Project Orion Ground Launch.

Would the counter weight tilt proportionately with the "wobble" of the earth due to it not spinning around a perfect axis?

 

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I guess it would behave like everything else in orbit around the Earth, because a space elevator is just a very oddly shaped satellite. In the site posted above, the idea is to anchor the elevator on a floating platform, which could then avoid the worst of any storms. I guess this could also absorb any *inaccuracies* in themotion of the elevator, coupled with a similar system on the counterweight.

 

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>>>>Would the counter weight tilt proportionately with the "wobble" of the earth due to it not spinning around a perfect axis?

i assume the wobble you are referring to is the precessional wobble.....takes around 26 000 years to complete so no problem.

 

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In the scenario described on the website I cited, I agree. I was originally thinking of a much larger cable (a couple of metres in radius), which would have a mass > 3 billion kg, whereas the websites cable is only about 45,000 kg.

 

what happens if some anti-human-expansion terrorist rams this elevator with a plane or a space ship laced with explosives or packing a nuke? or what about erosion from micro-meteorites (or does nano-tube material self-repair)? The world would effectively have spent trillions building a long, long, long cable that gets blown appart and dessenegrated with comparatively very little effort. As neat as the space elevator sounds, it just seems too fragile. A cable tens of thousands of kilometers long would be very likely to have a weak link in the chain, figuratively speaking, making it very likely for the cable to snap and send part of the cable plumeting back toward earth, and the part anchored to the asteroid flying out into space with the asteroid. At least it seems that fragile, by all means please let me know if I'm wrong somewhere.

 

I think you are right, that is why I proposed a long maglev/railgun that would be supported widely and be lower to the ground. I should do the math to see just how long it would have to be.

 

The bigger danger is sabotage at the space end, because you then have more cable free to land on the Earth, with more mass behind it. Then again, I'm guessing that sabotage in space is going to be rather hard for the average terrorist though!
Suppose you did lose a couple of hundred kilometres off the bottom of the elevator, repairing the elevator would be comparatively easy. Send a repair climber down to taper off the severed end, then send more repair climbers down to first add a new cable onto the end, and then additional climbers in a procedure similar to the construction.
However, I'm not sure that it would be that easy to break. Suppose, that we have a mobile platform, whose location you only know if you're the pilot flying there. In an area a couple of hundred kilometres on a side, finding and hitting the cable before you're shot down wouldn't be easy. Also, I don't know how to do the calculations for this, but which would tear, the aeroplane wing or the elevator?

 

If the cable is only microns thick by centimetres wide, with a density of 1.3 gcm-3, I'm sure that its terminal velocity in the atmosphere will be somewhat short of devastating. Even if it fell from geostationary orbit.

 

if an idiot with a box-cutter can ram an american plane into a building on american soil (did I say one plane? oops, no that's three isn't it), there's not a doubt in my mind that a guard system for a cable a thousand km-long, hundred km-long, or even ten-km long, can be penetrated by a cunning terrorist posing as an ordinary orbital worker in a maintenance or utility craft of some kind.

and even mankind's highest quality manufacturing technologies couldn't make a perfect, flawless 36,000km cable even if you did x-ray and test every part of it. other construction flaws are just going to happen, cause people screw up at least a few times on ANY construction project we've ever made

 

Also, what is you mess up during construction and let the cable come whipping down across 30,000km of the earth’s surface. Construction alone would be enough to cause major problems.

p.s. does anyone have an estimate of how long a launch pad would have to be to put someone in orbit with a max G-force of about 5?

 

That's exactly my point Cato - a ribbon of carbon nanotubes that's just microns thick is never going to "whip across the Earth's surface". Maybe flutter, but never whip.

 

The upper section of the cable would never make it to Earth anyway, due to the Earth's atmosphere.
As for the terrorist scenario, remember that two of those planes were flying into a city with a very high level of public air traffic. The site we're talking about for our cable will have zero air traffic, anything entering the zone will have, say, a thirty second warning to change course, and then it is targetted and destroyed. Given that most anti-air missiles are supposed to be used against military fighters travelling faster and more manoeuvrably than any passenger plane, they should be OK.
In my opinion, if a space elevator were constructed, it shouldn't have public access until at least one other elevator has been constructed. That way, you can have one elevator which is restricted to private launches, in order to maintain the system.

 

Whoever wants to answer this please feel free to enlighten me.

Has anyone ever made a simulation of this technology and ran that simulation on a computer as of yet? If so where are the results? Where are the math formulas showing what forces are going to excerted upon this structure? Where's the physics behind this, or is this all talk without any physics to PROVE that it can work?

 

Where's the physics behind this, or is this all talk without any physics to PROVE that it can work?

That has been Waynes problem all along these past years - he has yet to state a case for Orion that involves reality.

 

Try looking at the link I posted above. It is a serious proposal for the construction of a space elevator, including costs and a proposed timescale. It admits that the carbon nanotube technology we currently have is not quite up to the standard or scale of that which is necessary for the construction of the elevator, but in every other respect the technology needed is available.

 

I think eventually a space elevator will be good.
But right now a nuclear powered ship would be alot easier to make.
Also as far as a launch location goes it's the easiest part:
JUST LAUNCH IN THE SAME AREAS OUT IN THE DESERT THAT WHERE USED IN THE PAST!

Or at least in the same general area.
Also Antarctica wouldn't be to bad an area.
As long as its:
Away from the coast
Away from Lake Volstok (for exploration reasons)
And away from any Pengwins of course

Also nuclear space ships shouldn't be feared.
They would be about equal if not safer then current space ships.
Plus the radiation wouldn't be nearly as bad as all the past nuclear tests.
And would have less impact on the environment then current rockets.

Plus as fair as nuclear waste goes it could be easily disposed of by being shot into the sun.(Very easy especially since it wouldn't need to be to fast, compressed air could even get it there)

 

>>>>Plus as fair as nuclear waste goes it could be easily disposed of by being shot into the sun.(Very easy especially since it wouldn't need to be to fast, compressed air could even get it there)

i believe it is harder than you think. you have to gety rid of the earths orbital velocity from the ship first....otherwise it will orbit like the earth does.

 

Exactly, and current rockets aren't deemed safe enough to launch more than a little fissionable material at a time!

So, what if a 'Project Orion' rocket suffered a failure at launch? Veered off course, like the first launch of Arianne5 (due to bad software!). If it crashed, with a load of nukes on board, and the casing of just one ws breached, you'd have a bit of a problem.

Check out failure rates for spacecraft, before you start thinking nuclear bomb power is a good idea.

 

That all depends on how close to the earth it is.
If its close to the earth then it would be harder to get rid of it.
But for a nuclear spacecraft I imagine it wouldn't be to hard for it to move far from earth before begining the waste disposal.

 

This is strange you posted right before my reply to Borus.

In anycase as far as safety goes if the early tests are done in already desolate areas, it should give time for more improvement in safety.

Also if the nuclear rocket where to dangerous to be piloted, they would still be useful for transporting materials into orbit.