4 ms·
Also when it fails expect the lower end to fall and wreck everything in the area underneath. Which with that length will be a lot! The insurance bill would
by andylynch 4y ago
Also when it fails expect the lower end to fall and wreck everything in the area underneath. Which with that length will be a lot! The insurance bill would be … astronomical (see what happened in the Foundation TV show for an example).
- Sharlin 4y agoModern space elevator designs (starting from Brad Edwards’s NIAC study in the early 2000s) propose something much closer to a tether than a tower, maybe some hundreds of tons in total mass and shaped like a gossamer-thin ribbon. The worst-case failure mode of such a design would be rather anticlimactic.