Elevator
This is going to be, in some ways, a 3-part post about the end of the world.
Very recently Stephen Hawking predicted that unless we could get off Earth in the next 100 years, our civilization is doomed. He made 3 different points - one, about the demise of civilization, one about the time-span, and one about leaving the Earth.
In this entry I am going to mention how we could get off the Earth, the next entry tomorrow will discuss some possible doomsdays, and in the last we will see where the human race could actually go...
I would be surprised if we colonise any other planets in the next hundred years. I will probably live to see perhaps two-thirds of that, and I would be impressed if we have a working operational base on the moon, or even a more worthwhile and less-useless Space Station than the international one we have now. There are just so many problems with living on another planet, a few being :
Lack of Oxygen
Lack of Water
Muscles wasting from lack of gravity
Getting the materials out there
Communication lag
One possible solution suggested would be to use Terraforming equiupment (currently not even close to the level of sophistication required) to transform a suitable planet so it had an environment like ours. But the problems are somewhat...overwhelming.
We certainly need somewhere in space from which we can launch further missions. The payloads of current rockets are often compromised before of the equipment required to get them out of the atmosphere. If we had a base outside, things would be considerably easier. This is where the Space Elevator comes in.
I've seen this idea used in Scifi books (and there is one in Halo 2's New Mombasa). It does what it says on the label - it is a huge tether connected to the ground at one end, and a satellite/asteroid at the top. Goods can be ferried up and down using lifts similar to conventional ones, except they would have to be a lot stronger. This idea poses various problems, since the price would be enormous, an accident catastrophic, and the tether itself would have to be made out of a very strong material such as Carbon Nanotubes (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Kohlenstoffnanoroehre_Animation.gif). Lastly the lift itself would have to survive potentially burning up in the atmosphere, and have an airlock of some sort. But if built, it would greater help our exploration in space. I think Space Elevators are, potentially, our best chance for speeding up our exploration of the galaxy.
Tomorrow : Doomsday.
Very recently Stephen Hawking predicted that unless we could get off Earth in the next 100 years, our civilization is doomed. He made 3 different points - one, about the demise of civilization, one about the time-span, and one about leaving the Earth.
In this entry I am going to mention how we could get off the Earth, the next entry tomorrow will discuss some possible doomsdays, and in the last we will see where the human race could actually go...
I would be surprised if we colonise any other planets in the next hundred years. I will probably live to see perhaps two-thirds of that, and I would be impressed if we have a working operational base on the moon, or even a more worthwhile and less-useless Space Station than the international one we have now. There are just so many problems with living on another planet, a few being :
Lack of Oxygen
Lack of Water
Muscles wasting from lack of gravity
Getting the materials out there
Communication lag
One possible solution suggested would be to use Terraforming equiupment (currently not even close to the level of sophistication required) to transform a suitable planet so it had an environment like ours. But the problems are somewhat...overwhelming.
We certainly need somewhere in space from which we can launch further missions. The payloads of current rockets are often compromised before of the equipment required to get them out of the atmosphere. If we had a base outside, things would be considerably easier. This is where the Space Elevator comes in.
I've seen this idea used in Scifi books (and there is one in Halo 2's New Mombasa). It does what it says on the label - it is a huge tether connected to the ground at one end, and a satellite/asteroid at the top. Goods can be ferried up and down using lifts similar to conventional ones, except they would have to be a lot stronger. This idea poses various problems, since the price would be enormous, an accident catastrophic, and the tether itself would have to be made out of a very strong material such as Carbon Nanotubes (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Kohlenstoffnanoroehre_Animation.gif). Lastly the lift itself would have to survive potentially burning up in the atmosphere, and have an airlock of some sort. But if built, it would greater help our exploration in space. I think Space Elevators are, potentially, our best chance for speeding up our exploration of the galaxy.
Tomorrow : Doomsday.
posted by Mkzrj at 10:42 pm
1 Comments:
Would this lift have the annoying music? That would just be irritating considering the vast distances it would have to cover....
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