Space Elevator vs Wildlife 307
An anonymous reader writes "The longest test yet of the technology that might one day lead to space elevators has revealed some unusual problems. From the article: "There were several unexpected encounters with wildlife. More than a dozen insect egg colonies had been laid on the tether and curious bats flew around the balloons, apparently attracted by the sound made by the tether's vibrations. Late in the test, swallows were also seen swooping down on the balloons, possibly to sip the morning dew on their surfaces." Maybe all the critters just want to go to space too."
Just goes to show... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nature (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Rural Areas (Score:3, Insightful)
robot tests are dumb (Score:3, Insightful)
Putting it in perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Trying to put everything into perspective, the elevator is probably the least offensive solution in terms of the environment.
What about Airplanes? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:60,000 mile tether - not possible (Score:5, Insightful)
A space elevator sounds great, it just seems far-fetched. A 100 meter test. Only 96,560,540 more meters to go.
Ah, I see that your glass is half empty. While you say "A 100 meter test. Only 96,560,540 more meters to go" implying it's impossible, we say "A 100 meter test! Only 96,560,540 more meters to go" with the idea that we're simply going to do that 100 meter test 965,600 more times. Yes, that oversimplifies things, but it's a half glass full kind of perspective.
Consider: As I understand it, the wiring in the Golden Gate Bridge, if layed end-to-end, would stretch around the globe three times over. Considering the circumfrence of the earth is something like 40,000km, that would mean that we've already built bridge structures that incorporate over 100,000km of cabling. Granted, the design of the space elevator is completely novel; but this stuff is based on modern engineering understanding.
People get the scale of this whole project wrong. The initial ribbon would need to be small and slender and thin for weight purpouses of the initial ribbon. After that's established, we would start adding mass to the space elevator, until it's a megastructure, not unlike the Golden Gate Bridge. Eventually, the dream is to create a verticle subway system of sorts. Access to space would be cheaper than rockets once the space elevator was built up to the scale of the Golden Gate Bridge or the New York City Subway System.
Re:am i the only person (Score:2, Insightful)
The structure itself is way less problem.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying that is a bad thing, btw. If done will, maybe this technology would be cleaner overall than rockets or some kind of mythical antigravity fusion powered jet-pack thing.
Re:It's Probably a Valid Concern (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably nothing very different to a good thunderstorm. High voltage discharges through the atmosphere aren't anything unusual. Might not be a good idea to live next to the thing.
You have to realise that the ionosphere is fundamentally unstable, in the same manner that a waterfall is unstable. It's continually eroding and discharging, and only appears to remain there because it has a continual feed of new energy (from solar radiation). Thunderstorms are the most common way for it to dump excess energy. We could perhaps create a small region in which there is an unusual electric field, but we can't do any real damage any more than you can damage a river by standing in it. It may be assumed that all people and equipment near the top of such an object would have to be shielded in the same manner that all space equipment already has to be (since it operates beyond the ionosphere), so it shouldn't cause any significant problems in that respect. The most likely effect of the thing is to reduce the number of thunderstorms in the immediate area (because there will be less voltage around to cause them).
It should be an interesting experiment to put up a really tall lightning conductor and see what happens.
Re:60,000 mile tether - not possible (Score:5, Insightful)
-- Overheard circa 1903
Re:A quick, cheap way to put up a comm grid ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's Probably a Valid Concern (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What about people flying into it on purpose? (Score:3, Insightful)
For one thing, it would be sensible to have some military presence guarding the elevator to prevent any airborne attacks. But even if it did happen, it would only affect the bottommost part of the ribbon (it will be over 60,000 miles long, remember). All they'd have to do is lower a little bit of the ribbon and re-anchor it.
Your model airplane scenario is pretty silly, BTW. A couple of CIWS (Phalanx) cannons could easily and automatically take out all those planes.