July 22, 2010 • 23 mins
It's no secret that space shuttles need a vast amount of fuel to escape the pull of gravity -- but are space elevators a better alternative? In this episode, Robert and Allison explore the merits of literally building an elevator from Earth into space.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. This
is Alice Noderwell at the science that are at how
stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lambs, science
writer and how stuff works dot Com. Today's topic of
(00:23):
space elevators reminds me of the children's classic Charlie in
the Greek Class Elevator, which I understand that you never read, Robert, Well, no,
but I saw the movie and don't they have the
elevator at the end of the movie, right, right, So
there's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you know, Johnny Depp
and all that stuff, but then there's no, not Johnny Depp,
(00:44):
Gene Wilder. That's that's Charlie in the Chocolate fact Well right, right, yeah, yeah, okay,
point taken. And then the sequel is Charlie and the
Greek Class Elevator. Right. So when you open the opening
scene of Charlie and the Great Class Elevator, I think
it was called a Wonk evator in the movie. Okay, okay, Well,
so this this mega structure, the elevator is floating in
(01:06):
the sky and we see um, Charlie bucket and Willy
Wonka and all the various grandparents and even Charlie's parents
are all crowded into this elevator. And this is what
I was thinking of when we were preparing today's topic
for the Space Elevator, because the space Elevator is not
all that fanciful and idea like, it actually makes a
lot of sense and is something that we will probably
(01:29):
see in the decades ahead, we hope to see. You know,
I got really excited about this topic when we were
researching it. I'm not necessarily a space junkie. I'm very
excited about the different projects we're pursuing or not pursuing
as the case maybe uh and seems to be more
in the case these days. But um, the Space Elevator
really got me fired up, just because, yeah, it does
(01:50):
seem kind of doable. So let's give you a little
history on the space Elevator. Um, we have the idea
from one Russian gentleman Urie aren't suiting of excuse your
if we messed up your last name, And he came
up with this in nineteen sixty according to the Space
Word Foundation, and the Space Ward Foundation is going to
come up if you do any research into space elevators
(02:10):
and it's just a nonprofit organization that's dedicated to space
elevators for the space science, technology, all that good stuff.
Just a just a grassroots nonprofit interested in building an
elevator into out of space. So you can go to
space elevator dot com and read RS nine paper titled
to the Cosmos by Electric Train. It was published in Pravda,
(02:33):
the old Soviet union newspaper, and this is what kills me.
It was published as a Sunday supplement for the kids,
as far as I understand it, and it has this
kind of cool, fun kid graphics. Well in a way,
it's kind of sad though, because you think back and
it's like, oh, at a time when kids were interested
in science except for your kids listening, of course. So
Here he was a pretty smart guy, and he wasn't
really satisfied with rockets as a means for getting to space.
(02:54):
So Here's in which is reasonable because rockets are it's
like whatever you're sending into space, it's like strapping it
on the end of an explosion, you know, right, and
then there's a whole huge expenditure of fuel and you're
missing up the atmosphere. You have to protect passengers from
high acceleration. All this kid stuff. But let's read you
an excerpt. Oh, yes, yes, Robert has volunteered to do
(03:15):
this in his best Russian accent. Yes, Robert, feel free
to abbreviate the quote I got a little overzealous with
old Gary. All Right, here we go. Preparation for the
cosmic launching of a contemporary rocket requires not one day,
but more than one month. Yes, of course, these are
just the first steps. None is sounding a little like Dracula,
so I'm gonna stop and just continue in a normal voice.
(03:37):
The first steps man is taking beyond the limits of
his own planet. Still in the future, the construction of
rockets will not change in principle, and even in the future,
the first stage of the of the flight of a
cosmic liner will be accompanied by the furious effort of
straining engines, by the immense expenditure of fuel by protecting
passengers from high acceleration. Right, so, all sorts of crazy stuff.
Because Grandma's gonna want to go into space, two can't.
(04:00):
Ema wants to go into space, and and so Uri
winds up saying flight into the cosmos with the help
of a rocket will never be like an outing on
a boat or a trip on a tram. Yeah, and
then he wonders, is this the only method for cosmic flights?
And thus the space elevator thinks to your right. And
the fact most thing about it too is that it's
it's such a kind of like common sense sense answered.
(04:21):
Like you can imagine the first guy that brought it
up was just like sent out of the room, you know,
because he's like, hey, guys, I know these rockets are great,
but can we just build like an elevator that goes
from space. It's it's like when I was on vacation,
you know, you you get on at the lobby and
then you just push GEO for GIO synchronous orbit. Yeah.
Like when I was on vacation, we went to see
(04:42):
this hell fire pass thing and h in Thailand, okay,
and like there was some some some very old people
in God blessing from em brave enough to come on
the trip. But they were like, is there going to
be an elevator so we can ride back from the bottom.
You know, It's like it's a ridiculous question asking it
seems like a ridiculous question to ask of of space travel.
But it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, So for
(05:04):
a while they were thought of as kind of ridiculous,
and they'd really just existed in old Yury's head and
the realm of sci five as you guys my network,
Yeah you've wrote about it and Fountains of Paradise. But
two things moved space elevators firmly out of fantasy and
into the realm of possibility. And those two things were,
according to space Ward, the discovery of carbon nanotubes in
(05:25):
nineteen and their early nineteen nineties and uh Bradley Edwards
engineering research in two thousand one. So those were two
of the things that really made space elevators something that
we can hope for. We had the we had an
idea about how the engineering would work. It's not like
just going out and piling up cement blocks and two
by four until you reach orbit. I think part of
(05:49):
the problem for me when we were researching this podcast
was I just think of an elevator as a structure
being encased within a building. So that's not the case
with the space elevator. Yeah, It's more are like a
vehicle that climbs a super strong tether for miles and
miles and miles. Yeah, let's give some details on the
tether because that's pretty important part of the whole Space
(06:10):
elevator construction. Yeah. The thing that really that I had
to look up to really put it in perspective for
for me, UM is that the sheer distance we're talking here,
all right. Currently, the tallest structure in the world is
the Burgee Kalafa in Dubai. And you've probably seen pictures
of this super tall building. I was at the Seventh
Star Hotel. It might be it's yeah, it probably is.
(06:32):
It's in Dubai. It's probably eight um. But all right,
this structure is two thousand, seven hundred and seventeen feet tall.
That's roughly half a mile structure. Yes, the Dubai structure,
all right. Geo centrationis altitude is a hundred and twenty
four miles, Okay, okay, So you'd have to stack um
(06:55):
two hundred and um of those Dubai super hotels on
top of each other just to reach um, you know,
satellite territory. But that's not even the distance of the
Space elevator. The space elevator, according to uh to some predictions,
would be sixty two thousand miles in length, right, and
it would be made from lightweight carbon nanotubes, which again
(07:17):
according to some people, maybe a hundred times stronger than steel.
And then it's going to be security to a station
on Earth on one end. So depending on who you
talked to, you specifications for that ribbon vary. According to
the Institute for Scientific Research, the ribbon maybe three ft
wide and thinner than a sheet of paper, which is insane.
Something that's going to be slipping you up to space
and that a sheet of paper and maybe carrying all
(07:39):
sorts of expensive material and grandmas. And then if you
wanted to increase the amount of stuff you're bringing into space,
the payload you're bringing into space, and you would want
to scale up your space elevator by increasing the size
of your tether, which makes sense. Now this next part
really just floored me when I was when we were
researching it. And that's when you talk about the how
the counterweight stays in space, Like I ran this is
(08:00):
the simple explanation that I ran across from a scientist
and he was like, all right, imagine that your fist
is the is the planet, all right, and then you
have a bit of dental floss, you know, that, and
then that dental floss is tied to like a little um,
I don't know, like a little golf ball or something, right,
and then you like hold your fist over your head
(08:20):
and you just start swinging that golf ball around and
and of course the golf ball doesn't crash into your
fist because it's swinging around and around and around the rotation,
the rotation and all. And that's the same principle essentially
with the space elevator. And it's so simple that it
you know, it's one of those that kind of flourish.
You're like, that can't be right. That just sounds way
too simple, right, And we have the original space elevator guy,
(08:42):
the Russian Eurie, to thank for working this out. So
we all know that the Earth's force of attraction lessons
in proportion to the square of the distance, and centrifugal
force grows with the increase in distance. So what that
means is that at about a distance of fort KOs,
centrifugal force turns out to be an equal to the
force of gravity. So it's kind of cool. I never
(09:05):
knew that. And then the Institute for Scientific Research says
that by using the end of the ribbon like a slingshot.
You could send pretty serious payloads in the Moon, Mars
and beyond. That's so awesome. It's like if they're if
you're you're an astronaut, you're the Aunt. It's on the
little golf ball that's tied to the dental bloss that's
attached to my fist, and then you're swinging around and
then Aunt goes flying and on his way to Mars.
(09:25):
We are the ants, right, So let's talk about the
cars you have. These cars are climbers as they're called,
that are riding up the ribbon, and they're meant to
carry some serious weight and they themselves may way up
to twenty tons. So in one draft of the idea,
the cars attached to the ribbon have electric motors and
they get their power from a station on the ground
by way of laser beams. It's kind of a setup
like a ski lift, was one comparison I heard. And
(09:48):
then another idea is to use solar power instead of
laser beams to power the cars. Either way, you don't
want a huge engine on board because that kind of
negates the whole great thing about it. The solar energy
makes perfect sense because you're not going I have to
deal with with cloud cover right right, So inside the
cars could be roomier because of the relatively inexpensive cost
per pound, So great news for grandmas. She might have,
(10:09):
you know, sleeping and eating accommodations within the car. And
some of the estimates I've looked at um they show
that our like first space elevator, whenever we finally build
it could like bring thirteen tons of grandma's. Like, I
don't know if that's all the grandma's, but it's a large,
large assembly of grandma's it is, indeed. But you raise
an important point in that we're not going to be
(10:31):
sending grandma's up first. We're gonna be sending Also it's
important distress the grandma's will not be the first to
take the space elevator, no matter how many nights they
cam about to get tickets to be the first in line.
It sounds like a great Twilight Shone episode that where
it's like all the grandmas are called in for the
first space elevator, right, what's up right, We're gonna be
sending you know, different things for NASA and the European
(10:53):
Space Agency and all sorts of other folks are in
line before the Grandma's. I saw there's I saw an
article online talking about the map to the Space Elevator
which showed like some of the ways will test it,
which is kind of interesting and also kind of common sense.
It involves like using blimps to test like the early
section of it, and then using satellites to test the
higher portion of it until you reach the point where
(11:14):
you pull unrolled sort of the whole thing. So that's
pretty awesome. Would you be a guinea pig for that? No, No,
of course, I'm not a big fan of heights. So
you might be wondering how fast the cars are ascending.
I certainly was, and I heard according to space where
that there's a roughly a hundred miles per hours the
speed they would be going up. Okay, yeah, some of
(11:36):
the estimates I was looking at the talking about maybe
a week or so on board that thing. So I'm
guessing they'll probably some of that view to look at
the home, but there's some of the thirteen tons though.
You're gonna have to have your snack bars and your
places for the Grandma's to stay. You know, how are
the space bathroom work for Grandma yeah, because that's tricky,
wouldn't you think, Yeah, it would on several levels. Um.
(12:00):
And then of course we have the ground station. Right,
let's not forget about the ground and has where's that
going to be? Well, the best scenario as far as
I've heard, is in the ocean, right, because you want
to have um, you don't want anybody getting close to it, right,
So the ocean is the best place to have like
a hundred mile no fly zone keep planes from accidentally
running into it. Um. No, you know, to keep your
(12:24):
villainous folk away from it in case they want to Yeah,
crazy people you know, anti space elevator, terrorists, etcetera. Um.
And then also if something goes wrong, I mean, it's
all that's another reason to stay back from it, right.
It's a it's a pretty big investment with new technology,
right right. And any other thing is that it needs
to be near the equator, right, Robert correct. Which also
(12:46):
has the benefit of of having there being fewer like
catastrophic storms in that area, so you don't have to
worry about like hurricanes blowing your tether around, gotcha, Right,
So there will be a bit of movement kind of
like a guitar sty for the tether, which would be
a tad bit unsettling. Yeah, but it's kind of like,
you know, you want a little a little give and
(13:08):
take even with a skyscraper, So you definitely want some
give and take with something that stretches, uh six miles. Yes, intuitively,
I know that, but I'm still saying that I might
be a little bit frightened when that thing started. Wouldn't help. Yeah,
So why space elevator? What's the motivation behind it? I
think you guys know the answer to this. But um,
one of the people who's interested in this is a
(13:29):
company called Liftports, and their goal is to be the
folks behind mass transportation system that allows people to take
advantage of space and all the resources that space offers,
whether it's you know, mining asteroids or a helium three.
I mean, they want to be the transportation system for
even the smallest entrepreneur. Right. And the other great thing
(13:49):
about a space elevator is not just like physical um cargo,
but it would be a way to transport energy, a
way to transmit communications, um, you know in the information
it's uh, you know, it becomes a highway for for
all those things. Right, we break free the Earth, and
we start colonizing other worlds we established in the inter stations.
(14:11):
We finally get to go to Marsha or actually if
you we put a satellite into orbit and we make
a man and some robots watch bad movies on it,
like Mystery Sense Theater three thousand. They have a space
elevator of sorts in that show, is called the Umbilicus,
and they would Dr Clayton Forester would send the movie
up through that. So there's another sci fi example of
(14:32):
space elevator for you. Right. They're all over science fiction,
And there was also one of them book I just
read called Fearsome Engine by Ian M. Banks. I highly
recommend that to anybody who's into um into science fiction,
because there's a whole lot of like craze like anything.
I'm not gonna give any what anything like, except say
it has less of cyberpunk stuff in it. It has
stuff having to do with like um, with civilizations in
(14:54):
the Kardashef scale. It has stuff to do with like megastructures, um.
And there's in this particular world there was at one
point a space elevator, but it's long since been taken down.
That's a pretty glowing recommendation. So what are we talking
about for price to get Grandma on the space elevator?
The price, Yeah, I think it was a hundred dollars
(15:14):
per pound. So that's going to be a price of
a pretty serious plane ticket plus um luggage. Right, so
there maybe a hundred fifty pounds. You want to bring
fifty pounds of luggage, then you're talking roughly free Grandma
if you're a hundred fifty pounds. Wait, but why is
Grandma bringing fifty pounds of stuff in orbit? I don't
get that this Gamma need that many things. I just
(15:36):
like how much. I don't know. Maybe it's just a
lot of birthday cards to send now and stuff with
five dollar bills. I'm not really sure. I was just saying,
because you think of fifty pounds as the limit, you
know from when they you stick here, Well, I guess
you gotta bring a space suit, space food, all that stuff.
It ends up wings and max. Yeah. But one of
the thing is like sending anything into orbit, like using rockets.
That's the huge prices. The huge part of the price
(15:57):
tag is like you want to send food into space,
It's really expensive because it has to you know, right
on top of rockets. So it is inflated. As this
price might sound, it's a bargain. It's total bargain sending
it up in a rocket. Yeah, and then price of
building it, some would argue as a bargain as well.
That's going to be around the realm of ten billion,
that's one estimate. Well, we've we've spent that much on
(16:20):
things that were far less beneficial to the human race before.
So I think no doubt. I'm all for it. Ten million.
Sock it away, start saving right now. Um. So you
may be thinking this is kind of fringe, and yes,
it is far off, but it's not fringe. Lest you
think it is fringe, let's talk about some of the
people and agencies that are involved in this. We've got
you know, NASA and the Las Alamos National Laboratory. We've
(16:43):
folks from m I, T you see, Berkeley, Locked Martin,
European Space Society, all sorts of people and they all
get together every year. In fact, they're holding in August
two thousand ten Space Elevator Conference in Redmond, Washington. In
case you guys want to attend, I just give the
image of a bunch of scientist building a space elevator
like out in the field. Yeah, I don't think this
is it. I think it's got a little bit more
(17:04):
to it. So, among other things, are going to be
focusing on the four pillars of Space elevator development, and
those are science and technical aspects, Political, social, Yeah, because
obviously there's a like, how do you arrange to have
this giant section of of ocean that you're going to
erect it in? How do you, you know, convince people
there's not going to wreck their satellites, etcetera? Right? How
(17:25):
do you figure out who gets to ride on it,
who owns stuff, and who gets all the benefits from it,
you know, cost wise? Yeah, you're you're basically building a
gateway to like the Eighth Continent, you know, if you
can consider space or the Moon and the eighth continent,
and then it's like who owns the Eighth Continent? Right?
So another thing that they're going to be doing at
this Space Elevator conference is they're going to be holding
(17:47):
a materials engineering challenge that will play into the space
elevator development, and it's called the Strong Tether Competition. I
know you guys are wondering where I'm going with this,
but I promise you it has a point. So this
is a NASA sponsored challenge in which tames enter some
super strong tether that's subjected to a pool test. Right,
So in order to win the two million dollar prize,
that's no small chump change. The tether has to exceed
(18:09):
the strength of the best available commercial tether by with
no increase in mass. I wonder what they have pulling
on it, Like DoD they have those big, big guys
from the World's Strongest Man competition. That would be amusing.
I don't know. But at the two thousand nine Space
Elevator Conference, no one participated except for one exhibition only team,
and they brought with them a two point two meter
length of carbon nanotube. So carbon nanotube, you guys will remember,
(18:32):
is what some people have proposed building the elevators tether
out of. So according to NASA, this loop that the
team brought with them failed at a level that's well
below expected strength. But the fact that they made the
carbon nanotube loop was good news because we need that
ribbon first space elevator. So the main reason we're focusing
so much on the tether is of clearly it's a
(18:55):
key component that's the space elevator, but the materials technology
just and quite there yet. When will we have it though,
we're looking at what October thirty one. Yeah, they have
a running clock on their website and they have slated
October twenty one as the date. Two thousand one. I
gotta say, I'm pretty excited. Yeah, yeah, I bet they'll
(19:16):
Maybe they'll have the deal where you can like be
like going up in space, um on the on the
virgin Ship. You know, you can buy your tickets ahead
of time before the things even build. Yeah, there's gonna
be a lot of hype before that. Hey, So in
case you guys have nothing to do before two one,
when I go to the homepage and check out how
space elevators will work, or how space tourism works, or
(19:38):
how the Google Lunar exerprese works. Yeah, we have a
lot of great, great space content, so check it out.
And we're constantly throwing those links up to some of
these space related content pieces on our Twitter and our Facebook.
That's a stuff from the Science Lab on Facebook, Lab
stuff on Twitter. I also do a little stuff for
Discovery Space, so I'd like to throw that on to
(20:00):
the website as well. Yeah, you're pimping yourself there, Robert.
Nice work. So I got a little listener mail that
I would love to share. This could be my favorite
ever piece of listener mail, although we have gotten some
good ones, and it seems to be trending that we're
getting very interesting pictures from you all, which I really like.
(20:21):
In the past, we've received pictures of people's pet rats.
With your marvelous pictures of of listeners composting efforts. We
got that one with the lizards regenerated tale, which was
pretty awesome. That was good. But then then this this morning,
it was interaction and this one came from Jenna in Vancouver,
(20:43):
and Jenna writes, Hey, I just started listening to this
podcast and listening to back episodes, so you have to
excuse me for sending an email on an old one.
Please forgive you, Chenna, but I really do have something
to share on your podcast about hookworm. Three years ago,
I caught kanaan hookworm on a beach in Ghana. This
has a different life cycle in humans because we're dead
and host so instead of going to the lungs and intestine,
(21:04):
it pretty much just crawls around your foot. This was
probably the worst experience of my life, as it is
incredibly itchy. Luckily, by the time it really manifested itself,
I was in Scotland. Listen, she's in Ghana and then
she's in Scotland. Janna, you're a world traveler bringing parasites
all over the place, I know, right, So she's in
(21:25):
Scotland and they have cold water. Because the only way
I could sleep was to soak both the until he
went numb up to the ankle, at which point I
could sleep for two hours before getting up to numb
them again. Well, okay, so she she talks a little
bit more about the process, but she wraps up and says, now,
it's just a super fun and totally gross story that
I have pictures to prove. And indeed, Jenna sent us
the pictures of her foot with the hook room and
(21:47):
it is awesome. I'm about to give the photo out
again and look at it again just to re experienced it,
and it is so gross. It's just oh, I mean fit,
will you sent this photo in knowing that we would
be grossed out by your feet? Your feet are gross
in this photo because you can I'm sure they're lovely
now they're Jenna well, it's well, maybe we can put
this on the block. We would have to ask for question,
(22:09):
but yeah, maybe. Well it's not for the fan of heart,
it really isn't. It's like it's little worms crawling under
the skin kind of and it kind of looks but
it also kind of looks like like poison ivy um.
But you can see the path of the worm, which
is awesome, Like you can just yeah, because the whole
thing is like they used to have to like like
get it out and like spin it around a little
stick and you can just imagine somebody doing it to
(22:31):
these feet. Yeah, so that was disgusting and awesome. Yeah,
thanks Jenna, And that's all we got for listener now today.
So I think that wraps it up. Yeah, you guys
have thoughts on spaceworms space worms, Well, yeah, if you
have thoughts on spaceworms, centnamon because I would love to
know what that entails. But if you have thoughts on
just parasitic worms or space separate thoughts. And uh and indeed,
(22:57):
if you have some sort of horrific infection and you
have does that you're rather proud of send them in.
I guess I will look at that, Robert, I will
definitely look at him. I love this stuff. Yes, send
us an email at science stuff at how staff works
dot com. Thanks guys for more on this and thousands
(23:20):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the house stuff works dot com home page
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. This
is Alice Noderwell at the science that are at how
stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lambs, science
writer and how stuff works dot Com. Today's topic of
(00:23):
space elevators reminds me of the children's classic Charlie in
the Greek Class Elevator, which I understand that you never read, Robert, Well, no,
but I saw the movie and don't they have the
elevator at the end of the movie, right, right, So
there's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you know, Johnny Depp
and all that stuff, but then there's no, not Johnny Depp,
(00:44):
Gene Wilder. That's that's Charlie in the Chocolate fact Well right, right, yeah, yeah, okay,
point taken. And then the sequel is Charlie and the
Greek Class Elevator. Right. So when you open the opening
scene of Charlie and the Great Class Elevator, I think
it was called a Wonk evator in the movie. Okay, okay, Well,
so this this mega structure, the elevator is floating in
(01:06):
the sky and we see um, Charlie bucket and Willy
Wonka and all the various grandparents and even Charlie's parents
are all crowded into this elevator. And this is what
I was thinking of when we were preparing today's topic
for the Space Elevator, because the space Elevator is not
all that fanciful and idea like, it actually makes a
lot of sense and is something that we will probably
(01:29):
see in the decades ahead, we hope to see. You know,
I got really excited about this topic when we were
researching it. I'm not necessarily a space junkie. I'm very
excited about the different projects we're pursuing or not pursuing
as the case maybe uh and seems to be more
in the case these days. But um, the Space Elevator
really got me fired up, just because, yeah, it does
(01:50):
seem kind of doable. So let's give you a little
history on the space Elevator. Um, we have the idea
from one Russian gentleman Urie aren't suiting of excuse your
if we messed up your last name, And he came
up with this in nineteen sixty according to the Space
Word Foundation, and the Space Ward Foundation is going to
come up if you do any research into space elevators
(02:10):
and it's just a nonprofit organization that's dedicated to space
elevators for the space science, technology, all that good stuff.
Just a just a grassroots nonprofit interested in building an
elevator into out of space. So you can go to
space elevator dot com and read RS nine paper titled
to the Cosmos by Electric Train. It was published in Pravda,
(02:33):
the old Soviet union newspaper, and this is what kills me.
It was published as a Sunday supplement for the kids,
as far as I understand it, and it has this
kind of cool, fun kid graphics. Well in a way,
it's kind of sad though, because you think back and
it's like, oh, at a time when kids were interested
in science except for your kids listening, of course. So
Here he was a pretty smart guy, and he wasn't
really satisfied with rockets as a means for getting to space.
(02:54):
So Here's in which is reasonable because rockets are it's
like whatever you're sending into space, it's like strapping it
on the end of an explosion, you know, right, and
then there's a whole huge expenditure of fuel and you're
missing up the atmosphere. You have to protect passengers from
high acceleration. All this kid stuff. But let's read you
an excerpt. Oh, yes, yes, Robert has volunteered to do
(03:15):
this in his best Russian accent. Yes, Robert, feel free
to abbreviate the quote I got a little overzealous with
old Gary. All Right, here we go. Preparation for the
cosmic launching of a contemporary rocket requires not one day,
but more than one month. Yes, of course, these are
just the first steps. None is sounding a little like Dracula,
so I'm gonna stop and just continue in a normal voice.
(03:37):
The first steps man is taking beyond the limits of
his own planet. Still in the future, the construction of
rockets will not change in principle, and even in the future,
the first stage of the of the flight of a
cosmic liner will be accompanied by the furious effort of
straining engines, by the immense expenditure of fuel by protecting
passengers from high acceleration. Right, so, all sorts of crazy stuff.
Because Grandma's gonna want to go into space, two can't.
(04:00):
Ema wants to go into space, and and so Uri
winds up saying flight into the cosmos with the help
of a rocket will never be like an outing on
a boat or a trip on a tram. Yeah, and
then he wonders, is this the only method for cosmic flights?
And thus the space elevator thinks to your right. And
the fact most thing about it too is that it's
it's such a kind of like common sense sense answered.
(04:21):
Like you can imagine the first guy that brought it
up was just like sent out of the room, you know,
because he's like, hey, guys, I know these rockets are great,
but can we just build like an elevator that goes
from space. It's it's like when I was on vacation,
you know, you you get on at the lobby and
then you just push GEO for GIO synchronous orbit. Yeah.
Like when I was on vacation, we went to see
(04:42):
this hell fire pass thing and h in Thailand, okay,
and like there was some some some very old people
in God blessing from em brave enough to come on
the trip. But they were like, is there going to
be an elevator so we can ride back from the bottom.
You know, It's like it's a ridiculous question asking it
seems like a ridiculous question to ask of of space travel.
But it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, So for
(05:04):
a while they were thought of as kind of ridiculous,
and they'd really just existed in old Yury's head and
the realm of sci five as you guys my network,
Yeah you've wrote about it and Fountains of Paradise. But
two things moved space elevators firmly out of fantasy and
into the realm of possibility. And those two things were,
according to space Ward, the discovery of carbon nanotubes in
(05:25):
nineteen and their early nineteen nineties and uh Bradley Edwards
engineering research in two thousand one. So those were two
of the things that really made space elevators something that
we can hope for. We had the we had an
idea about how the engineering would work. It's not like
just going out and piling up cement blocks and two
by four until you reach orbit. I think part of
(05:49):
the problem for me when we were researching this podcast
was I just think of an elevator as a structure
being encased within a building. So that's not the case
with the space elevator. Yeah, It's more are like a
vehicle that climbs a super strong tether for miles and
miles and miles. Yeah, let's give some details on the
tether because that's pretty important part of the whole Space
(06:10):
elevator construction. Yeah. The thing that really that I had
to look up to really put it in perspective for
for me, UM is that the sheer distance we're talking here,
all right. Currently, the tallest structure in the world is
the Burgee Kalafa in Dubai. And you've probably seen pictures
of this super tall building. I was at the Seventh
Star Hotel. It might be it's yeah, it probably is.
(06:32):
It's in Dubai. It's probably eight um. But all right,
this structure is two thousand, seven hundred and seventeen feet tall.
That's roughly half a mile structure. Yes, the Dubai structure,
all right. Geo centrationis altitude is a hundred and twenty
four miles, Okay, okay, So you'd have to stack um
(06:55):
two hundred and um of those Dubai super hotels on
top of each other just to reach um, you know,
satellite territory. But that's not even the distance of the
Space elevator. The space elevator, according to uh to some predictions,
would be sixty two thousand miles in length, right, and
it would be made from lightweight carbon nanotubes, which again
(07:17):
according to some people, maybe a hundred times stronger than steel.
And then it's going to be security to a station
on Earth on one end. So depending on who you
talked to, you specifications for that ribbon vary. According to
the Institute for Scientific Research, the ribbon maybe three ft
wide and thinner than a sheet of paper, which is insane.
Something that's going to be slipping you up to space
and that a sheet of paper and maybe carrying all
(07:39):
sorts of expensive material and grandmas. And then if you
wanted to increase the amount of stuff you're bringing into space,
the payload you're bringing into space, and you would want
to scale up your space elevator by increasing the size
of your tether, which makes sense. Now this next part
really just floored me when I was when we were
researching it. And that's when you talk about the how
the counterweight stays in space, Like I ran this is
(08:00):
the simple explanation that I ran across from a scientist
and he was like, all right, imagine that your fist
is the is the planet, all right, and then you
have a bit of dental floss, you know, that, and
then that dental floss is tied to like a little um,
I don't know, like a little golf ball or something, right,
and then you like hold your fist over your head
(08:20):
and you just start swinging that golf ball around and
and of course the golf ball doesn't crash into your
fist because it's swinging around and around and around the rotation,
the rotation and all. And that's the same principle essentially
with the space elevator. And it's so simple that it
you know, it's one of those that kind of flourish.
You're like, that can't be right. That just sounds way
too simple, right, And we have the original space elevator guy,
(08:42):
the Russian Eurie, to thank for working this out. So
we all know that the Earth's force of attraction lessons
in proportion to the square of the distance, and centrifugal
force grows with the increase in distance. So what that
means is that at about a distance of fort KOs,
centrifugal force turns out to be an equal to the
force of gravity. So it's kind of cool. I never
(09:05):
knew that. And then the Institute for Scientific Research says
that by using the end of the ribbon like a slingshot.
You could send pretty serious payloads in the Moon, Mars
and beyond. That's so awesome. It's like if they're if
you're you're an astronaut, you're the Aunt. It's on the
little golf ball that's tied to the dental bloss that's
attached to my fist, and then you're swinging around and
then Aunt goes flying and on his way to Mars.
(09:25):
We are the ants, right, So let's talk about the
cars you have. These cars are climbers as they're called,
that are riding up the ribbon, and they're meant to
carry some serious weight and they themselves may way up
to twenty tons. So in one draft of the idea,
the cars attached to the ribbon have electric motors and
they get their power from a station on the ground
by way of laser beams. It's kind of a setup
like a ski lift, was one comparison I heard. And
(09:48):
then another idea is to use solar power instead of
laser beams to power the cars. Either way, you don't
want a huge engine on board because that kind of
negates the whole great thing about it. The solar energy
makes perfect sense because you're not going I have to
deal with with cloud cover right right, So inside the
cars could be roomier because of the relatively inexpensive cost
per pound, So great news for grandmas. She might have,
(10:09):
you know, sleeping and eating accommodations within the car. And
some of the estimates I've looked at um they show
that our like first space elevator, whenever we finally build
it could like bring thirteen tons of grandma's. Like, I
don't know if that's all the grandma's, but it's a large,
large assembly of grandma's it is, indeed. But you raise
an important point in that we're not going to be
(10:31):
sending grandma's up first. We're gonna be sending Also it's
important distress the grandma's will not be the first to
take the space elevator, no matter how many nights they
cam about to get tickets to be the first in line.
It sounds like a great Twilight Shone episode that where
it's like all the grandmas are called in for the
first space elevator, right, what's up right, We're gonna be
sending you know, different things for NASA and the European
(10:53):
Space Agency and all sorts of other folks are in
line before the Grandma's. I saw there's I saw an
article online talking about the map to the Space Elevator
which showed like some of the ways will test it,
which is kind of interesting and also kind of common sense.
It involves like using blimps to test like the early
section of it, and then using satellites to test the
higher portion of it until you reach the point where
(11:14):
you pull unrolled sort of the whole thing. So that's
pretty awesome. Would you be a guinea pig for that? No, No,
of course, I'm not a big fan of heights. So
you might be wondering how fast the cars are ascending.
I certainly was, and I heard according to space where
that there's a roughly a hundred miles per hours the
speed they would be going up. Okay, yeah, some of
(11:36):
the estimates I was looking at the talking about maybe
a week or so on board that thing. So I'm
guessing they'll probably some of that view to look at
the home, but there's some of the thirteen tons though.
You're gonna have to have your snack bars and your
places for the Grandma's to stay. You know, how are
the space bathroom work for Grandma yeah, because that's tricky,
wouldn't you think, Yeah, it would on several levels. Um.
(12:00):
And then of course we have the ground station. Right,
let's not forget about the ground and has where's that
going to be? Well, the best scenario as far as
I've heard, is in the ocean, right, because you want
to have um, you don't want anybody getting close to it, right,
So the ocean is the best place to have like
a hundred mile no fly zone keep planes from accidentally
running into it. Um. No, you know, to keep your
(12:24):
villainous folk away from it in case they want to Yeah,
crazy people you know, anti space elevator, terrorists, etcetera. Um.
And then also if something goes wrong, I mean, it's
all that's another reason to stay back from it, right.
It's a it's a pretty big investment with new technology,
right right. And any other thing is that it needs
to be near the equator, right, Robert correct. Which also
(12:46):
has the benefit of of having there being fewer like
catastrophic storms in that area, so you don't have to
worry about like hurricanes blowing your tether around, gotcha, Right,
So there will be a bit of movement kind of
like a guitar sty for the tether, which would be
a tad bit unsettling. Yeah, but it's kind of like,
you know, you want a little a little give and
(13:08):
take even with a skyscraper, So you definitely want some
give and take with something that stretches, uh six miles. Yes, intuitively,
I know that, but I'm still saying that I might
be a little bit frightened when that thing started. Wouldn't help. Yeah,
So why space elevator? What's the motivation behind it? I
think you guys know the answer to this. But um,
one of the people who's interested in this is a
(13:29):
company called Liftports, and their goal is to be the
folks behind mass transportation system that allows people to take
advantage of space and all the resources that space offers,
whether it's you know, mining asteroids or a helium three.
I mean, they want to be the transportation system for
even the smallest entrepreneur. Right. And the other great thing
(13:49):
about a space elevator is not just like physical um cargo,
but it would be a way to transport energy, a
way to transmit communications, um, you know in the information
it's uh, you know, it becomes a highway for for
all those things. Right, we break free the Earth, and
we start colonizing other worlds we established in the inter stations.
(14:11):
We finally get to go to Marsha or actually if
you we put a satellite into orbit and we make
a man and some robots watch bad movies on it,
like Mystery Sense Theater three thousand. They have a space
elevator of sorts in that show, is called the Umbilicus,
and they would Dr Clayton Forester would send the movie
up through that. So there's another sci fi example of
(14:32):
space elevator for you. Right. They're all over science fiction,
And there was also one of them book I just
read called Fearsome Engine by Ian M. Banks. I highly
recommend that to anybody who's into um into science fiction,
because there's a whole lot of like craze like anything.
I'm not gonna give any what anything like, except say
it has less of cyberpunk stuff in it. It has
stuff having to do with like um, with civilizations in
(14:54):
the Kardashef scale. It has stuff to do with like megastructures, um.
And there's in this particular world there was at one
point a space elevator, but it's long since been taken down.
That's a pretty glowing recommendation. So what are we talking
about for price to get Grandma on the space elevator?
The price, Yeah, I think it was a hundred dollars
(15:14):
per pound. So that's going to be a price of
a pretty serious plane ticket plus um luggage. Right, so
there maybe a hundred fifty pounds. You want to bring
fifty pounds of luggage, then you're talking roughly free Grandma
if you're a hundred fifty pounds. Wait, but why is
Grandma bringing fifty pounds of stuff in orbit? I don't
get that this Gamma need that many things. I just
(15:36):
like how much. I don't know. Maybe it's just a
lot of birthday cards to send now and stuff with
five dollar bills. I'm not really sure. I was just saying,
because you think of fifty pounds as the limit, you
know from when they you stick here, Well, I guess
you gotta bring a space suit, space food, all that stuff.
It ends up wings and max. Yeah. But one of
the thing is like sending anything into orbit, like using rockets.
That's the huge prices. The huge part of the price
(15:57):
tag is like you want to send food into space,
It's really expensive because it has to you know, right
on top of rockets. So it is inflated. As this
price might sound, it's a bargain. It's total bargain sending
it up in a rocket. Yeah, and then price of
building it, some would argue as a bargain as well.
That's going to be around the realm of ten billion,
that's one estimate. Well, we've we've spent that much on
(16:20):
things that were far less beneficial to the human race before.
So I think no doubt. I'm all for it. Ten million.
Sock it away, start saving right now. Um. So you
may be thinking this is kind of fringe, and yes,
it is far off, but it's not fringe. Lest you
think it is fringe, let's talk about some of the
people and agencies that are involved in this. We've got
you know, NASA and the Las Alamos National Laboratory. We've
(16:43):
folks from m I, T you see, Berkeley, Locked Martin,
European Space Society, all sorts of people and they all
get together every year. In fact, they're holding in August
two thousand ten Space Elevator Conference in Redmond, Washington. In
case you guys want to attend, I just give the
image of a bunch of scientist building a space elevator
like out in the field. Yeah, I don't think this
is it. I think it's got a little bit more
(17:04):
to it. So, among other things, are going to be
focusing on the four pillars of Space elevator development, and
those are science and technical aspects, Political, social, Yeah, because
obviously there's a like, how do you arrange to have
this giant section of of ocean that you're going to
erect it in? How do you, you know, convince people
there's not going to wreck their satellites, etcetera? Right? How
(17:25):
do you figure out who gets to ride on it,
who owns stuff, and who gets all the benefits from it,
you know, cost wise? Yeah, you're you're basically building a
gateway to like the Eighth Continent, you know, if you
can consider space or the Moon and the eighth continent,
and then it's like who owns the Eighth Continent? Right?
So another thing that they're going to be doing at
this Space Elevator conference is they're going to be holding
(17:47):
a materials engineering challenge that will play into the space
elevator development, and it's called the Strong Tether Competition. I
know you guys are wondering where I'm going with this,
but I promise you it has a point. So this
is a NASA sponsored challenge in which tames enter some
super strong tether that's subjected to a pool test. Right,
So in order to win the two million dollar prize,
that's no small chump change. The tether has to exceed
(18:09):
the strength of the best available commercial tether by with
no increase in mass. I wonder what they have pulling
on it, Like DoD they have those big, big guys
from the World's Strongest Man competition. That would be amusing.
I don't know. But at the two thousand nine Space
Elevator Conference, no one participated except for one exhibition only team,
and they brought with them a two point two meter
length of carbon nanotube. So carbon nanotube, you guys will remember,
(18:32):
is what some people have proposed building the elevators tether
out of. So according to NASA, this loop that the
team brought with them failed at a level that's well
below expected strength. But the fact that they made the
carbon nanotube loop was good news because we need that
ribbon first space elevator. So the main reason we're focusing
so much on the tether is of clearly it's a
(18:55):
key component that's the space elevator, but the materials technology
just and quite there yet. When will we have it though,
we're looking at what October thirty one. Yeah, they have
a running clock on their website and they have slated
October twenty one as the date. Two thousand one. I
gotta say, I'm pretty excited. Yeah, yeah, I bet they'll
(19:16):
Maybe they'll have the deal where you can like be
like going up in space, um on the on the
virgin Ship. You know, you can buy your tickets ahead
of time before the things even build. Yeah, there's gonna
be a lot of hype before that. Hey, So in
case you guys have nothing to do before two one,
when I go to the homepage and check out how
space elevators will work, or how space tourism works, or
(19:38):
how the Google Lunar exerprese works. Yeah, we have a
lot of great, great space content, so check it out.
And we're constantly throwing those links up to some of
these space related content pieces on our Twitter and our Facebook.
That's a stuff from the Science Lab on Facebook, Lab
stuff on Twitter. I also do a little stuff for
Discovery Space, so I'd like to throw that on to
(20:00):
the website as well. Yeah, you're pimping yourself there, Robert.
Nice work. So I got a little listener mail that
I would love to share. This could be my favorite
ever piece of listener mail, although we have gotten some
good ones, and it seems to be trending that we're
getting very interesting pictures from you all, which I really like.
(20:21):
In the past, we've received pictures of people's pet rats.
With your marvelous pictures of of listeners composting efforts. We
got that one with the lizards regenerated tale, which was
pretty awesome. That was good. But then then this this morning,
it was interaction and this one came from Jenna in Vancouver,
(20:43):
and Jenna writes, Hey, I just started listening to this
podcast and listening to back episodes, so you have to
excuse me for sending an email on an old one.
Please forgive you, Chenna, but I really do have something
to share on your podcast about hookworm. Three years ago,
I caught kanaan hookworm on a beach in Ghana. This
has a different life cycle in humans because we're dead
and host so instead of going to the lungs and intestine,
(21:04):
it pretty much just crawls around your foot. This was
probably the worst experience of my life, as it is
incredibly itchy. Luckily, by the time it really manifested itself,
I was in Scotland. Listen, she's in Ghana and then
she's in Scotland. Janna, you're a world traveler bringing parasites
all over the place, I know, right, So she's in
(21:25):
Scotland and they have cold water. Because the only way
I could sleep was to soak both the until he
went numb up to the ankle, at which point I
could sleep for two hours before getting up to numb
them again. Well, okay, so she she talks a little
bit more about the process, but she wraps up and says, now,
it's just a super fun and totally gross story that
I have pictures to prove. And indeed, Jenna sent us
the pictures of her foot with the hook room and
(21:47):
it is awesome. I'm about to give the photo out
again and look at it again just to re experienced it,
and it is so gross. It's just oh, I mean fit,
will you sent this photo in knowing that we would
be grossed out by your feet? Your feet are gross
in this photo because you can I'm sure they're lovely
now they're Jenna well, it's well, maybe we can put
this on the block. We would have to ask for question,
(22:09):
but yeah, maybe. Well it's not for the fan of heart,
it really isn't. It's like it's little worms crawling under
the skin kind of and it kind of looks but
it also kind of looks like like poison ivy um.
But you can see the path of the worm, which
is awesome, Like you can just yeah, because the whole
thing is like they used to have to like like
get it out and like spin it around a little
stick and you can just imagine somebody doing it to
(22:31):
these feet. Yeah, so that was disgusting and awesome. Yeah,
thanks Jenna, And that's all we got for listener now today.
So I think that wraps it up. Yeah, you guys
have thoughts on spaceworms space worms, Well, yeah, if you
have thoughts on spaceworms, centnamon because I would love to
know what that entails. But if you have thoughts on
just parasitic worms or space separate thoughts. And uh and indeed,
(22:57):
if you have some sort of horrific infection and you
have does that you're rather proud of send them in.
I guess I will look at that, Robert, I will
definitely look at him. I love this stuff. Yes, send
us an email at science stuff at how staff works
dot com. Thanks guys for more on this and thousands
(23:20):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the house stuff works dot com home page
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