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Space Elevator
- nunodonato 1y agoWow, I'm really surprised to see some birds flying that high. Question: How the heck are they able to live normally at such extremely low temperatures?
- adzm 1y agoIt was enjoyable and informative. Learned that sprites can be 50km long!!
- fuzzy2 1y agoEarlier this year, we were treated to an exceptional photo of one: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mysterious-red-sprite-appears-in-nasa-astronaut-photo-from-the-space-station-what-is-this-strange-electrical-flare-180986946/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mysterious-red-spr...
- kinduff 1y agoI always enjoy Neal's pages. I found planes at high altitude very interesting, didn't know we could fly that high!
- lproven 1y agoTo quote Toy Story: "That's not flying, that's just... falling with style!" Accelerate upwards fast enough, you can so to speak fall upwards for a short while before you fall back down again...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- daniel_iversen 1y agoThis was incredible! Couldn't stop scrolling and reading. For a kid of a certain age and curiosity it'll blow their mind! I'm so grateful the creator made this, shame that his "buy me a coffee" isn't a simple PayPal or Apple Pay but you have to put in credit card or bank details!!
- anticrymactic 1y agoPayPal and Apple pay take a significant cut of the transaction. CC is a lot less and bank is mostly free of TX fees. Most users don't know/don't care, so given the option, they will likely take it and funnel their donations to conglomerates.
- jve 1y agoI don't like to input Cc details into random sites whose main business is processing said transactions.
- linsomniac 1y agoMaybe you'd like one of the banks that provides you with limited-use or one-time credit cards? I've been using one called Envelope Budgeting for the last few months after my previous one shut down. It's $40/year, but that's waived if you spend more than $5,000 USD in card purchases. I put the Neal.fun on my "Misc" card that I keep at $0 balance and transfer money to when I buy something. I believe there are other services that will also give you virtual cards, I'm not familiar with them off hand. https://envelopebudgeting.com/ https://envelopebudgeting.com/
- pie_flavor 1y agoI use https://privacy.com https://privacy.com for this, you can create virtual cards with total spend limits or spend rate limits.
- dmd 1y agoI'm not understanding this sentiment at all. You'd rather input your CC details into a site whose main business isn't dealing safely with credit cards - rather than inputting it into Stripe (which is what his site uses), whose entire raison d'etre is doing so?
- jve 1y ago
- ai-onehealth 1y agoExcellent! My wrist started to hurt 0.01% of the way to the moon.
- _def 1y agoThe atmosphere of this reminded me of the game Outer Wilds
- Physkal 1y agoI was really disappointed not to see a sequel. No new games from the developers since.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoIts development is really interesting, in that it was more a proof of a scientific paper to start with. Anyway one of their tweets from September 2024 indicates they're working on a sequel, despite their publisher (Annapurna, owned by Megan Ellison, daughter of Larry Ellison) having had some issues around then.
- nunodonato 1y agothey are working on a new game. Outer Wilds doesn't need a sequel, leave it be, its perfect as it is ::)
- tempestn 1y agoTIL it's estimated that over 48 tons of meteors hit the atmosphere every day. Regarding actual space elevators though, while they're not sci-fi to the extent of something like FTL travel - ie. they're technically not physically impossible - they're still pretty firmly in the realm of sci-fi. We don't have anything close to a cable that could sustain its own weight, let alone that of whatever is being elevated. Plus, how do you stabilize the cable and lifter in the atmosphere? A space elevator on the moon is much more feasible: less gravity, slow rotation, no atmosphere, less dangerous debris. But it's also much less useful.
- lnsru 1y agoSpace elevator was the perfect application for carbon nanotubes according my professor few decades ago. I wish humanity could unite for such project and enter space exploration phase. But I feel it will stay sci-fi forever.
- tiagod 1y agoThing is, you're going to invest massive amounts of R&D in something that might be impossible, when you could invest in actually building stuff in space so you only need to shoot humans out there.
- floxy 1y agoInstead of massive amounts of R&D, why not small amounts for the next 100 years? Seems like this is something a tech bro could bequeath to humanity, Nobel style. A $250 million fund that pay out $10 million per year in grants. And maybe some larger chunks when the board of directors sees a good opportunity to do larger scale trials.
- tiagod 1y agoI'm pretty sure we've invested way more than $250m in carbon nanotubes.
- Yizahi 1y ago
- retube 1y agoWas hoping would go to geostationary orbit as an actual space elevator would :)
- Terr_ 1y agoDitto, although you'd have to scroll about 357 times further. I suppose it could be livened up by including the orbits of things, but there would still be lots and lots of empty space.
- officehero 1y agoSuch a lost opportunity, was hoping for another "space is massive" experience like already done in similar interactive maps.
- lproven 1y agoThe thing is, the same author has already done that. https://neal.fun/size-of-space/ https://neal.fun/size-of-space/
- officehero 1y agoYes (it's great) but it doesn't show distances. What I'm talking about is when you scroll on the phone and it never ends.
- kmacdough 1y agoWould be boring and space elevators are just for fun. They aren't a real idea.
- matt3210 1y agoI love this guy. Re playing this gem https://neal.fun/stimulation-clicker/ https://neal.fun/stimulation-clicker/
- eMPee584 1y agoCareful folks! This escalates quickly. Do not use xdotool on this.
- dole 1y agoGrateful it wasn't as long as Infinite Paperclips or Cookie Clicker, but still worth it. Great site!
- hakanito 1y agoThanks, I spent my lunch hour completing it without cheating. Amazing!
- archon810 1y agoDamn you! Half an hour later...
- tomaskafka 1y agoThanks! I found a funny hack: DVD logos generate stimulation per bounce, so ... let them fly for a few seconds, then resize window to small size and back. Lot of bounces as the logos get caught by the moving edge :).
- 243423443 1y agoI just clicked the temperature thingy in annoyance because I don't use Fahrenheit and to my delight, it just switched to Celcius
- isolli 1y agoMine was automatically set to Celsius ;)
- kqr 1y agoI did the same. I eyed it suspiciously and thought to myself, "This site is really well designed. Do you think if I..." and it did switch! The obvious interaction was implemented! Rare these days.
- gowld 1y agoDoesn't work on the the "meters" display, though!
- mkl 1y agoUnfortunately that doesn't change the "mph" in the info boxes.
- tonyhart7 1y agothe website feels heavy, can we optimize this further?? (not a web dev)
- randomtoast 1y agoI just looked at it in the dev console in a chrome based browser and I think it is already pretty optimized. It runs very smooth on my device (Thinkpad T480).
- cyode 1y agoA beautifully executed project here, I bought Neal a coffee. What evolutionary advantage, I wonder, is there to Ruppell's griffon vulture flying at 11400 meters? edit: units
- rkomorn 1y agoNot every behavior has an evolutionary advantage. If anything, "evolution" filters out disadvantages (eg: can't survive because your neck's too short and that pesky giraffe is eating all the leaves you could reach). Evolution kills what doesn't work.
- trinari 1y agobut every behaviour has a cost. In cast of flight altitude its energy and distance to food, water, mating zones.
- rkomorn 1y agoHaving a cost and being too costly aren't the same thing though.
- hatmanstack 1y agoDarwin started with survival of the "fit". It changed to "fittest" in later editions.
- robocat 1y agoPeople focus on the wrong issue so most quotes about evolution are highly misleading: the keyword should be about reproducing. Survival is almost irrelevant. Darwin awards in particular should never be given to anyone with kids (unless they kill their kids too). "Most grandkids" is good but not catchy. Or Idiocracy "evolution began to favor those who reproduced the most".
- rkomorn 1y ago
- vardump 1y agoThe rockets at higher altitudes were all in wrong orientation. In reality, they don't fly straight up.
- timonoko 1y agoGiant Space Bola is much more attractive. It is a 10000 km string with capsules at both ends. It rotates in sync with earth so that the speed at meeting point is the same. You just hop in and end up in space without much effort. Because it is freely floating you can move it around to avoid meteor impacts and other such shit.
- 243423443 1y agoDid you read Seveneves by Neal Stephenson? In the second part of the book, they use this and related technologies.
- arethuza 1y agoI think those technologies are mentioned throughout the book - just at a much larger scale in the second part.
- daeken 1y agoBolos are used for spin gravity in the first part, but that's very different from the rotovators used in the second part. Both in concept and design. The key point with the rotovator is that the tip is moving at ~0m/s relative to the body it's orbiting when it's at its nadir, allowing you to just hop/grab on.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- M95D 1y agoIncomplete. Where's the LEO, GEO, the counterweight?
- rob74 1y agoI think the idea behind this was less to showcase an actual space elevator and more to showcase what's going on at different altitudes. And above the Kármán line it would have become pretty boring, especially if you want to go up to GEO and beyond where the counterweight of a space elevator would be located - the Kármán line is at only 0.28% of the way to GEO. Using a logarithmic scale would have maybe helped, but not sure...
- M95D 1y agoThere are other presentations by this guy are long. I don't consider the space and the things we put between LEO and GEO to be boring.
- tstrimple 1y agoI loved the visuals but space elevators are far more science-fantasy than hard science-fiction. We should move on to sci-fi tech that has more realistic applications.
- jaggederest 1y agoOnly for Earth. We already have materials that can do it on the Moon (Zylon, for example), though not with great tether-to-payload ratios (200:1 or more), and Mars isn't too huge of a stretch (huge like the mass of the tether, which would be in the thousands to one tether-to-payload ratio. Shipping 50,000 tons of Zylon to Mars is a different beast)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tabemonooo 1y ago[dead]
- l5870uoo9y 1y agoIt is appreciated that you can change the temperature unit by clicking on it, and how surprisingly cold and changeable the temperature is as you travel up through the atomic sphere (down to -84C, -119F).
- petesergeant 1y agoSome huh! moments... * Jeez, Everest is tall * They got a plane to 17km in 1938! * There was a paper airplane flight at 35km
- everyone 1y agoAn actual space elevator would need to be over 357 times longer though right? Awesome site!
- ta1243 1y agoWhat's really interesting is that a space elevator goes to Geostationary orbit by necessity. Getting to 100km vertically doesn't save as much as you might think when it comes to getting into orbit. To get into a very low earth orbit from an equatorial launch pad at sea level you need about 9.2km/s of Delta-V To get there from a 100km tall tower, you need about 8km/s of delta-V - about 85%. Think about how much scrolling there was to get to 100km. To get to the ISS you'd need to scroll 4 times further. Starlink and Hubble are another 100km beyond that. You start having radiation problems if you spend too much time above 600km. Aside from Apollo, the highest a human has been is about 1400km - 14 times more scrolling than this page. To get to GEO would require scrolling over 25 times further than even that.
- matheusmoreira 1y agoHow much delta V would be needed to reach, say, a circular orbit from GEO altitude?
- ta1243 1y agoZero. By the time you get to GEO your are connected to a station which is in Geostationary orbit. Your 35 hour ascent at say 1000km/h will have accelerated you sideways to the required 3km/second with a sidewards acceleration of 0.002g throughout the trip. Of course you would be looking at a constant acceleration, not just a 1000km/hour trip. You'd probably be able to do the journey in a couple of hours with a reasonable acceleration and a rotating cabin (say 1.1g, meaning acceleration would slowly increase from about 0.1g at the surface, then after the flip point you'd decelerate at 1.1g). Even then sideways acceleration wouldn't be noticable (and your cabin could gimbal to just add it to vertical acceleration) That's the other crazy thing. A space elevator takes forever at elevator, or car, or even plane speeds. But with constant acceleration/decelleration you can have a trip in airplane style seats with cabin crew serving you caviar // scratchcards (depending on class of cabin). Your peak vertical speed would be in the region of 8km/second - way above Earth's escape velocity, but you wouldn't even notice the acceleration/deceleration. You'd slow down in under 15 minutes. Or you wouldn't and you'd depart Earth at 8km/s, twice the escape velocity. (If you really wanted a fast departure you'd accelerate at say 1.2g and get upto 30km/s, twice the speed of New Horizons. 1.2g would probably mean you'd have the seatbelt on for the whole 40 minute trip) You could launch cargo to Mars at say 5G, which would get it there in between 10 and 45 days depending where it is. Obviously you'd have a problem slowing down when you got there.
- waxsum8 1y agoLovely, great transitions!
- amelius 1y agoThe other direction: https://neal.fun/deep-sea/ https://neal.fun/deep-sea/
- stared 1y agoAnd "up", but shown sideways, and on a different scale: https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.... "If the Moon were only 1 pixel"
- amelius 1y agoNeal also made one: https://neal.fun/size-of-space/ https://neal.fun/size-of-space/
- novoreorx 1y agoI'm here to find this one, thank you!
- amelius 1y agoWhere is Elon Musk's Tesla?
- fredoliveira 1y agoToo far away to scroll: https://www.whereisroadster.com/ https://www.whereisroadster.com/
- gherkinnn 1y agoAmazing work as always. Paired with Wikipedia it makes for a very productive day.
- dpq 1y agoAmazing work! One minor correction: > As particles from the sun hit the atmosphere, they excite the atoms in the air. These excited atoms start to glow, creating brilliant displays of light called auroras. The process is a bit more nuanced than that. The modern mainstream understanding is that the growing pressure of the solar wind makes the tail of the magnetosphere "contract" (sort of pushing it inwards from the sides), which leads to reconnection of magnetic field lines. Once the reconnection occurs, the magnetic field lines that remain bound to the geomagnetic dipole accelerate the particles on them towards the Earth => they slam into the atmosphere, exciting the atoms and generating the aurora.
- pfdietz 1y agoRight. So the solar wind provides the energy that drives the aurora, but it's more indirect than just "solar wind particles hit the atmosphere". Instead, the solar wind is injecting energy into the magnetic field of the magnetosphere, and when reconnection occurs some of this magnetic energy is dumped into particles in the magnetosphere, some of which can then strike the atmosphere.
- hwillis 1y agoAny discussion of aurora which do not mention space tornados: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tornado https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tornado Is inherently incomplete. Not necessarily because they're needed to explain it, but they do need to be brought up at any time possible because they're cool.
- hnuser123456 1y agoI feel that way about galactic center filaments. They just scream "this region of space is not safe" in the most awe-inspiring way to me. 150-lightyear-long, magnetically powered, speed-of-light tornados. And there's hundreds of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Center_filament https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Center_filament https://science.nasa.gov/asset/webb/milky-way-center-meerkat-and-webb/ https://science.nasa.gov/asset/webb/milky-way-center-meerkat...
- kulahan 1y ago
- HelloUsername 1y agoPrevious discussion on 20-apr-2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35629972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35629972
- stared 1y agoHow on Earth do we know the maximal altitude for a pterodactyl?
- saltserv 1y ago[dead]
- whatsupdog 1y agoNo, thank you. Don't want any existential crisis today!
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- pharmhax 1y agoNeat! It would be amazing to see how the pressure changes with altitude in addition to the temperature.
- honkostani 1y agoI missed that notice at where its says: Here be a near mars atmosphere in temperature, pressure (40 kms up) but not as hostile composition and with less radiation. Thats five Mt Everests high.
- hshdhdhehd 1y agoPerfect. I think it just needs explanation of Karman line. Why is it 100km. What is the meaning?
- 0xEF 1y agoIt's my understanding that the Karman Line the conventionally accepted "edge" where you leave the atmosphere and enter outer space, but many call this out as a fairly arbitrary point, arguing that there is no measurable boundary. Useful as a point of reference for positioning, though. Neal possibly just used it as a marker but chose to not define it for this reason.
- tiborsaas 1y agoIt's an arbitrary number, which is a good enough measure to distinguish an aircraft from a spacecraft. Kármán said that it's about this height where the aerodynamic lift and inertia being dominant are reversed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- imiric 1y agoLovely, as all neal.fun experiments. <3 My favorite is probably https://neal.fun/infinite-craft/ https://neal.fun/infinite-craft/ This type of interactive learning experience reminds me of how fun it was to browse Encarta back in the day. It was full of interesting facts, presented in fun interactive ways. As much as I love that we have Wikipedia today, a static web page with text and limited multimedia is far less engaging and conducive to learning. I think that Neal Agarwal and Bartosz Ciechanowski should be sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation to create similar experiences on Wikipedia. That would do so much to facilitate learning for students of all ages.
- FailMore 1y agoSo great. Thank you Neal!
- orangebread 1y agoWARNING: This guy's site is a trap for people with ADHD/OCD -- the ease at which I was sucked into every link on his site made me nope the heck out. Beautiful work though.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y agoOh no, I scrolled all that way and didn't even reach some destination! Where does this space elevator go? No one knows! Would have been bit more satisfying if it ended up at a space station or something, as I think that's the purpose of the space elevator idea in the first place :)
- matheusmoreira 1y agoI think it could but does not necessarily have to reach a station. The elevator just has to clear the atmosphere, right? As they say: once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago> just clear the atmosphere But for what purpose? You just want to float around in a elevator carriage, aren't you going somewhere when you go with a space elevator?
- matheusmoreira 1y agoPresumably the elevator would lift cargo, fuel, maybe even the actual rocket into orbit where maneuvering is easier. Once it's in space and in orbit, substantially less fuel is required maneuver.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y agoI think you might be talking about something else than a "space elevator"? A space elevator would just go up and down as far as I understand, not horizontally, and if you wanna end up in orbit, you need horizontal movement, not vertical.
- rkomorn 1y agoIf it's not horizontal enough, just wait up to 6 hours...
- neuronic 1y agoCongrats, first time I noticeably hear my MBP M4 Pro fans and can feel the temperature through the keyboard. Amazing work, as always. I love neal.fun Edit: also good to know that paper airplanes have officially beat the SR-71, F-104 or X-43B with altitude record.
- Oreb 1y agoHow do we know how high pterodactyls were flying?
- flir 1y agoCame here to ask the same thing. Hoping you get a response from an expert. I was vaguely under the impression they were mostly gliders... maybe it's something to do with thermals?
- ekropotin 1y agoScientists created a detailed virtual reconstruction of pterodactyl’s body and then feed it to computer simulation to estimate flight speed, endurance and altitude.
- xrd 1y agoMy 8 and 10 year old daughters love this site, often choosing it over Roblox during screen time. This is stunning and perfect.
- slrainka 1y agoWow, I just discovered Ruppell's Griffon Vultures from this. What a fascinating bird with high flying capabilities!
- tetris11 1y ago> Temperatures can reach <something very high> but the molecules are spread sobfar apart you wouldn't feel it. Conceptually I get, it's like being in a cold room that showers hot sparks on you from above occasionally... ...but I feel that the definition of temperature has been abused here slightly
- asimovDev 1y agoI didn't take a look cause I didn't see "reject all cookies" button in the cookie popup
- TheDong 1y agoDid you know if you open a page in a private browser window, once you close that page all the cookies vanish? It's even better than a button which might not even work.
- asimovDev 1y agoIt's purely out of principle because in a proper cookie popup rejecting everything should take the same amount of clicks that accepting everything does I do understand that this is one those generic ones (I saw it many times) which the original creator of the website just slapped on.
- temperceve 1y agoThis is just lovely. I, for one, have bought Neal a coffee!
- avmich 1y agoSpace elevator is not something which stands on the ground and grows up. It is something which lives on geostationary orbit and grows down from it to the Earth. If you cut the lower 1 meter of it, the rest will hang... ...that is, until a satellite will hit the cable above. Space elevator is built in the equatorial plane, all satellites cross it, so eventually every satellite is going to collide with the cable. For this reason the space elevator is incompatible with existing spaceflight, that's why even with nanotubes it's unlikely to be built.
- yreg 1y agoThe sound mixing is so smooth. Is it a simple fade with the right choice of melodies or is there more to it?
- pandemic_region 1y agoThat space elevator music 100% made my day, thank you!
- isgb 1y ago> Space elevators are actually a possible idea being considered by scientists. > The hard part is making a strong enough cable. And finding enough elevator music... Most engineers would bring up a lot more issues than just finding a strong cable. Also, most attempts with e.g. carbon nanotubes have been abandoned ages ago https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093356-carbon-nanotubes-too-weak-to-get-a-space-elevator-off-the-ground/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093356-carbon-nanotube.... - We don't have a good ascent mechanism other than rockets - and then we might just use rockets without building an elevator. - We don't have a good (and safe) descent mechanism. - Maintenance? Protection from space debris? Protection from oscillations? Ground-protection if the elevator collapses? This is dyson-sphere level of fiction. We can do back-of-the-napkin calcualtions on how things would work, but the practicalities make it completely impossible or impractical.
- mrkickling 1y agoYou didn't even mention the music!
- honkostani 1y agoThe material is actually not a problem, if you consider active structures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_structure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_structure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain Then again, when doing mega structures, a launch loop is more plausible.
- bombcar 1y agoAll we have to do is make the global religion require bringing a rock to a specific location; after long enough we’ll have a mountain so high it extends out of the atmosphere!
- kubanczyk 1y agoThis presents a considerable risk of splitting English into several languages, none of them intelligible with the others.
- TiredOfLife 1y agoI like the white text on white backgroud. Makes very easy to read
- Zobat 1y agoInteresting how counter intuitive it felt to scroll up from the "landing spot". Even with the instructions right there on the screen I tried scrolling down at first.
- dzonga 1y agodoes anyone have the link to the money one ? scale of a billion ?
- jvanderbot 1y agoVery cool. One thing I wish was better shown: space is close, it's just hard to go up. Our liveable breathable atmosphere is razor thin compared to the size of earth. In most cases, 100km is less than the distance between sizeable metropolitan areas. It's a day long bike ride. Air runs out less than a bus ride across town. A 15k jog/hike would put you in the stratosphere. Those jet aircraft that seem so high are closer than that. Closer than your friends house or the local stadium probably. Look at a map or globe with that in mind and everything feels so thin!
- messe 1y ago> it's just hard to go up Going up is the comparatively easy part, it's not exactly rocket science. Going fast enough sideways so you stay up there is the tricky bit.
- aDyslecticCrow 1y ago> Going fast enough sideways so you stay up there is the tricky bit. nah, thats the simple part. getting up there efficiently is the difficulty. once we're up, its just a matter of force over time to create a nice orbit. The faster you go, the more friction you face, and the more heat and vibration your equipment must endure. Going slower reduce friction and stress but use more energy just negating gravity. Slow rocket is inefficient rocket. So we wanna leave the atmosphere as soon as possible, but not so fast that the rocket melts or engines collapse. Prefferably just below the sound barrier. once we're up, its pretty chill... until you wanna go down again. Slow rocket is alive rocket.
- raducu 1y ago> once we're up, its just a matter of force over time to create a nice orbit. It depends what you mean by "up there". ChatGpt tells me you'd free fall from 1000 km to 100km in about 8 minutes. It also did the math that you'd need 1.65G of sideways thrust to reach orbital speed. That's quite a bit of force for spacecraft sized objects. If you have an actual space elevator, sure, you can go to close to geosynchronous altitude and by that time you'd have enormous sideways velocity just by being dragged sideways by space elevator and indeed it would be easy to propel yourself to orbit (above a certain altitude my intuition tells me you could let go of the rope and while you'd end up on an eliptise you'd still be in orbit)
- chasingthewind 1y agoI find it curious that the Lockheed Vega is chosen as “Amelia Earhart’s plane” since most people would probably associate her with the Lockheed Electra, the plane she was flying when she disappeared. It’s analogous to saying that Ernest Shackleton’s ship was the Nimrod…not wrong, just odd.
- cheraderama 1y agoDoomscrolling isn't supposed to feel so right...
- cl0ckt0wer 1y agoI watch AC's video on this, it was quite entertaining: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5aHMB4Tje4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5aHMB4Tje4 If you like factory games and space elevators, then try Satisfactory!
- Sohcahtoa82 1y agoI really wanted to enjoy Satisfactory, but I really struggled with building a factory in first person perspective. Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program, Captain of Industry...loved them all. Satisfactory? Just wasn't for me.
- bentt 1y agoSeems like even before we do an elevator, we should get _something_ tethered to the ground to be in space. Like... anything! That'd be a huge accomplishment.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- hermitcrab 1y ago>Above this altitude is known as the "death zone", because there isn't enough oxygen for human life. Being pedantic, this should be "there isn't enough oxygen for sustained human life". An acclimatised climber can survive tens of hours.
- cauliflower2718 1y agoI was wondering about this, because the link shows a bunch of birds in the "death zone".
- hermitcrab 1y agoDifferent species will have different 'death zones'. I'm not sure any bird would stay at that height for 10s of hours though.
- jmyeet 1y agoSpace elevators aren't going to happen. Not in Earth's gravity well anyway. Even if you can find a material strong enough (and that's a big "if"), you still have to traverse 50,000km to get from Earth's surface to geosynchronous orbit to get the benefit. You know what does make way more sense and is way more achievable? Orbital rings [1]. Basically, put some copper wire in space, orbit it at ~8km/s, run a current through it and then you can reset structures on top of it (magnetically) and those structures are fixed to the Earth's surface. You can technically run a cable from 100-150km up to the surface and run a gondola into LEO. This would transform both Earth transport and interplanetary travel. You accelerate something on the inside (Earthside) of the ring at ~2G, like with a maglev train, and you have enough velocity to escape the Solar System. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E
- hermitcrab 1y agoThis is a really nice piece of work. Question: Why does the Douglas Skyrocket have its undercarriage down at 25km? Unsolicited feedback: It would be nice to be able to click on an item and see some more information. Perhaps just a hyperlink to a wikipedia entry.
- lolive 1y agoWhy not scroll up to 36000 kms, so we can reach the end of the cable? #iFeelCheated !
- kmacdough 1y agoBecause space elevators aren't actually possible so it doesn't really matter.
- xipho 1y agoNotes on mushroom clouds are sobering.
- cranx 1y agoThis is cool, but the UX of the arrows should follow the scroll mode of the device. You drag down on an iPhone to scroll up. Following the arrow and dragging up causes nothing to happen
- Aaargh20318 1y agoThis. Took me a while to realize you have to scroll down, not up.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoDeep links would _kill_ on this. I'd love to be able to link someone to the Blackbird. (25,700 meters)
- nodra 1y agoJust came to say that this is so cool. Great work.
- GMoromisato 1y agoI love this page and I donated, but I was (naively) expecting it to get to geosynchronous altitude, which is the actual top of a space elevator. Of course, that would require a page 420 times longer, and I don't know if a browser would even support it.
- kmacdough 1y agoI mean the idea isn't actually real or practical. It's a thought experiment that makes for some fun calculus. No one's actually going to try and build one.
- gtowey 1y agoactually geosync isn't the top. You need to extend beyond that & have a counterweight that balances the weight of everything below the point of geosynchronous orbit. Otherwise it would fall down.
- LorenPechtel 1y agoCounterweight or just more cable. IIRC it's 170k (miles? kilometers?) if you use no counterweight. And note how fast that outer end is moving, it can throw things pretty hard.
- dredmorbius 1y agoFrom the same site, there's the Size of Space page: <https://neal.fun/size-of-space/ https://neal.fun/size-of-space/> There are a few sites which let you scroll through the solar system, from the Sun or Earth IIRC. Here's one: <https://onotherplanets.com/solarwalk https://onotherplanets.com/solarwalk> Ah, and "If the Moon Were Only One Pixel", which is what I'd had in mind, shared by @stared <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45641839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45641839>: <https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem....> (2014) (HN discussions: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44266828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44266828> (4 months ago), <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21735528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21735528> (6 years ago) <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32936581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32936581> (3 years ago).
- moat 1y agoThat was fantastic. My biggest surprise (and confusion) was just how high butterflies and bumblebees go.
- mikkupikku 1y ago> On June 21, 1972, Jean Boulet of France piloted an Aérospatiale SA 315B Lama helicopter to an absolute altitude record of 12.440 kilometres (40,814 ft).[68] At that extreme altitude, the engine flamed out and Boulet had to land the helicopter by breaking another record: the longest successful autorotation in history.[69] I just had to look that up. Absolutely incredible.
- bilsbie 1y agoWhy would cranes fly so high?
- simpaticoder 1y agoGiven the title "Space Elevator" I was expecting some more information on a hypothetical space elevator cable. Assuming humans can manufacture defect-free nanotubes at any length and can combine them into thicker cables, you could specify at every height a) the cumulative mass of the cable, b) the thickness of the cable at that point, and c) the stress experienced by the cable at that point. You could further break c down into the gravitational vs centripetal forces on the cable at that point.
- kmacdough 1y agoSuper fun! I do always have to object to comments like "space elevators are possible," "scientists have studied" and "would save money". It's a fun thought experiment, nothing more (for now). You can do some calculus to estimate the necessary strength-to-weight ratio based on centripetal and gravitational forces. Single carbon fibers seem to meet this optimistic criteria. But there are many forces left out. Many practicalitites left unconsidered. Why? Because there is no scientific community that believes it's vaguely achievable with near-future technology. It's simply not worth investing the outrageous resources required to do a vaguely useful viability analysis.
- dima55 1y agoI like looking at these, but does why does it have to redline my cpu?
- jedberg 1y agoI like how the height is measured in metric but the temp is measured in imperial.
- nopakos 1y agoYou can click on it to change to Celsius!
- melenaboija 1y agoHoly guacamole, common birds like cranes fly high. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_heights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_height...
- araes 1y agoThe biplane part (Caproni ca 161) right after the "you should put on a spacesuit" comment got my notice, so I checked. Actually vaguely fascinating that in 1938 the Italians had Mario Pezzi wear an electrically heated pressurized suit [1], an airtight helmet [2][3], and sit inside of a pressure cylinder [4] to fly at 17,083 m (56,047 ft) in a propeller-powered biplane. Seems to have barely been mentioned afterward though, as it's difficult to even find imagery. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Pezzi_(aviator) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Pezzi_(aviator) [2] https://static.thisdayinaviation.com/wp-content/uploads/tdia/2013/10/PEZZI-Mario-full-pressure-suit.jpg https://static.thisdayinaviation.com/wp-content/uploads/tdia... [3] https://www.enricopezzi.it/fam_pezzi/mario_pezzi/images/MP_1937%20C161_01w.jpg https://www.enricopezzi.it/fam_pezzi/mario_pezzi/images/MP_1... [4] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F40xmdzpd1ft71.jpg https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F4...
- mcv 1y agoI honestly expected to be scrolling for a couple of days to reach geostationary orbit.
- grishka 1y agoI get it that it requires yet-impossible materials to build a space elevator that goes all the way to space, but what if we instead build one that only extends high enough to clear the thickest layers of atmosphere, so rockets could be launched from there for massive fuel savings?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 1y agoWe can't practically build a tower that tall. A space elevator would work by hanging off a counterweight (possibly more space elevator cable) which means it needs to go past geostationary orbit.
- al_borland 1y agoThe space elevator would need to be strong enough to lift a rocket. Though, maybe without all that extra fuel they could be much smaller and lighter.
- vpribish 1y agothe space elevator has to go a LOT higher than that. also, the landing gear is down on the reentering shuttle. The big thing people don't get is that orbit is about sideways speed not altitude and this does nothing to address it. I don't get the hype for this, it's cute but not much at all.
- ebbi 1y ago"Temperatures in the thermosphere can reach 2,500°C, but molecules are so far apart that you wouldn't even feel it." I don't have a science background. But how does this work? If you can't feel it, how would you measure it? Space boggles my mind I love it!
- shmerl 1y agoCool, I had no idea bumblebees can fly that high.
- DavidPiper 1y agoI found this strangely emotionally affecting. Probably on account of the music, but I was really struck the vastness and loneliness as the elevator went higher and higher (and we're still nowhere close to the moon).
- 14 1y agoLoved this site. Only thing I could think to add would be the ability to click each item and be taken to a wiki page or some further source of information about the object.
- g00k 1y agoThis is so fun
- notepad0x90 1y agoWhy isn't there an elevator to the highest altitude where an elevator could be built, and then spacecraft can propel from there. It should still reduce fuel costs and the cost to construct space craft? Would powering the cable permanently, with a power station at the bottom and a constant feed of water for super-heated steam thrusters work? Just throwing scifi at it. I'm just curious why it has to be one component or why the weight can't be supported by propulsion. I'm guessing the TL;DR is the numbers just don't work out?
- rikschennink 1y agoSo nice, it’s just unfortunate that even fun experiences like this first show you a cookie popup.
- tomaskafka 1y agoI'm so glad there are still makers who know this is what the internet was made for! Be quirky at scale :).
- max23_ 1y agoThis is neat, a lot of TIL. I liked how the images/sounds were lazy loaded as you were ascending.
- earthnail 1y agoWow, super cool. When I finally scrolled through it and the buy me a coffee link showed, I simply thought “take my money!” :D
- lovegrenoble 1y agoNeal is fun!