{"id":2415,"date":"2003-02-06T09:46:00","date_gmt":"2003-02-06T12:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/bb\/viewtopic.php?p=242"},"modified":"2003-02-06T09:46:00","modified_gmt":"2003-02-06T12:46:00","slug":"more-about-the-beanstalkspace-elevator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/2003\/02\/06\/more-about-the-beanstalkspace-elevator\/","title":{"rendered":"More about the beanstalk\/space elevator"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s an update to my previous post<\/a> about this.
\n
\nHighLift Systems<\/a> has a proposal for a small-scale space elevator. Instead of a large-diameter (5 to 20 meters) full-scale beanstalk, they propose a 10-20 cm wide ribbon which would be only fractions of a millimeter thick. This is based on a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts<\/a> study<\/a>.
\n
\nThis design would drive costs down into the $10-billion range – much less than what AOL\/TimeWarner lost last year<\/a> – and allow payloads of a few tons.
\n
\nThe ribbon would be 100,000 km long and weigh about 750,000 tons. There’s a FAQ<\/a> which answers many questions about safety. For instance, the ribbon would wrap 2.5 times around the Equator if it fell down… but such a thin ribbon would be mostly evaporated during re-entry. Dana Blankenhorn<\/a> elaborates further on problems and opportunities. However, Carey Gage<\/a>, among others, makes the point that such a structure is presently impossible to defend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an update to my previous post about this. HighLift Systems has a proposal for a small-scale space elevator. Instead of a large-diameter (5 to 20 meters) full-scale beanstalk, they propose a 10-20 cm wide ribbon which would be only fractions of a millimeter thick. This is based on a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Rainer Brockerhoff","author_link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/author\/rbrockerhoff\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1q3Zc-CX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}