NOVA scienceNOW | An Elevator To Space? | PBS

[gasdive]

It's a dumb idea. A rotovator will get you to orbit in a few minutes and can be built tomorrow with existing materials. Search for Momentum Exchange Tether on Wikipedia.

[ArenThomasian]

wait how do they factor the orbit of the earth around itself and the moon

[Neverninja]

it will probably go faster in space cause of no gravity :D

[OhmgrownCron]

The music in this video is sick!

[Neuroglide]

I would build this from the top down.  Start with a carbonaceous asteroid as your anchor.

[masluxx]

first make buckey filaments in a way that they are unbroken and as long as you want to make the cable, then make a superconductor to transmit the high amounts of power needed to climb with a load, then you will have your space elevator.

[deltaforce]

the trip itself is a vaction

[ripemind]

How do you build the strip that the elevator ascends?

[CZKing]

@ripemind carbon (nanostructure)

[dcarrera01]

@ripemind

The strip is built from carbon nanotubes.

First you make a cable that's not very wide, so it's light enough to bring up with a rocket. Put that in geo-synchronous orbit and start unrolling. As it unrolls, the centre of mass remains in GEO, so it doesn't move relative to the surface of the earth. When it gets all the way down, you anchor it.

Now you have a minimal elevator. You can use it to bring up another cable, and another and gradually make it bigger.

[djstorm75]

that wouldnt work. Newtons law says that you must have rocket boosters to keep the satellite in orbit otherwise it will gradually be pulled down by anything climbing the cable.

[SisterLoquacious]

@djstorm75 The 'satellite' is anchored in space by a weight hanging just beyond geosynchronous orbit, where the centrifugal force pushing outward is greater than the gravitational force pulling inward.

[OregonGrown7]

But with a space elevator we could build a ship in space and waiting and then save all that fuel to go to farther places. A bad thing tho war would change too.

[OregonGrown7]

If we could make space elevators then it would change A LOT! it would be way cheaper to put things in space. Like people or material to build things. If you had space elevators you can send up more material then what we can fly up now and do it cheaper. Which means you could build a nice space station or a moon base. One of the most costly things is fighting the earths gravity to get into space with fuel.

[GodsReflex]

Sometimes i swear it seems humanity goes back in time rather than forward.

i mean an elevator? Really?...

[leppy111]

Well think about how cheap it would be to ferry people and equipment to space

[CZKing]

@GodsReflex Do you even know whats so cool about it ? the "rope" would hold in space by itself, thats first amazing thing, the second is that the cost of getting any amount of materials up there would be rly cheap.

[TreuloseTomate]

We need an elevator to the moon.

[JmSantos78]

That's impossible. The moon moves around the earth in 28 days, not 24 hours.

[FIGHTFANNERD3]

that woulld be cool but it wont happen but not now

[LegoKid92]

This is stupid!!! Our tax money is being wasted!!!! JERKS!

[disappears]

Idiot, your not even thinking outside the box. How would you save tens of billions of dollars by not using space Rockets. If this works, it would keep more money in your pocket. "You really need to use your brain before commenting"

[concordat]

go compare NASA's budget to the DoD's sometime.

[newguy33X]

Even compare it to some individuals wealth.

[adamackels]

So all the bail-outs are ok then, huh? We could of built this for what we gave away..

[hurjaheikki]

Is it necessary to put people in the elevator? Maybe just some small equipment. The spider net material would be handy right now.

Also i'd like to see a huge cannon shooting all the nuclear waste out of the planet.

[CascadianPatriot]

I'm not sure if I really want to see some of the waste accidentally falling back to Earth and giving people cancer and birth defects... :P

[d3athbyblackhol3]

yeah- getting a metal tub of nuclear waste to reach the escape velocity of the earth (7 miles per second) would be very hard. Also paying for a rocket to propel it would be very expensive. And rockets blow up sometimes- What if there is a technical error before it actually left the ground like challenger- all of the waste will simply get spewed out all over (a "cannon" as he said- ignites the content in order to propel it anyway- so I do not want to see a cannon firing nuclear waste anytime).

[mariaceciliapara]

I suggest an elevator underground to save human being from balls of fire that will fall down from the sky to diminish humanity.

[pardeep1976]

who will hold the upper end of the ribben in space?

[concordat]

A counterweight.

[Meganoob473]

Forget all that. If you build a giant hollow column from the ground to just over the edge of the earths atomosphere, you suck all the air out of it so there is a vacuum leading all the way to the ground. put your space capsule in the bottom and let the air in underneath it. The capsule will shoot into space like sucking soda through a straw. This idea is far more feasible than a rope tethered to a geosynchronous asteroid. Tower of Babel, anyone? Perhaps God(or the aliens) saw this and halted it.

[CascadianPatriot]

Good idea, through that doesn't work with towers the height of which you suggest, through.

Also, the Tower of Babel is a story, not literally true.

[dazedandconfucious]

I wish I were born 20 years from now.

[thaer12345]

@dazedandconfucious That's what you would say if you -were- born 20 years from now! :D

[Unbeginner]

@dazedandconfucious

If I was born one second later everytime I thought that.

[saucy05]

someone help me out, i do not understand how in the hell a device like this would work as a "space elevator". all i saw was a motor that climbed a rope, noting special. Are they planing to build a tower that reaches the heavens so their precious invention could climb on to? seems to me like a step backwards from what we are using right now.

[hancho17]

the rope would be anchored on an asteroid or a large mass and repeatedly using a space elevator would supposedly be a more economical way to get into space vs spending all the money and manpower building expensive one use rockets. i do think 15 years is a little ambitious. 50 at least before we see a real one.

[scr3wu2]

they wouldnt have to tie the "rope" as you call it to anything and they definitely would not need to build a tower. The ribbon is so long that it is held in place by the spinning of the earth.

[inthefade]

you've gotta read about it on wikipedia.

you have to have geo-synchronous docking platform in space that is tethered (probably using carbon nano tube materials) to a station on earth (ie. a ship on the ocean, that could dodge storms).

Then you would have a tether that goes another double the distance from the earth to the platform, out into space, to counter-act the weight of the first tether.

Building it would be a huge and expensive challenge, but it would pay itself off relatively quickly.

[agenttrotter]

Neil was skeptical, and rightly so. Some prototype! I can climb that high on a rope!

They compared it to space travel's first steps- but 15 years before the first space travel, we could go higher than that!!

[ArtistIreland]

Drop a line down from the International Space Station!!!! Use the sun's power to move it..Up & Down.

Just a 47XXY Idea. Justin.

[AzureDrag0n1]

You mean Neil Degrassi? Umm.. you have no idea who he is do you?

[epinaz]

The guy hosting this is a moron.

[JUKIO01]

ya he is, it doesnt know what the hell he is talking about

[addisye]

What the h*** did you say idiot?He doesn't know what he's talking about????do you know who the he** you're talking about here ? FYI His name is name is NEIL DEgrasse,He's a Scientist and and an astrophysicist and he is a lecturer at Prinston University.You're the the most dumbest 26 year old ever.

[addisye]

What ? NEIL DEgrasse is a moron ?? are you kidding me ?? look who is talking here,He is one of the top Scientist in the World.Google NEIL DEgrasse before you judge a book by it's cover.

[epinaz]

I guess my comment was a little ignorant as well. I really should have said "I didn't care for how he presented this segment." I don't know his background, but that was my impression when I watched it,

[Keithjustinburton]

There was no Tower of Babel.

[e1r2h3Tube]

Cool!

[BlazingSky2006]

I mean it seems like a repeat of...Tower of Babel

[BlazingSky2006]

Seems like a repeat of the Tower of Babylon.

[spectre111]

"This a prototype to climb a space elevator ribbin"

"Climb to where?"

"To space?" DUH!!!!