C-60 carbon nano fibre space elevators are supposed to be a reality in the very near future so do you think..?

Question

That weather patterns will cause a lot of problems for the first few test runs of the space elelators?

Also i hope they don't come up with space elevator music.

Answer 1

The physics of it certainly works out. The real questions are:

1. Is there a material strong enough to build it? (carbon nanotube rope?)
2. Is it economically feasable? The thing needs to make money, or at least be a loss leader.
3. Does there exist the political will to build it? There's certain to be strong oposition, not only from neo-luddites and nimbys, but also from the owners of existing satelites who would all have to alter their orbits in order not to crash into it.

If the answer to all these questions is yes, then it will get built.

Something else to note is that the physics and economics of a moon based space elevator work out to be somewhat simpler, so one may be built there first.

NB: ignore answer 1, the elevator will co-rotate with the earth, so only normal winds will affect it. Nevertheless, the jet stream moves fairly fast.

Answer 2

Consider this:

The elevator car traveling up that carbon fiber will be traveling through the air at over 1100 Miles Per Hour (speed of Earth's rotation). What do you think will happen when it is struck by a Jet Airliner traveling some 500 miles per hour with 350 people on board. The collision will probably shear off one wing from the Jet liner completely, and sever the C-60 filament. Thousands and thousands of feet of filament will spiral down into the middle of cities and farm crops all over the place. Good ridance some will say. We never liked hearing that thing hum in the night wind anyhow... Just imagine some fool running an extension cord all the way up to some silly satellite way up there in space. What a crazy way to run a hotel.

Answer 3

Any shape as super as an area elevator might have huge numbers of tiny defects interior the progression fabric. it truly is been reported,[40][40][40-one] that, because of the fact super platforms have greater defects than small platforms, that super platforms are inherently weaker than small, giving an predicted carbon nanotube potential of purely 24 GPa right down to purely a million.7 GPa in millimetre-scale samples, the latter corresponding to many extreme-potential steels, which may well be massively below that mandatory to construct an area elevator for a clever value.

Answer 4

First of all that is a exercise in futility, and yes among the other multitude of problems weather would be a small issue in comparison.

Answer 5

i am not so sure.