4 ms·
This seems like a major obstacle in the way of space elevators. I would imagine running what amounts to a short-circuit wire from the ionosphere to the ground m
by athenot 7y ago
This seems like a major obstacle in the way of space elevators. I would imagine running what amounts to a short-circuit wire from the ionosphere to the ground might be a bit tricky…
- netcraft 7y agoCould it be used to collect that electricity though I wonder?
- ryanmercer 7y agoThe common proposed solution there is putting it in a specific bit of ocean in the western equatorial Pacific where there are far fewer chances (now, with climate change who knows) of hurricanes and other storms. I imagine if we ever have the means to actually construct one though we'll probably also have good super conductors and crazy super capacitors and could probably just build superconductor lightning rods up and down the length of it that dump into super caps which then power the climbers and HVAC.
- dredmorbius 7y agoI've speculated on this before. @carapace was kind enough to provide a reference showing that exactly this happened on an experiment utilising a 20km space tether deployed from the Space Shuttle. The line literally fried itself due to charge build-up and induced currents. https://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wtether.html https://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wtether.html Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20898725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20898725