Joyce, Matthew wrote:
I hope no one thought I was saying tt would just hang there! The whole thing is under tension, like a steel cable in the construction crane. If the tension is too great, the cable breaks. Neither part of the cable is, itself, a balanced 'space elevator'. Both will experience enormous whip lash.-----Original Message-----There is an account of a space elevator tether breaking in the trilogy Red
From: Paul E Condon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, 7 February 2003 9:15 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: shuttle disaster (space elevators)
Ray wrote:
On Thursday 06 February 2003 11:55, John Hasler wrote:would be
Mike M writes:how many different airports do we have now? seems like 1000
Can you imagine a 100 or a 1000 of these things?Yes, but why would you need that many?
normal(unless you have
to low.
yes it would be possible to slow the rotation of the earth, but it would takeWould it be possible to use them to increase the length of a day?The question makes no sense.
a bit of work to do using these before it became noteable
your days down to 12 digits)fluttering back to
What would happen when the ribbon broke and came
bottom. Thethe planet's surface?It would break at the weakest point which would be at the
which itribbon would not be under tension so it would pretty much just hang there waiting to be repaired.it actually depends on how its done, most likely the tension
wouldattached to the
have would pull it away from earth (atleast the part still
far end) and if it broke off high enough, then yes, therewould be a line of
ribbon that comes down that could cause problems.It is not hard to compute the tension in a space elevator ribbon. (It would be a fair question for a final exam in an undergraduate mechanics course.) It depends on position along the ribbon, on the Earth parameters (size, rate of rotation, etc. ) and on the mass-per-unit-length (kg/m) that is assumed for the ribbon. The ribbon must be at least thick enough to be strong enough to keep from breaking under its own self-generated tension. The last time I checked, there was not a material having a suitable combintation of kg/m and tensile strength.
one of the many questions i can't answer is
Why is this thead still going? and why on Debian User?
Mar, Green Mars, Blue Mars.
It did not hang there though, it fell back to the planet with catastrophic
results.
But there will be other failure modes for this 'invention' as well.
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