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Cooling a 200km loop with liquid helium sounds more than moderately difficult! Neat idea but not particularly possible given current material science as always
by buildbot 2y ago
Cooling a 200km loop with liquid helium sounds more than moderately difficult!
Neat idea but not particularly possible given current material science as always seems to be the case with space elevators.
- eppp 2y agoHow cold would the pipe be in space if it was shaded? Wouldnt that cut the energy needed by a bit?
- perihelions 2y agoIt's more or less impossible to shade a space elevator because the (hot, radiant) earth spans a full hemisphere of its field of view and the sun wanders most of the opposite one. No way to passively reach cryogenic temperatures—let alone the deep-cryogenic ones demanded by high current-density superconductors.
- punnerud 2y agoWhat about using Starship or similar to move the coolant up, then let it “fall” down? Once you have the elevator operated some of the transportation could be used for refueling coolant. And you start it from space and gradually lower it down to earth.
- ben_w 2y agoI don't know why you think that would help? If we could build this at all, we could build it on the ground, then just switch it on (gradually) and it would float, and if we needed to get consumables up, they can be pulled up on a winch like any other payload to space. But also, I don't know why you think Starship is the right category for a solution; the structure in this paper is 200 kilometers in size (it says altitude, but for magnetic repulsion the best separation distance is a constant factor of the size before your get performance issues), whereas a fully stacked Starship is about 0.12 - 0.15. It would be like trying to refuel a 747 in flight with an personal selfie drone.
- punnerud 2y agoThe Starship was only for moving coolant, not as part of the elevator. I was thinking you probably have to have extra payload to stop the end. And that it then would be better to start from the top, than from bottom
- ben_w 2y agoI can't visualise what you're trying to suggest. "Stop the end"?
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