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[Necro910]

"if we had a space elevator" is about as useful of a statement as "if i had 10 billion bucks i'd totally stop world hunger"

factors sure do have a lot of potential... but that doesn't mean that they'll ever be manned

The moon doesn't make a good staging point... its a gravity well that you need to escape whenever you want to go anywhere. (though i guess with some kind of rail gun it can make things stack up better)

inb4 rants

[TheBronzePickle]

I guess everyone agreed with my point about gold, at least.

In the end, it's all about 'if we had' because we don't, you know, have it.

The space elevator was just one potential idea that might be viable with the technology that we are forming.

[Il Palazzo]

But, as I was trying to say, the space elevator looks like an inherently flawed idea. There is nothing you can do to ensure it not causing a huge disaster one day.

[Virex]

But, as I was trying to say, the space elevator looks like an inherently flawed idea. There is nothing you can do to ensure it not causing a huge disaster one day.

That never stopped us from sending huge cylinders filled with high-explosive liquids into orbit. Nor did it stop us from putting nuclear reactors on ships, or building cities near active volcanoes for that matter.

[Necro910]

But, as I was trying to say, the space elevator looks like an inherently flawed idea. There is nothing you can do to ensure it not causing a huge disaster one day.

Nope.

It's like the human equivalent of a megaproject. Expensive, big, and will cause great Fun!

But, as I was trying to say, the space elevator looks like an inherently flawed idea. There is nothing you can do to ensure it not causing a huge disaster one day.

That never stopped us from sending huge cylinders filled with high-explosive liquids into orbit.

Or nukes strapped to huge cylinders filled with high-explosive liquids.

[sneakey pete]

I guess everyone agreed with my point about gold, at least.

Oh i forgot about the gold. Its actually more resistive than copper (silver isn't, however). And its heavier. As for its other electrical properties, i can't say either way. Still, i cant see a situation where a nice copper alloy of some kind wouldn't be better, but feel free to explain it more.

anyway, /rants

[Il Palazzo]

But, as I was trying to say, the space elevator looks like an inherently flawed idea. There is nothing you can do to ensure it not causing a huge disaster one day.

That never stopped us from sending huge cylinders filled with high-explosive liquids into orbit. Nor did it stop us from putting nuclear reactors on ships, or building cities near active volcanoes for that matter.

Well, the danger in doing that is roughly equal to the danger in driving a car - in case of an accident up to maybe a dozen people will die.
Space elevator collapsing would probably end up being a major disaster in more than a dozen countries.

[Virex]

Depends on the location and specifications of the elevator. If it is anchored in synchronous orbit using a counterweight, then a break in the elevator would cause the top part of it to be ejected from orbit as suddenly the center of gravity shifts up. It's possible to lose at least 50% and maybe even 75% of the elevator this way, which could damage some satellites, but it wouldn't land on Earth. The rest would come down of course, but if the elevator was placed on a purpose-built island, then the damage would be negligible, only the spaceport itself would be lost.

[Necro910]

Depends on the location and specifications of the elevator. If it is anchored in synchronous orbit using a counterweight, then a break in the elevator would cause the top part of it to be ejected from orbit as suddenly the center of gravity shifts up. It's possible to lose at least 50% and maybe even 75% of the elevator this way, which could damage some satellites, but it wouldn't land on Earth. The rest would come down of course, but if the elevator was placed on a purpose-built island, then the damage would be negligible, only the spaceport itself would be lost.

Build it in the middle of the ocean, and make sure that the vacuum end has more pulling power than the gravity end.

Got it.

[Virex]

For more information, read this quite speculative but still relevant wiki page. Most of the cable would burn up in the atmosphere or come floating down gently. The only real damage would be done at the space port as the sudden break-down of the cable could cause the machinery holding it in place to tear itself up (The space-port still has to counteract the wind effects, which would require quite a structure). The lower part of the cable could do some damage, but anything above a certain, quite low height would be harmless. Oh and you've got the crawlers and anything hanging off of the cable to think about, but that's no different than the effect of an uncontrolled satellite reentry. This is the prime reason for building it in the sea, anything low enough would plunge into the ocean and if it's high enough you have a few hours to evacuate the projected impact zone.

[Il Palazzo]

It ending up like the wiki article describes assumes a lot about how would the construction behave entering the atmosphere, and this in turn depends on the building materials.
But yeah, fair enough. It might not be an inherently flawed idea.

I was always more into the space fountain though.

[TheBronzePickle]

Oh i forgot about the gold. Its actually more resistive than copper (silver isn't, however). And its heavier. As for its other electrical properties, i can't say either way. Still, i cant see a situation where a nice copper alloy of some kind wouldn't be better, but feel free to explain it more.

anyway, /rants

The thing about resistance was me making a minor flub.

The advantage of gold circuitry is in nanotech. A nano-sized gold circuit won't tarnish, while a copper one will. At the atomic level, tarnished copper doesn't conduct electricity that well, and it will ruin the circuit. The gold won't have that problem.

Gold also has other useful properties, but I don't recall them all.

[MonkeyHead]

Helium might be a more pressing need. The rate at which we use it in high end physics could mean running very low on the Earths useable resource of it by 2030... plenty of Helium up there.

[Virex]

Oh i forgot about the gold. Its actually more resistive than copper (silver isn't, however). And its heavier. As for its other electrical properties, i can't say either way. Still, i cant see a situation where a nice copper alloy of some kind wouldn't be better, but feel free to explain it more.

anyway, /rants

The thing about resistance was me making a minor flub.

The advantage of gold circuitry is in nanotech. A nano-sized gold circuit won't tarnish, while a copper one will. At the atomic level, tarnished copper doesn't conduct electricity that well, and it will ruin the circuit. The gold won't have that problem.

Gold also has other useful properties, but I don't recall them all.

Wires. It's pretty easy to make nanowires from gold, while the same can't really be said from copper.

[TheBronzePickle]

That's...sort of what I just said.

As for the helium thing, that's more the fault of American government. We're trying to ditch all our helium supplies by 2014, for some ungodly stupid reason that probably made more sense long ago.