7 ms·
> "...six oval-shaped cars, each measuring 18m x 7.2m holding 30 people, ... eight days ...." Whooooa. Let's think about this for a second. Eight days means
by blahedo 8y ago
> "...six oval-shaped cars, each measuring 18m x 7.2m holding 30 people, ... eight days ...."
Whooooa. Let's think about this for a second. Eight days means people need to sleep (and not just sitting up in a chair, no matter how comfy). At 1m x 2m per bed that would be a 15m x 4m space even without aisles to walk between the beds or down the middle or any sort of privacy separators. Also, a bathroom and actual washing facilities of some sort are mandatory, and a kitchen with at least minimal food-prep capabilities (even if it's mostly pre-made); modern airplane galleys only need to deal with trips in the tens of hours.
18m x 17.2m is really really not a lot of space for all that.
- frenchie4111 8y agoShouldn't we just knock the people out for the 8 day trip?
- Keyframe 8y agoAnd how exactly do you plan to 'knock out' people safely for eight days, or even just a few? Heck, even for just a few hours without medical equipment and personnel?
- p1mrx 8y agoThe medical technology for human stasis doesn't seem particularly unattainable, when compared against building a carbon nanotube tether into orbit. Some mammals are able to hibernate for months.
- Keyframe 8y agoSo far, for humans, that lives within same realm that warp drives occupy in science fiction.
- p1mrx 8y agoIf bears were capable of warp drive, then I would agree with you.
- Keyframe 8y agoIf bears will be the ones to take space elevator trips, then we're set.
- adrianN 8y agoNo, we don't even know if warp drives are allowed by the laws of physics. We have a pretty good idea how to do hibernation: Saturate the tissue with some cryoprotectant and freeze it very quickly. The problem is that we don't have a cryoprotectant that is sufficiently non-toxic and we can't freeze anything as big as a human quickly enough.
- Keyframe 8y agoOf course we know. Bend space and don't travel faster than light. We JUST need exotic matter of sufficient energy density to carry around.
- adrianN 8y agoYeah and since nobody knows whether the exotic matter needed actually exists, we don't know whether bending spacetime in the required way is physically possible. On the other hand, we can successfully freeze and thaw bunny kidneys.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoAnd some way of resolving the resulting time travel paradoxes.
- jstarfish 8y agoGeneral anesthesia kills 1 in 100,000 patients, and that's with medical personnel standing by in actual hospitals, much less a skeleton crew of people strapped to a spacebound elevator. We don't understand ourselves or our bodies anywhere near as well as we can understand or advance materials science. My money is on new cables before reliable stasis.
- ceejayoz 8y agoI think the safety/ease of sleep makes people think anesthesia is about as easy to manage. In reality, it requires a highly trained professional to be monitoring 24/7, and even that involves very significant risks.
- Barrin92 8y agosix oval shaped cars with those measurements each is about 780 square meters in total. The average Tokyo condo is about 65 square meters (for a family of three). Somewhat unpleasant for 30 people but not really that small. Like 3 people in one Tokyo apartment density wise.
- Shivetya 8y agoto be safe I would suspect any one of the three cars must be able to support all persons on the trip. they are pretty much of out reach of help shortly after leaving. it might be interesting to see what type of personality tests them use before allowing anyone to actually board one of these should they ever come into existence.
- Someone 8y ago”Obayashi envisages a space elevator using six oval-shaped cars, each measuring 18m x 7.2m holding 30 people, connected by a cable” I can’t see how one would read that other than as each car holding 30 people. You would need an extra comma to make it six cars holding 30 people in total: ”Obayashi envisages a space elevator using six oval-shaped cars, each measuring 18m x 7.2m, holding 30 people, connected by a cable”
- DavidSJ 8y agoBut the original sentence is ungrammatical either way. Under your interpretation there’s still a missing “and”: “each measuring 18m x 7.2m and holding 30 people”.
- vorg 8y agoThe missing "and" is a tiny grammatical error, whereas the missing "," Someone mentioned is a large grammatical error. Tiny grammatical errors are OK -- language grammars change over time because many people start making the same tiny grammatical error until it becomes part of the accepted grammar of the language.
- Barrin92 8y ago
- curiousgal 8y agoHow much space would they get on the ISS either ways? It'd be a good practice.
- krallja 8y agoThey’re not going to ISS, they’re going somewhere in geosynchronous orbit.
- db48x 8y agoBut it's still an apt comparison. People live for long periods on the ISS, and the amount of space isn't likely to get any bigger during their mission.
- bencompanion 8y agoThe end of this cable would be 36000km up, compared to the ISS's 400km. The first space elevator would primarily be used to shift stuff, rather than people at first - there's no point having convenient transit for people if they've got nowhere to go at the other end.
- jessaustin 8y agoThat's where the end of the cable is, but there's no rule that that's where anyone has to get off the elevator.
- throwaway648 8y agoActually the cable will extend well beoynd that point. 36Mm is the altitide where the elevator would be travelig at orbital speed. Jump out any lower and you will drop back to earth. Unless you jump very hard (using rockets or something).
- peeters 8y agoInteresting thought. Note that getting off 300 km up would not put you in orbit; you would lack the orbital velocity required for that. So if you get off there you'd have to burn around 8 km/s of delta-v, which is quite a bit of fuel to haul up. For efficiency you'd want to go higher. There'd be a point much higher than 300 km where detethering would put you into a highly elliptical orbit where the periapsis is 300 km. Then you'd just have to burn retrograde to circularize. Off hand I'm not sure what the math for that would be but it should be pretty simple algebra.
- toyg 8y agoYou forget this is Japan, where tons of people sleep on trains almost every day - often on their feet.
- salutonmundo 8y agoNot to mention the existence of 'capsule apartments'...
- grozzle 8y agoThere's one practically derelict building of capsule apartments, it was a failed experiment. Capsule hotels are a thing, but not apartments.
- skookumchuck 8y agoDon't actually need much for 8 days. Provide video games, pizza, and a relief tube. People do it all the time.
- reustle 8y agoIt's an elevator to _space_. There are going to be some comfort compromises, especially on these early iterations.
- bacon_waffle 8y agoSeems doable, to pick a random example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Endeavour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Endeavour 30m long, 8.9m beam, complement of 94.
- a_silly_name 8y ago8 days of uncomfortably close quarters on ascent may be a good way to psychologically prepare folks for a perhaps slightly-less cramped orbital experience.
- rfrey 8y agoBeds can stack.
- mirimir 8y agoHey, Stephenson had people living long-term in spaces that size, in Seveneves. That didn't turn out so well, but eight days isn't that long. Tube beds could be close packed, and people could sleep in shifts. Also, one can survive just fine with just a washcloth and towel, and a source of warm water.
- misja111 8y agoComparing to a typical submarine, it's three times as much space per person. Submarines typically have 30 square feet pp, 18m x 17.2m for 30 people is 93 square feet.
- blahedo 8y ago7.2, not 17.2, so about 46 sqft per person. Point taken, but if a submarine is the point of comparison... yeah, that's really really not a lot of room.
- nabla9 8y agoAstronauts wear diapers, painfully lose their fingernails when working in spacewalks. Having to bunk in submarine style accommodation for little over week is nothing.
- spydum 8y agookay i had never heard of the fingernail thing. that sounds awful. I wonder if later designs helped? My immediate thought is: fill those finger spaces with clay like material -- to spread the load across the whole surface of the finger, not just the nail.. but yowtch. glad I never chose that career.