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The cars would travel at up to 200kph and arrive at the space station eight days after departure from Earth. These early cable experiments are important, but s
by ourmandave 8y ago
The cars would travel at up to 200kph and arrive at the space station eight days after departure from Earth.
These early cable experiments are important, but someone should also be working on the composing an 8 day Elevator Muzak score that won't drive you insane.
- abrowne 8y agoI'd pick Max Richter. His Sleep¹, which is nearly 8.5 hours, would be a good start. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_(album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_(album)
- quink 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
- sandworm101 8y agoMusic? The first four days will be safety announcements. The last four will be debates as to who is responsable for cleaning up all the vomit. A week of near-zero-g in a room with 30 people will not be fun.
- newnewpdro 8y agoIs humor against HN rules? I regularly see such posts being downvoted and it doesn't make sense to me.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoMost humor can be categorized as "insubstantive comments" and those are discouraged. It is possible to crack a joke here and get it upvoted, but it's hard to pull it off. I even once had a joke upvoted by quite a lot,* like 50 points or something, but most jokes are downvoted not because humor is forbidden, but because insubstantive comments are discouraged. Some humor is downvoted for being uncivil because a lot of humor is basically poking fun at people or mocking them. A lot of humor is not nice at all. HN tries to meet a very high bar for civility. * Under my old handle and it hit 59 points: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14996229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14996229
- noonespecial 8y agoWell said. That's about as succinct a sum-up as I've heard. This might actually belong in the FAQ as it might save some folks a bit of confusing cultural acclimation upon arriving at HN from parts distant such as reddit or slashdot (is that still a thing?). At any rate, way better than "harumph! HN hates fun!"
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoI posted a joke a couple of days ago about "the Xzibit pattern" which ended up at 10 points, but it fluctuated a lot so it probably got something like 40 up 30 down. Would be interesting to see the breakdown of votes on HN.
- komali2 8y agoI'm just glad you can't see the # of votes here for other comments. Helps prevent bandwagonning, though that still happens for downvotes once the css kicks in.
- tambourine_man 8y agoCan I ask why you retired your previous handle?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- DoreenMichele 8y agoThe short version is that I made the leaderboard and it looks like a feminist handle. There's more factors involved, but that's the crux of it.
- sandworm101 8y agoBut if you note my "joke" actually illustrated a point of physics about which at least one person was confused: the expected g-forces. So it wasnt insubstantive, certainly not as insubstantive as the parent comment about elevator music.
- thanatos_dem 8y agoNo, it’s not against the rules, but downvotes aren’t there to enforce the rules. It’s just a culture thing. HN tends to be more news and factually focused than reddit/Twitter/etc. People here just prefer to stay on topic, especially since humor is very different between people and can be very hit or miss.
- craigmi 8y agoyup, coming here and the top comment actually being something insightful or some point worthy of discussion instead of some sarcastic comment or joke like elsewhere is what makes this place.
- sandworm101 8y agoThe use if my joke is evident in the immediate reply, the confusion over g forces. There is no reason an informative comment cannot also be funny.
- dang 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17482490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17482490
- arethuza 8y ago"near-zero-g" Why would it be "zero-g" you're not in orbit?
- sandworm101 8y agoYou are moving from ground (1g) to geostationary orbit at zero. It will be a slow progression from one to the other (with a very slight lateral acceleration) but imho once below .5g anyone who is going to get air/sea/space sick wont see much difference.
- arethuza 8y agoAh good point - I was just thinking about lower down.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 8y agoI'm sure James Last's heirs will be happy to supply the required stock.
- BacioiuC 8y agoWhat is kph? I can't be 200 km per hour and have it take 8 days.
- lucb1e 8y agoIn SI, that would be kilo pico hour. But yeah I'm pretty sure it's kilometers per hour in American.
- isostatic 8y ago8 * 24 * 200 = 38,400 km. Geostationary orbit is 35,786km above the equator, so 8 days feels a fair approximation.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- p1mrx 8y agoFor a space elevator, the "space station" is near geosynchronous orbit. 36000 km / 200 km/h is roughly 8 days.
- 14 8y agoI assume the author meant km/h or 200 km per hour as you have guessed, and if the satellite it 36000km high / 200km it would take 180 hours or 7.5 days.
- mLuby 8y agoWeird to me that they aren't accelerating till the midpoint and then breaking till the destination at a constant 1g. Gets around the space sickness by providing artificial gravity and should take ~hours rather than ~days.
- ghaff 8y agoBecause it would require you to reach an improbably high velocity (especially for pulling yourself up a cable)--and you'd do so relatively quickly using an improbably large amount of energy in the process.
- p1mrx 8y agoThat trip would only take an hour, but I don't think you could build a cable and drive system capable of operating at 18 km/s.
- amelius 8y agoNot sure if this would work, but how about using a wire with evenly-spaced metal beads, then using a magnet (a large one like used in MRI machines) to pull up the cart? You'll probably have to turn the magnet on/off at a specific frequency, depending on the momentum of the cart, which could be a challenge.
- aidenn0 8y agohttp://www.orbitalvector.com/Orbital%20Travel/Space%20Fountains/Space%20Fountains.htm http://www.orbitalvector.com/Orbital%20Travel/Space%20Founta...
- p1mrx 8y agopower = force * distance / time If you want constant acceleration, you need to maintain constant force. A higher-velocity vehicle applies that force across a greater distance per unit time, and therefore requires more power. Accelerating 1 metric ton at 1g requires 9800 N. So at peak velocity (18 km/s), that's 180 megawatts per ton, which is more than 700 times the power to mass ratio of a Tesla P100D.
- pilsetnieks 8y agoI think copyright won't apply after the first half hour.
- imglorp 8y agoEnforcement might get interesting since jurisdiction will be a question. The RIAA and MPAA will probably be the first two organizations to have extra-planetary legal claims.
- tomovo 8y agoStairway to Heaven is about 8 minutes long, so they better work hard on speeding the elevator up to match that.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoOnly if they want this to be a fancy burial service where we slingshot your corpse into space for kicks.
- mipmap04 8y agoI don't doubt there's a market for that service.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoYes, but it's a completely different market from folks desiring a space elevator. Also, it makes the need for muzak nonexistant because all your passengers are dead and can't hear it anyway. Seems to me that defeats the purpose of trying to time the trip to coincide with the length of a particular song.
- saagarjha 8y agoIt seems to me that you missed the joke…
- DoreenMichele 8y agoNope. It just wasn't really that good.
- isostatic 8y agoAlso completely pointless - playing David Bowie to a space suit in a convertible that's fired into interplanetary space.
- eftychis 8y ago
- holografix 8y agoThere’s only so much bossa nova one can endure.
- cwkoss 8y agoThe entire R Kelly "Trapped in the Closet" on repeat could be a strong contender.