Posted on 03/28/2017 12:36:32 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Why not mount some sort of thrust engines on the asteroid to allow control and adjustment the orbit?
Well, because this isn’t like a tiny low mass satellite that only requires occasional adjustments to keep its orbit from decaying. This is a high mass satellite with an atmospheric anchor continually dragging it down that would require massive thrusters constantly burning lots of fuel or it would decay past the point of no return very quickly. Where is the fuel going to come from to do that? Just constantly launching rockets from earth to ferry a little bit of fuel per launch up to the asteroid at billions and billions of dollars per launch?
Who will want to pay for that? Who will want to take the risk that if a few launches go wrong the thrusters run out of fuel and life on planet earth possibly goes extinct?
Everyone calm down. Remember, the Arabs were great contributors to math and science. /s
Ultimate Skeet!
And if you buy this I have some scenic Detroit storefronts to sell ya.
>> Is this Arthur c Clarke’s space elevator? <<
No. No asteroid involved in a space elevator, but a super-strong strand is required for the space elevator.
>> The two highest sections of the tower - starting at between 17,000 and 20,000 metres above earth - are reserved for a reliquary section (which would house religious relics) and a funerary section. The tallest point of the tower above earth is planned for about 32,000 metres above ground. <<
15,000 of vertical space for a reliquary?
“Lol they envisioned this futuristic plan, and they can’t have a heliport or something, you have to jump off with a parachute?”
Artistic freedom .... Low density and cold at 50,000+ feet ...
>> Bazinga!! Wonder what effect this would have on the tides. <<
Zero. Very massive by human standards, but it has zero mass from the perspective of planetary mass.
You would have to have a super strong strand for this too. A captured asteroid would also work well for a Clarke elevator. a lot less to put into orbit.
“At least they’re ambitious.”
Exactly. This is just someones paper project, but its the sort of big idea that everyone should be entertaining. Some of them will find a way.
This does not solve the issue of weight. The weight of the building would act as a force to sheer it
A Clarke elevator would be used to transport people and belongings to and from a geosynchronous orbit. The elevator-satellite would have no reason to have any substantial height at all, so no gravitational force acting to tear it apart.
The Clarke elevator isn’t all it’s commonly understood to be. It’s useless for building the satellite in the first place. All it does is allow a very cheap exchange of materials between the satellite and Earth. But you have to put mass up their to be exchanged in the first place.
Thats just a quibble. If you have the tech to drag a 1km or so diameter asteroid into geostationary orbit, then you have the tech to set up reactionless drives (see recent NASA tests of the EM drive) powered by nukes or solar panels.
Actually, I take it back about the Clarke elevator. You could use a giant rail gun to launch ballast into space. Such a rail gun involves accelerations that would obliterate anything useful. But once the ballast is in space, the elevator could exchange the mass of the ballast for more useful materials.
“The Towering Inferno II” & “The Poseidan Adventure II” all
rolled into one. - PASS!
“If you have the tech to drag a 1km or so diameter asteroid into geostationary orbit...”
Well, we don’t.
“see recent NASA tests of the EM drive”
Verrrry preliminary tests, mind you. Ping me when there’s a spacecraft flying around powered by a reactionless drive. Until then it’s vaporware.
“its the sort of big idea that everyone should be entertaining”
No, it’s the sort of stupid idea a first year engineering student should be able to point out the massive flaws in. We’d be much better off focusing on ideas that might actually work.
Yup. Like that fellow Walter Hohmann, figuring out the orbital mechanics of getting spacecraft to the planets (in 1925) when there was no known way to even get into Earth orbit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Hohmann
Aim high.
Per aspera ad astra
and my personal favorite,
Plus ultra (rough translation - go beyond)
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