user. Besides, you only have to get the basic structure assembled, then we could use the elevator to bring up the bulk of the materials.
Go fuck yourself user.
Bentley Phillips
oh wait i thought this was about space elevator futurology threads, not about actual space elevators. space towers are superior concepts to space elevators.
Nicholas Powell
> Now how much would it cost if you factor into the price the fuel taken to reach it in space and bring it safely back to earth?
Probably a lot. It might actually be easier to develop deep-mantle mining than to mine asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The point is that there's a very valid market for mining asteroids for materials that are hard to get from the Earth's crust. Doesn't mean the space elevator is feasible or even a good idea. I'd say some sort of automated mining strategy with more conventional technology will happen first, or limited manufacturing in space itself - in orbit.
Jason Ward
SPS didn't make sense in the Gerard O'Neill context of 100 km^2 solar arrays on a grid, connected to a gimbaled 5 km^2 transmitter serviced by a 20,000 person space colony. SPS does make sense in what Mankins, Jaffe, Kaya and others have proposed. These would instead be swarms of tiles that can beam form the needed energy at any point within line of sight. These tiles or sandwiches can be launched on any rocket and just grow in capability in orbit.
Adrian Cruz
I'll break it down for you in the most simple way - a space elevator is not possible to build with current technology in earth's gravity well. Will something be possible to build someday in the future, sure, we know of materials that perhaps could be used. Right now however we as a species are more interested in social development and welfare. The idea of a space elevator is at the level of a big bang theory normie meme right now. >have proposed So what you are saying is that there is no proof of concept, we just know it is possible. Want another $20 million dollar study funded on it or something?
Jaxson Hughes
>Solar panels have decades of research behind them and still only sporadically used as a power generation solution. There is a reason that photo-voltaic panels have only been implemented sparingly around the globe. The reason is only for political support and has nothing to do with bringing down pollution of any kind or providing reliable electricity at low cost to consumer. ...and yet, we still have to deal with physical reality. It is not a viable technology civilization wide for the future. It is only useful in limited situations where you are isolated from infrastructure, I am not saying solar panels don't have their use but too often people over estimate their use and capabilities. I would only go to Mars if I had a nuclear power source. Anything else is suicide.
Ryder Evans
Asteroid mining is only really useful in order to create some sort of in-space manufacturing plants. Taking them down into Earth's gravity well is pointless unless we're out of a certain metal. Keeping them up in space to manufacture things that were to go up into space in the first place is much more valuable.
Asher Jenkins
I really don't.
Logan Smith
There have been many proofs of concept that work. The biggest issues have been scale since >too often people over estimate their use and capabilities. Not when they are directly overhead and providing 24 hour base line power to the grid, unlike terrestrial PV. >I would only go to Mars if I had a nuclear power source. Anything else is suicide. A robust microwave network could negate the need for nuclear, however the Lockheed fusion reactors are going to change a lot of things.
Liam Ward
>fusion reactors god damn it
>>What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!!!!!!????
Lockheed is building "trailer sized" fusion reactors that will output 100MW or similar, deuterium cycle. The cool thing is their project lead on it did his dissertation on fusion rockets and it looks all the world like you could just uncork one end of the linear confinement system and you'd have a fusion rocket again.
Jace Peterson
>Shit, fission reactor's containment system blow up, what do we do? Build a bigger one!!!!!
This is why you are lappers. You think of fantasy as reality and support technology that is bullshit. I don't mean that fusion isn't real but if you think that building a fusion bomb whose only containment is a magnetic field is a move in the right direction, you are fooling yourselves and only contributing to university scientist that need perpetual funding. It may be feasible technically but there are much better, safer and grounded alternatives.
Oliver Clark
If I were advocating fusion I wouldn't link a paper from 1934. >Sweet we've spun hot plasma in a circle for almost two minutes >Lets beg the USA for more money >Money spent: Billions >Energy produced: None Solar is better than fusion right now, sad.
Daniel Anderson
>with near zero loss by running power transmission cables down the elevator > near zero loss
nigger you trippin
iz like 66% of power loss on cables in the earth networks, n sheeit
Jason Hernandez
>space elevator thread! >oh wait it's just some faggot
