10 ms·

Well as soon as we find a reason to use space, solving something we can only solve there that is dire enough to warrant the cost, or prove manufacturing there i

Well as soon as we find a reason to use space, solving something we can only solve there that is dire enough to warrant the cost, or prove manufacturing there is well worth the expense of the cable, then perhaps the question will matter. Its not like not having the cable prevents from exploiting space based industries, we just haven't come up with the value of the proposition

Zikes 13y ago
Asteroid mining.
- polymatter 13y ago
  Not in the short term see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining#Financial_feasibility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining#Financial_feasi...). It is a lot cheaper, easier and less risky to mine even very rare minerals on Earth rather than do so in space. And will be too for the foreseeable future. Plus any investor doesn't want to dump platinum on the market as then the price would plummet and seriously erase the profit. And you'll want a lot of guaranteed returns to undertake such a financially risky investment. I could see Space Tourism taking off though. Taking space jet skis out for a spin round the moon and back that kind of thing. Perhaps some exclusive space hotel.
delluminatus 13y ago
And the space elevator is not something that would be developed by interplanetary travelers but by people who just want to get into Earth orbit. I think it would mainly be useful for people either launching/maintaining a lot of satellites, or living in Earth orbit. Or if someone is producing energy or material in space (orbital solar power stations?) and they want to easily transmit it back to Earth, an elevator would probably be more efficient than weekly collection runs.
- ef4 13y ago
  > And the space elevator is not something that would be developed by interplanetary travelers but by people who just want to get into Earth orbit. That's not true at all. The vast majority of the energy cost of going to another planet is incurred just getting into earth orbit. A space elevator radically improves the economics of interplanetary travel. In fact, you can get certain transfer orbits "for free" by just extending your tether a bit beyond geosynchronous orbit and using it to fling bulk payloads to Mars, etc.
  - timdiggerm 13y ago
    Although it does make getting into orbit very slow. In "Blue Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson, we get to a point where travel between Earth and Mars is faster than the elevator ride from the top of Earth's elevator to the bottom.
ef4 13y ago
That's kinda missing that the whole point of researching space elevators is to dramatically change the value proposition. Space will be economically uninteresting until somebody manages to drop the price-per-pound by a few orders of magnitude, and then an awful lot of things becoming economically interesting. A viable space elevator might just accomplish that.
- fancyketchup 13y ago
  Can you expand on which things you think might become economically interesting? I can't see the cost of delivering and supporting humans in space dropping below the cost of, say, delivering and supporting humans underwater in SCUBA gear. Living in a space hab is like living in a deep-sea hab in many logistical ways (including no need for decompression time). The only major uses of SCUBA I'm aware of are 1) the military; 2) mineral exploration; and 3) tourism. Is there really any reason to think there will be "an awful lot" of other economically interesting things to do in space?
  - adwf 13y ago
    Asteroid mining. Mine some asteroids for iron, carbon, silicon, water. Now you have the raw materials for the biggest solar powerplant ever made. Ship the power down the space elevator and you have cheap renewable energy without the downsides of it being earthbound. Ship any excess ores down to earth for more profit. Some of those asteroids could have billions, if not trillions of tons of raw materials ready to use. It's a bit far out there as ideas go, but so was visiting the moon at one point!
  - TheLoneWolfling 13y ago
    Forming monocrystals and other delicate processes, for one.
  - mcv 13y ago
    There are some big differences between space and the deep sea: easier communication, there's abundant precious metals in space, there's plenty of sunshine to generate power, and the view is a lot better. The only real similarity is that they're both really hostile environments where people need serious protection. But you don't have to send people. There's lots of stuff in space that can be done by robots. Easier than in the deep sea, because of easier communicaton. And if you're not talking about the deep sea, but fairly shallow seas, then doing things there isn't really all that expensive at all, and driving the costs of operating in space down to that level is going to be incredibly attractive.
comicjk 13y ago
We have; here's an example. A solar panel in geostationary orbit only has a few hours of shadow per year. The incoming power is so much greater than that at the surface (about 4x the best desert) that a solar array in space will have a positive energy balance even when launched with current rockets. With a space elevator, orbital solar might be the most lucrative source of electricity. http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/03/space-based-solar-power/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/03/space-based-sola...
- dllthomas 13y ago
  "The incoming power is so much greater than that at the surface (about 4x the best desert)" But with 22k miles (3x earth diameter) of transmission losses.
  - comicjk 13y ago
    The losses when transmitting through vacuum are pretty negligible; it's only the last fifteen miles that really cost you.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      That certainly might be the case, but I don't immediately see why.
      - csense 13y ago
        I'm not a physicist, but my understanding is that there are two ways a wireless photon-based energy transmission system loses energy in transit. First, each molecule has a specific set of frequencies where photons are "easy" to absorb because they correspond to transitions between quantum states. Any system whose goal is to deliver energy wirelessly through the atmosphere will obviously not use those frequencies. The other way for a photon to lose energy to the medium it's traveling through is, if the medium contains molecules like water that have different parts with positive and negative charges, the electromagnetic wave will move the differently charged parts in opposite directions. The energy to do that is lost [1]. [1] "Lost" is an application-specific notion. This mechanism is also how a microwave heats food, and in this case the energy imparted to the water molecules in the food can't be considered "lost" because it's supposed to go into the food!
mcv 13y ago
We already have reason to use space. The big problem is that it's prohibitively expensive to get there. A space elevator solves that problem. Of course the elevator itself is prohibitively expensive too, but if it's possible at all, those costs will eventually be recouped.

Zikes 13y ago

Asteroid mining.

polymatter 13y ago
Not in the short term see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining#Financial_feasibility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining#Financial_feasi...). It is a lot cheaper, easier and less risky to mine even very rare minerals on Earth rather than do so in space. And will be too for the foreseeable future. Plus any investor doesn't want to dump platinum on the market as then the price would plummet and seriously erase the profit. And you'll want a lot of guaranteed returns to undertake such a financially risky investment. I could see Space Tourism taking off though. Taking space jet skis out for a spin round the moon and back that kind of thing. Perhaps some exclusive space hotel.

delluminatus 13y ago

And the space elevator is not something that would be developed by interplanetary travelers but by people who just want to get into Earth orbit. I think it would mainly be useful for people either launching/maintaining a lot of satellites, or living in Earth orbit. Or if someone is producing energy or material in space (orbital solar power stations?) and they want to easily transmit it back to Earth, an elevator would probably be more efficient than weekly collection runs.

ef4 13y ago
> And the space elevator is not something that would be developed by interplanetary travelers but by people who just want to get into Earth orbit. That's not true at all. The vast majority of the energy cost of going to another planet is incurred just getting into earth orbit. A space elevator radically improves the economics of interplanetary travel. In fact, you can get certain transfer orbits "for free" by just extending your tether a bit beyond geosynchronous orbit and using it to fling bulk payloads to Mars, etc.
- timdiggerm 13y ago
  Although it does make getting into orbit very slow. In "Blue Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson, we get to a point where travel between Earth and Mars is faster than the elevator ride from the top of Earth's elevator to the bottom.

ef4 13y ago

That's kinda missing that the whole point of researching space elevators is to dramatically change the value proposition. Space will be economically uninteresting until somebody manages to drop the price-per-pound by a few orders of magnitude, and then an awful lot of things becoming economically interesting. A viable space elevator might just accomplish that.

fancyketchup 13y ago
Can you expand on which things you think might become economically interesting? I can't see the cost of delivering and supporting humans in space dropping below the cost of, say, delivering and supporting humans underwater in SCUBA gear. Living in a space hab is like living in a deep-sea hab in many logistical ways (including no need for decompression time). The only major uses of SCUBA I'm aware of are 1) the military; 2) mineral exploration; and 3) tourism. Is there really any reason to think there will be "an awful lot" of other economically interesting things to do in space?
- adwf 13y ago
  Asteroid mining. Mine some asteroids for iron, carbon, silicon, water. Now you have the raw materials for the biggest solar powerplant ever made. Ship the power down the space elevator and you have cheap renewable energy without the downsides of it being earthbound. Ship any excess ores down to earth for more profit. Some of those asteroids could have billions, if not trillions of tons of raw materials ready to use. It's a bit far out there as ideas go, but so was visiting the moon at one point!
- TheLoneWolfling 13y ago
  Forming monocrystals and other delicate processes, for one.
- mcv 13y ago
  There are some big differences between space and the deep sea: easier communication, there's abundant precious metals in space, there's plenty of sunshine to generate power, and the view is a lot better. The only real similarity is that they're both really hostile environments where people need serious protection. But you don't have to send people. There's lots of stuff in space that can be done by robots. Easier than in the deep sea, because of easier communicaton. And if you're not talking about the deep sea, but fairly shallow seas, then doing things there isn't really all that expensive at all, and driving the costs of operating in space down to that level is going to be incredibly attractive.

comicjk 13y ago

We have; here's an example. A solar panel in geostationary orbit only has a few hours of shadow per year. The incoming power is so much greater than that at the surface (about 4x the best desert) that a solar array in space will have a positive energy balance even when launched with current rockets. With a space elevator, orbital solar might be the most lucrative source of electricity. http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/03/space-based-solar-power/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/03/space-based-sola...

dllthomas 13y ago
"The incoming power is so much greater than that at the surface (about 4x the best desert)" But with 22k miles (3x earth diameter) of transmission losses.
- comicjk 13y ago
  The losses when transmitting through vacuum are pretty negligible; it's only the last fifteen miles that really cost you.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    That certainly might be the case, but I don't immediately see why.
    - csense 13y ago
      I'm not a physicist, but my understanding is that there are two ways a wireless photon-based energy transmission system loses energy in transit. First, each molecule has a specific set of frequencies where photons are "easy" to absorb because they correspond to transitions between quantum states. Any system whose goal is to deliver energy wirelessly through the atmosphere will obviously not use those frequencies. The other way for a photon to lose energy to the medium it's traveling through is, if the medium contains molecules like water that have different parts with positive and negative charges, the electromagnetic wave will move the differently charged parts in opposite directions. The energy to do that is lost [1]. [1] "Lost" is an application-specific notion. This mechanism is also how a microwave heats food, and in this case the energy imparted to the water molecules in the food can't be considered "lost" because it's supposed to go into the food!

mcv 13y ago

We already have reason to use space. The big problem is that it's prohibitively expensive to get there. A space elevator solves that problem. Of course the elevator itself is prohibitively expensive too, but if it's possible at all, those costs will eventually be recouped.