Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I have a Blueberry for a daughter. An all right,
Speaker 1: so today we're going to start off with a little
Speaker 1: listener mail. This listener mail comes from Alan, and Alan
Speaker 1: says Chris and John. I love your podcast and have
Speaker 1: a suggestion for a future topic. You mentioned in your
Speaker 1: rare Earth Metal show, the exciting possible uses of carbon nanotubes.
Speaker 1: I've heard that space elevators could be achievable with this
Speaker 1: new high strength weight material. Would consider a space elevator podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks a bunch. Well, we considered it, and we decided
Speaker 1: to do it anyway. Yeah, this is sort of the
Speaker 1: the area where stuff to blow your mind would normally cover. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know what, there's tech, so we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about it, darn it, and we beat him to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. I haven't gone through their entire list
Speaker 1: of of episodes. I don't know if they've done an
Speaker 1: episode about space elevators or not. But what is a
Speaker 1: space elevator? I hear you all ask. It's pretty much
Speaker 1: what sounds like. It's an elevator that goes into space. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like many things that we have talked about on this show,
Speaker 1: this was apparently originally conceived by a writer, Arthur C.
Speaker 1: Clark Gosh Fountains of Paradise, the guy I thought up
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. He did he did well. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe not a lot of the things we've talked about,
Speaker 1: but we did talk about the geosynchronous orbit and using
Speaker 1: that for communications. That's something that that he came up
Speaker 1: with for for for his writing. And in Fountains of Paradise,
Speaker 1: engineers build a space elevator on an island called temp Robane.
Speaker 1: Probably mispronouncing that, but I'm okay with that. Um. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's a uh, it's basically Sri Lanka, which is where
Speaker 1: he lived apparently in many respects I have I haven't
Speaker 1: read it, um, but basically he in the book this
Speaker 1: island is on the equator, which is kind of important. Um,
Speaker 1: as we'll get to in a few minutes. But the
Speaker 1: idea of being that there is a something I guess
Speaker 1: the top floor in geosynchronous orbit, which would allow the
Speaker 1: space elevator to to have a tethered cable at the
Speaker 1: other end, and the elevator could move on that cable
Speaker 1: up into space and back. Yeah. The the element that's
Speaker 1: in geo secrets orbit is essentially a counterweight. It's uh.
Speaker 1: If you've ever if you've ever had like maybe a
Speaker 1: yo yo and you've done it around the world, that
Speaker 1: would be the kind of the concept here. Um the
Speaker 1: except of course that the weight is not being um
Speaker 1: held in place by the cable so much as the
Speaker 1: Earth's orbit or Earth's gravity rather, but it is an
Speaker 1: orbit around the Earth. That essentially means that it's constantly falling.
Speaker 1: That's essentially that's what orbit tends to be. UM, but
Speaker 1: you're falling in this circular pattern or elliptical pattern, and
Speaker 1: uh the cable is uh anchored somewhere on Earth. Some
Speaker 1: plans I saw had it uh an anchor that would
Speaker 1: be on a uh something that would be a platform
Speaker 1: in the ocean. Okay, So that's kind of an interesting
Speaker 1: idea of because that gives you a little more mobility
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about why that might be important in
Speaker 1: a little bit. It. Uh some others I've seen where
Speaker 1: they suggested that the cable could be anchored to the
Speaker 1: top of a very tall building, which is not quite
Speaker 1: as mobile. As it turns out, you aren't able to
Speaker 1: move tall buildings around easily. When tall moved buildings move around,
Speaker 1: that's usually a bad thing. So, uh, why would you
Speaker 1: even consider a space elevator in the first place. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a very good question. The point is not to
Speaker 1: reach the top floor where the penthouse looks out into
Speaker 1: a nebula. That's funny. I was gonna say the crab nebula. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: I was reading an article from NASA called audacious or
Speaker 1: audacious I don't know, and Outrageous Space Elevators by Steve
Speaker 1: Price um and he was the one who explained to
Speaker 1: me that this actually came from Fountains of Paradise. But um,
Speaker 1: the idea would be that you could transport people and
Speaker 1: things and possibly even electric city between the Earth and
Speaker 1: space too. I guess space stations or other objects in
Speaker 1: space that might, um, you know, be useful for people
Speaker 1: to use. Um that was redundant. So uh, yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea being that you could carry things out into space
Speaker 1: and back without having to launch a rocket or you know,
Speaker 1: spend spend the time and money and and have to
Speaker 1: worry about weather openings and things like that. Um, I
Speaker 1: assume that having a giant cable reaching out into space
Speaker 1: would produce hazards of its own, but I'm sure, but
Speaker 1: it would be a fairly affordable method of getting things
Speaker 1: out into space. Yeah. The Uh, that's the big point
Speaker 1: there is affordable both both of the fact that it's
Speaker 1: affordable and in general safer in the sense that whenever
Speaker 1: you have a launch, there are a lot of risks involved.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all know this because we've unfortunately seen
Speaker 1: tragic results of launch is gone awry. Uh, So there's
Speaker 1: always an element of danger launching anything into space. It
Speaker 1: takes an incredible amount of energy to launch anything off
Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth. So you want to be
Speaker 1: able to cut down that energy cost. You want to
Speaker 1: reduce the risks. According to our article on the site
Speaker 1: we actually have how space elevators will work on how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, it was written by Kevin Bonser
Speaker 1: and Uh. According to to Kevin, the approximate cost to
Speaker 1: put one pound of equipment or one pound of anything
Speaker 1: UH into space using a rocket based method is ten
Speaker 1: thousan dollars ten dollars per pound. That's more expensive than
Speaker 1: the really good cuts of beef at my butcher by
Speaker 1: by a couple of factors. Actually, uh. The by contrast,
Speaker 1: a space elevator could in theory deliver a payload of
Speaker 1: around UH at around a hundred dollars to four per pound,
Speaker 1: significantly cheaper, right. Um. Yeah, the the NASA article actually
Speaker 1: quoted David Smitherman, who is UH Marshall's advance of NASA
Speaker 1: and the Marshall Advanced Space Projects Office. Um, and he's
Speaker 1: actually looked into the possibility of of UH creating a
Speaker 1: space elevator. Um and he said that, Yeah, I saw
Speaker 1: um Kevin Monster's article. But the compared cost here, according
Speaker 1: to smither And, what Smitherman would be um, oh, shoot,
Speaker 1: about two hundred two dollars for a passenger with baggage
Speaker 1: at about hundred and fifty, So that's two not bad.
Speaker 1: Compare that to the massive amounts of money you would
Speaker 1: have to pay to go up on our Russian rocket
Speaker 1: to visit the International Space Station, as some as a
Speaker 1: person I know actually did Hello, Richard aread Um. But
Speaker 1: the yeah, the the the article that we have on
Speaker 1: the side has some really interesting uh factors in there.
Speaker 1: You might wonder exactly how would this work? How would
Speaker 1: you get a machine to go up a cable all
Speaker 1: the way into space? Uh? Well, the the concept here
Speaker 1: is is really fascinating to me. It's a it's essentially
Speaker 1: a platform or some sort of enclosure, depending upon what
Speaker 1: you're putting on there, and it is attached to this cable.
Speaker 1: The cable itself is not necessarily really thick either, because
Speaker 1: it's it's it theoretically built out of carbon nanotube nanotubes
Speaker 1: and I'll talk a little bit more about those in
Speaker 1: a second. Um. But the the platform has these robotic
Speaker 1: climbers that can either climb up or climb down the
Speaker 1: cable once they are powered. And the way you get
Speaker 1: power to the elevator is that has these photovoltaic say cells, Man,
Speaker 1: I can't talk today either. We we recently changed our
Speaker 1: podcast recording time and our mouths aren't haven't caught up
Speaker 1: to the rest of us. But photo voltaic cells, so
Speaker 1: those are the same kind of cells like solar power cells, right,
Speaker 1: but these cells tend to be tuned to a different
Speaker 1: frequency of light than our solar power cells are UM
Speaker 1: they're used, they're made out of different materials. Are solar
Speaker 1: cells are are made out of silicon. These are made
Speaker 1: out of other materials that absorb different frequencies of light.
Speaker 1: Then you use lasers or lasers to direct the light
Speaker 1: onto the cells, which then the cells will convert the
Speaker 1: light into electricity, which then powers the robotic climbers. So
Speaker 1: all you have to do, I'm making this sounds simple.
Speaker 1: All you really have to do just point your laser
Speaker 1: at the photo voltaic cell and it does the rest.
Speaker 1: Not granted it's it's definitely not in all you have
Speaker 1: to do kind of thing. I dismissed that as being
Speaker 1: far too easy. But the idea here is that using light,
Speaker 1: essentially you are providing power to this platform which will
Speaker 1: then climb all the way up into space. Uh. And
Speaker 1: there have been some very variations on this idea where
Speaker 1: you might have multiple space elevators on the same cable
Speaker 1: and uh and they would kind of do sort of
Speaker 1: like a fireman brigade type thing where you would transfer
Speaker 1: the payload from one to the other, so you don't
Speaker 1: have one UM one platform going the whole way necessarily. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of uh it depends on which which
Speaker 1: approach you read. Uh that that will tell you, like
Speaker 1: how how high up the counter measure is going to
Speaker 1: be and how fast the platform will move. In the
Speaker 1: article on our site, uh, Kevin was talking about a
Speaker 1: company called Liftport that had suggested putting a platform that
Speaker 1: would be or acount of count of way, that would
Speaker 1: be two thousand miles above the surface of the Earth,
Speaker 1: and it would move at a speed of The elevator
Speaker 1: would move at a speed of around one miles per hour.
Speaker 1: So I did some math. Yeah, that means that to
Speaker 1: to make the entire trip to go all the way up,
Speaker 1: not a round trip, but one way, it would take
Speaker 1: five d point four hours of travel, or around twenty
Speaker 1: two days. That's a long time to listen to the
Speaker 1: girl from Eponinus that song bum. Okay, that's all I
Speaker 1: can do before I get sued. But yeah, now that
Speaker 1: is that no one should be forced to listen to
Speaker 1: music for twenty two days straight. Excuse me, I got
Speaker 1: all choked up. UM. So yeah, it's funny that that
Speaker 1: you point that out. I did want to make that
Speaker 1: point that this um the article is is very uh,
Speaker 1: is really kind of centered on Liftport's concept of doing this,
Speaker 1: because um, the version that David Smitherman suggested uses a
Speaker 1: little bit different um technology. Now, he said there were
Speaker 1: five things that needed to happen in order to make
Speaker 1: space elevators possible. The first thing is you needed high
Speaker 1: strength materials for the cables and the tower. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: the carbon nanotube should probably cover that. I think. The
Speaker 1: second is, uh, you know, the the continued development of
Speaker 1: the tether technology, which I imagine is going on. I
Speaker 1: don't know that for a fact, Um, you also need
Speaker 1: lightweight and composite, lightweight composite structural materials to be able
Speaker 1: to build the towers and the buildings that necessary to
Speaker 1: make it work. The fourth is high speed electromagnetic propulsion. Um.
Speaker 1: I'll get back to that in just a second. And
Speaker 1: then the fifth is the development of the infrastructure needed
Speaker 1: to support the space construction. So um. The fourth is
Speaker 1: the one that really applies to the difference between this
Speaker 1: and Spaceport because his version basically uses magnetic propulsion. Rather
Speaker 1: than touching the cable, necessarily you would be able to
Speaker 1: like a maglev train. It would basically you know, move
Speaker 1: up the cable without actually touching the cable necessarily, rather
Speaker 1: than rather than climbing it. Um. And if I'm if
Speaker 1: I'm understanding it correctly, uh, which is really kind of cool. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know how. You would have to be very cool.
Speaker 1: You'd have to have a really low resistance in those cables,
Speaker 1: so that would mean you have too super cool of
Speaker 1: course once you got into space. But it's a neat idea. No,
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating idea. I had not come across that
Speaker 1: in my research, So that is an incredible idea. And
Speaker 1: the reason he suggests, the reason it's so important to
Speaker 1: have stations placed at the equator is the uh, likelihood
Speaker 1: of storms decreases at the equator, so you're less likely
Speaker 1: to have atmospheric interference with the space elevator traveling up
Speaker 1: and down the cable. Um. So I found that completely
Speaker 1: fascinating because it's one of those things. I think the
Speaker 1: first time I actually came across the idea of a
Speaker 1: space elevator was in playing Civilization Too, So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I was going space elevator. What's that? How the heck
Speaker 1: is that even possible? Yeah? Because you sit there and
Speaker 1: you think about it, like, how could you do that?
Speaker 1: How could you get you know, how do you keep
Speaker 1: the tension on the wire. Well, that's easy, the countermeasure
Speaker 1: does that for you. Because it's in orbit, we should yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: until if the counter measure were to fall out of orbit,
Speaker 1: that would be a bad thing. Uh exactly, if something
Speaker 1: were to happen to the cable, that would also be
Speaker 1: a bad thing. It wouldn't necessarily mean the counter measure
Speaker 1: would fly off into space, because again it's an orbit,
Speaker 1: but it would mean that you would, you know, you
Speaker 1: would have a broken space elevator. You would have to
Speaker 1: find some way of either repairing or attaching a new cable.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the cables for a little bit. Uh,
Speaker 1: the carbon nanotubes in particular, which I find fascinating, you know,
Speaker 1: just by themselves. Yeah, carbon nanotubes are kind of like
Speaker 1: the miracle equipment of the future, right, I Mean it's
Speaker 1: like it's like that material that everyone's heard about and uh,
Speaker 1: no one's really like it's hard to explain exactly what
Speaker 1: it does or what it you know, what what it
Speaker 1: kind of functions, it may it may fill in the future.
Speaker 1: Carbon nanotubes are made up of think of a sheet
Speaker 1: of carbon molecules and they are arranged in a heck
Speaker 1: like a pattern of hexagons. Yes, okay, so if you've
Speaker 1: ever had any kind of graph paper that was in
Speaker 1: hexagon form, I'm looking at you all my war gamer
Speaker 1: friends out there, um here okay, I mean the other ones.
Speaker 1: I've got more than just you. So anyway that if
Speaker 1: you think about it, you've got a sheet of hexagons
Speaker 1: all connected together, and then you roll that sheet up
Speaker 1: into a tube that's essentially a carbon nanotube. It's it's
Speaker 1: takes this sheet of molecules, you roll it up, and
Speaker 1: depending on the angle that you roll this sheet into,
Speaker 1: um it has certain properties. So if you roll the
Speaker 1: carbon nanotubes or the carbon sheet rather one way, you're
Speaker 1: going to get certain properties out of this this carbon.
Speaker 1: If you roll it another way, you'll get totally different properties.
Speaker 1: And you might think, well, wow, that's insane that you
Speaker 1: would just just by changing the angle that changes the
Speaker 1: properties of the material. But then think about what all
Speaker 1: the stuff that carbons in. Right, you look at the
Speaker 1: difference between graphite and diamond, one of the softest materials
Speaker 1: that we know about, one of the hardest materials we
Speaker 1: know about. Clearly, carbon has got some flexibility, uh figuratively speaking,
Speaker 1: so well it is. It is considered as flexible as plastic.
Speaker 1: That's that's the line. That and it's stronger than steel
Speaker 1: if you roll it the right way, right and um,
Speaker 1: from what I understand to the idea wouldn't necessarily be
Speaker 1: to take a single tube and run it into space.
Speaker 1: They would actually braid these tubes together, which seems like
Speaker 1: it would make it in more. I would imagine you'd
Speaker 1: have to grope, yeah, because if you didn't do that,
Speaker 1: if it were a single tube, I think it would
Speaker 1: be so thin that anything, right, you just slice right
Speaker 1: right in half if you came in contact with it. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, you're exactly right. It would have to
Speaker 1: be several all. When I say several, I'm talking like millions,
Speaker 1: all uh, interwoven together. And that's one of the big
Speaker 1: problems we have right now is just the finding the
Speaker 1: methodology to create carbon nanotubes length sufficient to work in
Speaker 1: this kind of uh you know, this kind of application. Right.
Speaker 1: If we were able to do it now, we'd already
Speaker 1: have lots and lots of things made out of carbon nanotubes.
Speaker 1: So it's it's an ongoing process. I mean, you do
Speaker 1: find some products out there that have carbon nanotubes built
Speaker 1: into them, like um For instance, there's a some block,
Speaker 1: really some some block has carbonano tubes in it because
Speaker 1: of one of the properties of being able to um
Speaker 1: block harmful radiation. That's one of the cool things there.
Speaker 1: There's also clothing that has carbonano twos interwoven into it. UM.
Speaker 1: There was the idea that you would be able to
Speaker 1: eventually create a Spider Man type suit out of carbonano
Speaker 1: twos because one of the the things you could do
Speaker 1: is make it so that it would adhere to surfaces,
Speaker 1: so you could actually climb up the side of buildings
Speaker 1: just by wearing the right kind of suit. It's pretty cool, huh,
Speaker 1: Except for my question was how do you get your
Speaker 1: when you put your hand down and it adheres to
Speaker 1: the building, how do you get it off right? If
Speaker 1: it's strong enough to hold you there, how do you pull?
Speaker 1: And apparently it was all in the angle, at least
Speaker 1: in this sort of concept that this one scientist had
Speaker 1: for it. Anyway, that's an off track. I just I
Speaker 1: just had this image in my head of somebody, you know,
Speaker 1: successfully climbing a wall and the suit and somebody, can
Speaker 1: I have your autograph and I want my pen back. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that's done. You should do that's you know, I can't
Speaker 1: get into my else anymore. My keys are stuck right here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the carbon nanotubes play a big part in
Speaker 1: this because it's it's a material that has the potential
Speaker 1: to to withstand the the pressure that the tensile um strength.
Speaker 1: It has the tensile strength necessary to fulfill this. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have platforms climbing up this taut cable and
Speaker 1: down this taut cable, you know, thousands of miles. It's
Speaker 1: got to be strong. Yeah, And I think that's, uh,
Speaker 1: that's obviously since that's the very very first thing um
Speaker 1: that Smitherman said. You know, you've got to have something
Speaker 1: strong enough to to work for this cable, no matter
Speaker 1: what type of propulsion the elevator is using to get
Speaker 1: up and down the cable, you've got to have something
Speaker 1: as robust as something or like the carbon nanotubes. I
Speaker 1: am having so much trouble talking today. It's it's a
Speaker 1: Friday morning, folks, give us a little break. So anyway, now, it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's really neat to see that they've they've gone this far,
Speaker 1: but you know, what about the possibility that there are
Speaker 1: going to be whether problems with it or you know
Speaker 1: that the cable is going to break while somebody is
Speaker 1: in space, or even or they need repair simple repair
Speaker 1: right there. There's also the issue of their stuff in
Speaker 1: space there what lots of there's lots of stuff in
Speaker 1: space as space, as it turns out, is big, really big,
Speaker 1: um the but there's lots of little things floating around
Speaker 1: in space that could potentially cause damage to either the
Speaker 1: cable or more likely the actual elevator as it was
Speaker 1: traveling through space. So debris, um, you know, anything from
Speaker 1: you know, meteorites entering the atmosphere to uh, you know, satellites.
Speaker 1: Just the fact that some set, not all satellites are
Speaker 1: geospatial satellites, right, They're not all locked into the same
Speaker 1: spot right, In fact, most aren't, I think. So you
Speaker 1: get to a point where you have to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: what what do we do in the case of there's
Speaker 1: a you know, uh, an object that's on a collision
Speaker 1: course with the elevator. You have to be able to
Speaker 1: detect those things. You have to be able to adjust
Speaker 1: the speed of the climb or descent of the space elevator,
Speaker 1: so it avoids them. Um And with the the water
Speaker 1: based anchor, you know where you've got the bottom of
Speaker 1: the cable anchored to a platform that's on the ocean,
Speaker 1: you at least have the potential of moving that platform
Speaker 1: so that you can change the angle enough so that
Speaker 1: the elevator will avoid whatever the object is, because even
Speaker 1: a tiny object could do a massive amount of damage
Speaker 1: the elevator. Because you think, if it's an object that's
Speaker 1: moving around essentially in the orbit of the Earth, it's
Speaker 1: moving on an incredible speed. So you have to plan
Speaker 1: these things out. You can't just say all right, well,
Speaker 1: now we've got the climbing technology, we've got the platform,
Speaker 1: we've got the cable. Let's do this. You've got to
Speaker 1: be able to protect what you've just built. We can
Speaker 1: build it. We have the technology right well, and there
Speaker 1: were there were fears of terrestrial problems as well, not
Speaker 1: just weather, but people who might want to sabotage the
Speaker 1: space elevator. Yeah, as it turns out, you know, when
Speaker 1: people come up with these brilliant ideas that are um
Speaker 1: there are potentially going to change the way we do
Speaker 1: something you know, massive like moving things into space. It
Speaker 1: means that we've invested a lot of money in time
Speaker 1: into that, right, and so what better way to strike
Speaker 1: at an enemy than to hit a spot that's going
Speaker 1: to you know that that was the result of billions
Speaker 1: of dollars of investment and and and countless hours of time. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, take sabotage that and then you've struck a
Speaker 1: huge blow. So especially if you have something like a
Speaker 1: platform floating down in the ocean. Um, depending upon how
Speaker 1: big that platform is, you might not have that many
Speaker 1: personnel assigned to it, so it becomes an attractive target.
Speaker 1: This is actually something that people have had to think about.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's you know, if you're if you belong
Speaker 1: to a terrorist organization and you're looking at potential targets,
Speaker 1: then you want to look at high impact and you
Speaker 1: want to look at the high probability that your attacks
Speaker 1: going to work. So, I mean, it's an unfortunate reality.
Speaker 1: So that's another one of those things that people have
Speaker 1: had to think about, like, well, how would we protect this?
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty certain that whichever nation comes up with this,
Speaker 1: or if even if it's a you know, a group
Speaker 1: of nations that work together to create the first space elevator.
Speaker 1: I'm certain they will have incredible security measures around that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would imagine so. But I don't think we're likely
Speaker 1: to develop a working space elevator in the next you know,
Speaker 1: short few years. I think it's still going to be
Speaker 1: quite a ways down the road. Um. And it seems
Speaker 1: like the logistical things there's a lot to work out. Um. Sure,
Speaker 1: you know, it just seems it's always seem risky to
Speaker 1: me to have a cable running that far out into
Speaker 1: space and expecting it to stay where it is. You know,
Speaker 1: it just seems weird. The aliens don't like that. The aliens, yes,
Speaker 1: they don't. Uh. And you know, I forgot about one
Speaker 1: of the other potential uses for a space elevator. The
Speaker 1: thought is actually really cool. One of the potential uses
Speaker 1: is actually launching UH vehicles from the space elevator into space,
Speaker 1: because the idea here is that you don't need as
Speaker 1: much fuel UH and you don't need as larger rocket
Speaker 1: in order to go into space once you're in orbit,
Speaker 1: because you don't have to escape UH or gravity from
Speaker 1: the surface. Right. So, so it means that we could
Speaker 1: cut down on the costs of space travel, and potentially
Speaker 1: use a space elevator as a launching site for missions
Speaker 1: into deeper space, like another trip to the Moon or
Speaker 1: perhaps two Mars or who knows. Yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: as long as the elevator work capable of carrying that
Speaker 1: weight through the you know, up until it reaches the
Speaker 1: edge of the gravitational pull, significant gravitational pull, it seems
Speaker 1: like it would be able to do that. But I
Speaker 1: can't imagine. I would have to be a pretty hefty
Speaker 1: elevator to carry something the size of say the Space Shuttle. Boy,
Speaker 1: it's gonna carry that weight, carry that Wait a long time,
Speaker 1: Oh man, I can't let you out here, Dave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because you know, the space platform is just
Speaker 1: above hardware and uh and tools and uh that's a
Speaker 1: long long wait. Yeah, it's interesting because although we're calling
Speaker 1: it an elevator, obviously it would feel more like a uh,
Speaker 1: some other kind of vehicle. Yes, something like that. It
Speaker 1: would have to be if we were going to be
Speaker 1: traveling for multiple days. You know, clearly you wouldn't be like,
Speaker 1: all right, did everyone go before they got in the elevator?
Speaker 1: Because this is important. It's gonna be several days before
Speaker 1: we get to the top. So clearly it would be
Speaker 1: more like you know, it had to be bigger, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it would have a you know, facilities clearly would
Speaker 1: have to beds, things like that. Food Yeah, yeah, Food
Speaker 1: would also probably be important. I would not want to
Speaker 1: go and not want to go between eight and twenty
Speaker 1: two days without eating. Um, I don't like going a
Speaker 1: couple of hours without eating, tell you the truth. I
Speaker 1: wonder if I wonder if there's a way to send
Speaker 1: smaller things up the cable at the same time the
Speaker 1: elevator is like for example, uh, you know, you have
Speaker 1: the elevator going, and you have a small container of food,
Speaker 1: you know, for stay a week, and you send it
Speaker 1: on up and it caught up to the space elevator
Speaker 1: and they could you know, drop waste or trash or
Speaker 1: you know, I suppose a person breaking out because he's
Speaker 1: in an enclosed space and freaks out an elevator. The
Speaker 1: longer you would the longer you go on the trip, Like,
Speaker 1: the closer you get to the top up, the longer
Speaker 1: it would take the supplemental material to get to you. Yes,
Speaker 1: it would, um, I would imagine that, but that would
Speaker 1: probably I wouldn't help prevent the need for carrying a
Speaker 1: lot as much stuff. Yeah, I mean, if the robotic
Speaker 1: climbers are are powerful enough, it's not really an issue
Speaker 1: because I mean we're That's the other thing is we're
Speaker 1: not really thinking of Uh, you know it's space elevator
Speaker 1: is not the same as an elevator, and that elevators
Speaker 1: usually use cables to pull them up or lower them down,
Speaker 1: whereas in this case, the space elevator is using robotic
Speaker 1: climbers that climb either physically or magnetically in the case
Speaker 1: that you quoted the cable, So, um, I imagine. I
Speaker 1: mean these these climbers have to be incredibly powerful. They
Speaker 1: have to be I mean there otherwise you wouldn't you know,
Speaker 1: nothing would go up the cable. Well, if there are
Speaker 1: any rocket scientists listening, you're happen to have any insight
Speaker 1: on that. Yeah, I just know I don't want to
Speaker 1: step into a space elevator. See otis on the door,
Speaker 1: and then you know, seven days into it, it stops
Speaker 1: and then I'm just sitting there. Essentially, you spent too
Speaker 1: much time on Martha equipment. Yeah, well, did you see
Speaker 1: my tweet this morning? According to the sign my next
Speaker 1: train was arriving in one thousand, three d seventy four minutes.
Speaker 1: Rather I calculated that out. It means that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be here until tomorrow. Well, it's a good thing that
Speaker 1: you are so that we can do this show. Um,
Speaker 1: it was very lonely without you last week. Okay, well
Speaker 1: I really don't have any else anything else. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a really interesting approach. It's um. Obviously, it's
Speaker 1: an approach that comes with its own set of problems,
Speaker 1: not all of which are trivial. But if we can
Speaker 1: get it to work, it will mean that we could rapidly,
Speaker 1: at least comparatively speaking, uh, shoot things up to say
Speaker 1: the International Space Station or bring it back down. Um.
Speaker 1: It would mean that we could build out other space stations.
Speaker 1: We could launch deeper exploration uh missions, whether they were
Speaker 1: robotic or human manned. Um, human manned, Well they if you,
Speaker 1: if you built enough of them, you could develop a
Speaker 1: significant infrastructure in space to do all kinds of different things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and eventually you could have a fantastic arcade game space
Speaker 1: elevator action. I'm not even going to touch that. Do
Speaker 1: Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do? Alright,
Speaker 1: then hey, I love that game. All Right, Well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna wrap up this discussion. Clearly we're a little loopy,
Speaker 1: but no, space elevators really are an interesting idea. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure we'll ever actually see one implemented. I hope so. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's certainly a lot of people who are really really
Speaker 1: smart who are working on this, who are really trying
Speaker 1: to make it work. Uh, and I hope there's a
Speaker 1: accessiful The projections for when we might see it tend
Speaker 1: to be around the end of around give or take
Speaker 1: a year or two um in either directions, So hopefully
Speaker 1: that will actually pan out. Yeah, you know, the thing
Speaker 1: that worries me more is not necessarily the technology, but
Speaker 1: the logistics of actually making it happen. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: actually seems to me to be the biggest problem. We
Speaker 1: didn't even talk about how they would get the cable there. Essentially,
Speaker 1: the idea I saw was that you would launch a
Speaker 1: rocket up that would be carrying this cable on a spool,
Speaker 1: and at a certain altitude it would start to unspool
Speaker 1: as it continued to go up into space. So you
Speaker 1: would have the cable unspooling while it was still in
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere and uh, then the rocket would reach
Speaker 1: its destination and stop, essentially um and possibly become the counterweight.
Speaker 1: That's that's one possibility is used the whatever vehicle you
Speaker 1: used to get the spool up there, use that as
Speaker 1: the counterway to secure it in space. There have been
Speaker 1: other suggestions that we'd use an asteroid, you know asteroid, yeah,
Speaker 1: to to secure the cable to an asteroid and geosynchronous orbit. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then you would use an aircraft to capture the
Speaker 1: cable in the Earth's atmosphere and bring it back down
Speaker 1: to whatever you were going to secure it too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of that's crazy. I mean, it's the whole
Speaker 1: concept is both amazingly awesome and insane. I could Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could do that. Yeah. So anyway, if you have
Speaker 1: any amazing, lee awesome but insane things to say to us,
Speaker 1: can you drop the insane part and just make it
Speaker 1: amazingly awesome because the insane ones hurt my brain. But no, No,
Speaker 1: you can write us. You can actually contact us on
Speaker 1: Twitter or Facebook or handle at both of those is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff hs W, or you can email us that
Speaker 1: address is tech Stuff at hell Stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: and Christen, I will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
Speaker 1: click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
Speaker 1: of our homepage. The house Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
Speaker 1: Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the
Speaker 1: reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you