Beam Me Up Otis: Teams Getting Set To Take Another Shot At Space Elevator Prize
from the To-the-moon dept
Despite the fact that it sounds like something straight out of a bad sci-fi novel, there are a number folks who believe that space elevator technology represents that best way for humans to cheaply and conveniently explore outer space. As with other "out there" ideas, NASA has started holding contests to promote innovations in the area. The challenge for the teams isn't to actually build a full-fledged space elevator (that probably won't be for a while), but to build a robot that can hoist itself up 100 meters in the air on a thin carbon tether in 50 seconds. Last year, a team from Canada failed to hit the mark by just two seconds. This October, teams will have another crack at it, and assuming there's been any innovation at all, some team is likely to take home the $500,000 prize. After reaching this goal, it's just another 384,402,900 meters to go before they get to the moon!Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: contests, nasa, space, space elevator
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Please don't laugh at me
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
ok, you can laugh if you want
to get rid of the of the AC label, I'm a senior mechanical engineering major at Rose-Hulman concentrating in aerospace structures
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
and at 50 sec per 100 meter.....thats...22 days?
better be good music on that elevator
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bad math
Perhaps it will go faster as gravity is reduced.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Bad math
Okay, I was bored. And that assumes constant gravitational pull and constant friction, both of which would be reduced as it traveled away from the Earth and atmosphere.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I always liked the idea
I've always like the idea but as far as I'm aware the real problem has always been finding a material for the tether that doesn't need to be miles wide at the top just to be able to hold it's own weight
Still not impossible though - materials improve all the time
Still #3's right - it wants to be fekking amazing elevator music
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I always liked the idea
It's TechDirt. They can't seem to report on anything without a healthy dose of snark nowadays.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
um...
We just need to get out into orbit.. that's the real benefit. It's cheap to fly around in space once you're there; it just sucks to get off the earth.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I would just like to point out the obvious: the objective of a space elevator isn't to get to the moon, but rather to get into orbit around the earth; about 100,000km. So calculate that, instead.
And yes- you can expect the trip to take more than a few days... so make sure you go to the bathroom before getting on. ;)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
distance
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Surely they'd go to Geosynchronous Orbit?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
even doing the math correctly...
The FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale) defines outer space as being above 100km (62 miles).
100km=100,000m
100,000/2 (100m in 50 sec = 2m/sec)
50,000 seconds
833.333 minutes
138.889 hours
5.787037037 days
assuming constant velocity...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: even doing the math correctly...
833.333 min * 1 hr / 60 min = 13.888 hrs
13.888 hrs * 1 day / 24 hrs = 0.579 day
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Interesting
Go Rosie's Engineers!
CPE '05
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
On the other hand, i doubt there would be significant delays from weather conditions, and the next 'launch' could probably happen as soon as the elevator came back down ... so longer in transit, but less time in prep/delays ... sounds fair to me
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If Centrifugal Force is in play
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
check the math, watch the units
207.1 days, actually, but who's counting?
geosynchronous orbit has a radius of 42,164 km
earth's equatorial radius is 6,378 km
86400 seconds per day
100m in 50s is 2m/s is 0.002km/s
(42164 - 6378) / (0.002 * 86400) ==> 207.1 days
units: (km-km)/((km/s)*(s/d)) == km/(km/d) == d
So it's slow but not pathetic, considering that we're avoiding the dangers and stresses of the rocket ride, which would allow sending up items with far less weight wasted on ruggedization and more for productive payload. Also, I'm sure that once the proof-of-concept is passed, they'll work on speeding it up. As Pagarodog suggested, the gravity will decrease along the way, becoming zero at the "top", so the same power level can result in greater speed along the way up to the maximum that the drive can stably sustain.
The recomputation of 'trip time' considering the decrease of gravity and consequent increase of speed is left as an exercise for the reader. Be sure to allow for a braking maneuver as the elevator approaches the goal altitude—we generally want a geosynchronous orbit to be circular.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: check the math, watch the units
Obviously, this also means the cable itself is not stationary but flings through the air, around the planet.
If that would be implementable, one could choose how high we want the top to be (hence how long the trip would last), provided of course the speed at which the bottom would slide around the world would be acceptible
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: check the math, watch the units
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
self-assumed geniuses
I'd hope those of you who had Algebra I could figure out the trivial word problem, even though it contains metric units.
I guess it's easier to tear something apart than to help define a new reality.
The elevator would be suspended by centrifugal force on the tether and upper platform. That's all. So the platform, of course, is geosyncronous. Basic physics. As another poster said, the main issue is finding material for the tether, hence this project to look into propulsion systems on a carbon tether. To test the materials you need a tether and propulsion system. So there's this contest.
Snark away or define the future. It's up to you...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
re: rope a meteor
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That's not true at all
It's not cheap to fly around in space once you're there. It's only comparatively cheap when you're comparing sitting in orbit to getting into orbit. But the amount of energy required to travel even extremely short interplanetary distances (like to Mars, for example) in anything approximating a timely fashion is absolutely tremendous.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Arthur C. Clarke's novel The Fountains of Paradise struck me as pretty good sci-fi last time I read it...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: The Fountains of Paradise
Check the Wiki for more than you can absorb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator The big thing about getting into space is the cost to geosynchronous orbit. Projected costs for an elevator are about $200/lb. versus $20,000/lb. for NASA.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
WTF is this supposed to do?
BTW: Kudos to NASA for enticing amateur and professional inventors. The device which enabled widespread ocean navigation centuries ago was also the result of a similar contest. The winner was a clock which could keep consistent time on the rolling ocean, enabling accurate measurement of longitude.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]