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Inflatable Tower Promises Easy Access to Outer Space
- GiraffeNecktie 17y agoIt's too bad the article is so lean on details like how much it would cost and how the design would deal with the enormous strains of torque and wind etc. But one thing's for sure, put a revolving restaurant at the top and it would pay for itself in three years.
- windsurfer 17y agoHow is that sure, may I ask?
- mhb 17y agoBecause of the view.
- windsurfer 17y agoWhat I mean is... Well, not everyone has $10,000 to pay for a dinner, even if it is on the edge of space. How are you so sure people will take out a line of credit to pay for such an extravagant couple of hours?
- nopassrecover 17y agoSure, but enough people do. You'd have a wedding proposal each night.
- evgen 17y agoNot everyone has $10K to spend on dinner, but enough do. A restaurant like this will not cater to people who need to borrow to pay for the meal. $10K per person is basically the equivalent of a week at a five-star luxury resort. This is well within reach of anyone making $500K/year and there are enough foodies, adventurers, and people who will use a meal at a place like this as a way of "keeping score" in that group to keep the reservation number for this restaurant perpetually busy.
- GiraffeNecktie 17y agoIt's a joke. Sorry.
- jws 17y agoAt 20 kilometers you still have gravity… I should hope so. They talk about saving launch fuel by launching satellites from such a tower. The dynamics elude me on that one. Sure, higher up the gravity well and all, but gossamer cylinders of (probably) hydrogen in a rocket plume is going to be worth the price of admission.
- stcredzero 17y agoYou can put an electromagnetic accelerator on the thing, and substitute acceleration from it for a first stage. It would be like the "pop-up" trajectory envisioned for some TSTO concepts. Just by getting the craft above the bulk of the atmosphere, you can optimize the engines to work in a narrower range of atmospheric pressure. At 20km, you still have some atmosphere to work with as well. Perhaps such a craft could use fins to exchange some vertical velocity for horizontal.
- jws 17y agoI like that idea. I wonder if you even use the inherent springiness of the pressurized cylinders for the first boost. Get the rockets up there then start the tower top bouncing, eventually release the rocket when it can loft high enough that a minor steering adjustment will avoid tower destruction.