Space elevator now possible?

Nisyros Nyiragongo wrote:

A major problem with the space elevator is the "Emergency Stop" button.

Idiot. Since the minimum energy path is not a straight line ground to
geosynchronous orbit, I'd say your "major problem" would arrive long
before anything connected from here to there.

When you press it, no one will be able to come to help.

Tough ****. NASA is rich with lethal oopsies. So is Detroit.

How are you going to put all those floor numbers on a panel anyway?

Radar altimeter. Shaft encoder and digital display. Epsilon-minus
dwarf trained to say "roof."

How big should the spring be at the bottom if the motor fails?

You can't afford the weight. In case of emergency the car disengages
from the beanstalk and a whole bunch of Mexicans under NASA contract
light Santaria candles and put out flowers, preferably erecting the
memoral where the thing will land.

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf

Since there's hardly any atmosphere, and damn little gravity as you
leave the moon, all that we're dealing with is mass and velocity.
However, having that tether represents an alternative method of using
crawlers that can travel as fast or as slow as the task demands, then
magnetic or even physical friction onto the tether as to stop at any
given floor. After all, we're only talking 64,000 km, and that's only
64,000 of those individual floor buttons.

Remember that the LSE-CM/ISS comes with a rather nifty tether dipole
element, thereby we've got terawatts of energy to burn. Thus our
"Emergency Stop Button" is based upon thrusters as well as upon the
plan-B of available friction of the tether that can be configured as
robust and full of surface area as need be.

Actually several tethers may ultimately function on behalf of a
counterbalance, by which the falling mass can be gradually ejected or
released entirely. I assume that magnetic fields still function in
space, so what's so complex about using a moving stream of magnetic
fields in order to create whatever retro-thrust energy for breaking the
velocity of going either way.

Regards, Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm

Actually, once we've created the artificial lunar atmosphere by way of
bombing it with the likes of CO2/Rn, thus creating 1e6 tonnes of
vaporised basalt per tonne of CO2/Rn, as that's where roughly 50% of
the lunar basalt becomes O2, and thereby chances are certainly
improving for the parachute alternative.

At 0.01 bar the parachute notion should become worth four times the
payload of Mars, and everybody knows getting folks affordably and
safely to/from Mars is a done deal. And, our NASA/Apollo teams proved
that the surface of our moon isn't nasty, as there's hardly any
radiation, it's not actually all that hot and never once a speck of
anything arriving via 30+km/s, thereby offering folks just another EVA
moonsuit walk in the park.

Regards, Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm

Dear Brad Guth:

"Brad Guth" wrote in message
oups.com...
....
Remember that the LSE-CM/ISS comes with a rather nifty tether dipole
element, thereby we've got terawatts of energy to burn.

Not near the Moon, you don't. The solar wind isn't that strong, nor is the
magnetic field of the Earth that far out.

David A. Smith

Dear Brad Guth:

"Brad Guth" wrote in message
oups.com...
....
radiation, it's not actually all that hot and never once a speck of
anything arriving via 30+km/s, thereby offering folks just another EVA

Those craters on the Moon must have been made by the *last* attempt to
colonize it then? Not by any old pesky falling objects...

David A. Smith