Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hi there everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks to the future and says, hey,
Speaker 1: I just met you. This is crazy. Here's my number,
Speaker 1: so call me maybe. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I'm Lauren Vocbaum.
Speaker 1: You went like two lines longer than I would have
Speaker 1: thought that, But who are you? Okay, that's all I
Speaker 1: wanted to know. Now, today we wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: bit about space elevators. We recently talked about the concept
Speaker 1: of torque on Forward Thinking and UH, and torque plays
Speaker 1: a big part in space elevators. In general. A space
Speaker 1: elevator is UH, some way for us to climb into space,
Speaker 1: as opposed to using rockets to thrust us into space.
Speaker 1: That's the general idea. Why why would we want to
Speaker 1: do that? Well, mainly because thrusting ourselves into space with
Speaker 1: the help of rockets is incredibly expensive and also more
Speaker 1: than a little dangerous. Whenever you're trying to ride explosives
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere, there comes an element of danger associated
Speaker 1: with that. And but mainly it's cost And if you
Speaker 1: think about it, if we can get things to space,
Speaker 1: without having to have that huge cost. It'll be easier
Speaker 1: for us to get more stuff into space and then
Speaker 1: build stuff in space. You know, if we could build
Speaker 1: spacecraft or space stations in space as opposed to assemble
Speaker 1: them here on Earth and then find some way of
Speaker 1: getting them out there, that could really speed things up. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't have to go through the atmosphere. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could design a spacecraft that was never meant to go
Speaker 1: through the atmosphere and to be perfectly fine because you
Speaker 1: build it out there in space. And we don't want
Speaker 1: to give the impression that we necessarily think that the
Speaker 1: rocket program was not worth what we spent on it. No,
Speaker 1: I'm giving that impression. No, No, of course it was
Speaker 1: very pro space exploit. Yeah, yeah, pro pro rock. It's rockets.
Speaker 1: But the numbers are pretty grim like throughout the history
Speaker 1: of the rocket program. They say that it averaged about
Speaker 1: ten dollars per pound. That's expensive, more expensive than the
Speaker 1: salmon that I like to buy at my local grocery
Speaker 1: store significantly and more expensive. Well, they're they're looking at
Speaker 1: only only four or five a pound for space elevators, right,
Speaker 1: and stuff into space. Now, let's keep in mind that
Speaker 1: of course hypathetic. And this is after we've built one
Speaker 1: of these magical space elevators, which which we haven't done yet.
Speaker 1: But but we're getting ahead of ourselves. People, Where did
Speaker 1: this idea come from? Yes, I do know. Okay, So
Speaker 1: if you want to, if you want to look at
Speaker 1: the first suggestion of building something to allow us to
Speaker 1: get into space without using rockets, you've got to go
Speaker 1: all the way back to eight And that's when a
Speaker 1: fellow by the name Konstantine silkovski H suggested, we uh
Speaker 1: that it's kind of a thought experiment. It wasn't ever
Speaker 1: meant to be a real experiment. But so what if
Speaker 1: we were to build a tower, an actual physical tower,
Speaker 1: from the Earth's surface all the way up into space,
Speaker 1: and the idea being that if you built it high enough,
Speaker 1: you could climb to the top of that tower, step
Speaker 1: off the edge, and you would just stay there because
Speaker 1: you would you would be in orbit around the Earth,
Speaker 1: as opposed to falling plummeting to the Earth. You would
Speaker 1: be beyond gravity in that sense, or really you'd just
Speaker 1: be falling to the Earth at the same rate as
Speaker 1: the Earth is turning, so you're constantly in free fall.
Speaker 1: Would that be geostationary orbit. Well, the tower would be
Speaker 1: in geostationary orbit because it was directly connected to the ground.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's it's a tower, So uh, it's not
Speaker 1: really geo stationary in the since we think of a
Speaker 1: geostationary satellite, um, and you would I guess be geo stationary.
Speaker 1: I guess it would depend on what if you if
Speaker 1: you jump into the atmosphere into the non atmosphere to space,
Speaker 1: then you would be in synchronous orbit kind of. It
Speaker 1: would depend on It would depend on whether or not
Speaker 1: you were at the equator. You should distinguish between geosyncras
Speaker 1: and geostationary right, Okay, same thing, but either way, it
Speaker 1: doesn't It all depends on whether or not you're at
Speaker 1: the equator. So it's the point is kind of mood. Uh,
Speaker 1: But anyway, Constantine suggests building a tower, as you know,
Speaker 1: it's just a thought experiment. Again. Uh. Then you move
Speaker 1: up to about nineteen sixty and then a fellow named
Speaker 1: Urie arts a ton of boy it's I'm terrible at
Speaker 1: these these Russian names, but he suggests a the first
Speaker 1: what we would think of as a real space elevator.
Speaker 1: This is something that is using tensile strength, a taut
Speaker 1: tether as opposed to a tower. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: instead of building a solid structure that reaches all the
Speaker 1: way up into orbit, which would obviously impossible, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: compression that you would the compressive forces that would act
Speaker 1: upon the base of this tower would be so great
Speaker 1: as nothing, nothing we know of could withstand that that
Speaker 1: amount of pressure. The tallest manmade structure in Dubai right
Speaker 1: now is only it comes in under three thousand feet,
Speaker 1: so fewer than the multiple miles exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: so this suggestion would be, well, what if instead of
Speaker 1: building a tower, we had the equivalent of a very
Speaker 1: long rope, and that rope where was attached to something
Speaker 1: out beyond uh the initial orbit of the Earth and
Speaker 1: allow or you know, something that would be an orbit
Speaker 1: around the Earth go beyond that point and tie off
Speaker 1: to another object, and then you have essentially centrifugal force
Speaker 1: keeping that that line taut. You have it anchored on
Speaker 1: the ground on one side, anchored to some object that's
Speaker 1: circling the Earth on the other side, and that's what's
Speaker 1: keeping the rope taut. And then you find some way
Speaker 1: of being able to climb that rope, and that was
Speaker 1: the very basic idea that became the space elevator notion.
Speaker 1: There were a few other people who worked independently, uh
Speaker 1: and also came up with the same idea around the
Speaker 1: same time, but his was the first. And uh, the
Speaker 1: idea started getting some traction in the general public beyond
Speaker 1: just you know, physicists and engineers around nineteen nine, and
Speaker 1: that's when Sir Arthur C. Clark wrote The Fountains of Paradise,
Speaker 1: which was a fictional account of this sort of idea
Speaker 1: of building a space elevator. And once that entered into
Speaker 1: the the the circle of science fiction nerds out there, uh,
Speaker 1: the idea started to kind of filter into the general population.
Speaker 1: I'd still say that there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who don't know what a space elevator is or have
Speaker 1: never heard of this term. But um, but it's it's
Speaker 1: something that is not completely foreign to everyone. A lot
Speaker 1: of sci fi. Yeah. Yeah, And because it's again for
Speaker 1: the idea, the same ideas that we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: it really helps the with a cutting down the cost
Speaker 1: and well, one of the big problems we have with
Speaker 1: our space exploration programs is that they cost a pretty
Speaker 1: good amount of money. Now. Granted, if you compare that
Speaker 1: amount of money to other programs in the United States,
Speaker 1: for example, it's a tiny, tiny amount, but it's still
Speaker 1: an amount you have to convince politicians to spend for
Speaker 1: us to to be able to fund these programs, and
Speaker 1: that gets tough. It's a you could say that there's
Speaker 1: a large return on investment, right, I mean, any scientific
Speaker 1: endeavor is bound to turn out lots of good benefits
Speaker 1: for the future. But sure, even if it's not just
Speaker 1: the space elevator. You know, all kinds of carbon nanotube
Speaker 1: technology and other fascinating things could be created around this,
Speaker 1: which would also be worth the research dollars. But but
Speaker 1: but convincing a politician of that, you say, hey, we
Speaker 1: could get some ideas from this, and they go, who well, well,
Speaker 1: And and not to put all the how soon in
Speaker 1: the next two months, right, And not not to put
Speaker 1: all the blame on politicians because they are answering their inswering,
Speaker 1: because they're innswering to people, and the people are saying,
Speaker 1: I'm paying taxes, where are you spending my tax money on?
Speaker 1: And the politicians says, I'm spending tax money on this thing.
Speaker 1: That may not ever work, and the taxpayer says, why
Speaker 1: am I paying my taxes? So I don't put all
Speaker 1: the blame on the politicians. I hold them accountable, but
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily blame them because I'm not in that position.
Speaker 1: So I'm not the one aging ten years for every
Speaker 1: actual human year. Um. Some of those people seem really comfortable, though,
Speaker 1: so I do blame them a little bit. Anyway, That's
Speaker 1: that kind of covers the history of it. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about what the actual design of one of these
Speaker 1: things would be. And we kind of talked about a
Speaker 1: little bit about that anchor point. But well, essentially, like
Speaker 1: you said, um, it would rely on centrifugal force, but
Speaker 1: not just centrifugal force, right, So you're saying that they're
Speaker 1: essentially two parts. There is a tether and there is
Speaker 1: a climber. Now, if we talk about the tether first,
Speaker 1: this is imagine a long, very thin ribbon going from
Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth at the equator um miles
Speaker 1: out into space right um or sixty very far out
Speaker 1: past geo geostationary orbit um and it would have to
Speaker 1: have something really heavy at the end of it to
Speaker 1: keep it pulled taut. So some ideas have included things like, well,
Speaker 1: let's lasso an asteroid. I'm going to just stop you
Speaker 1: for one second and say we probably should say massive
Speaker 1: rather than heavy. M there you go. Point excellent, but
Speaker 1: that's but but continue, but thanks for breaking my flow there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're welcome. So they're going to be writing to me,
Speaker 1: Joe exactly exactly a very massive object like a massive
Speaker 1: asteroid um, or we could just build something really heavy
Speaker 1: out there or one thing massive massive. One idea I
Speaker 1: like a lot that I've heard is just to use
Speaker 1: all of the massive garbage left behind from building things
Speaker 1: in space and make a big trash ball out of it.
Speaker 1: Um that's very massive. So you coalesced all the all
Speaker 1: the trash into one mask, you make a weight out
Speaker 1: of the garbage. Or or for example, a space station
Speaker 1: could be used something that you know, people could live
Speaker 1: on and grow pretty things in or something well, especially
Speaker 1: if you're using that to you know, deliver materials directly
Speaker 1: to the space station. Or the space station is also
Speaker 1: like a space port if we're looking far off into
Speaker 1: the future where you want to build stuff out there. Okay,
Speaker 1: but so what you have to imagine now is that
Speaker 1: it's not just so the centrifugal force acts on that.
Speaker 1: And you just imagine like if you stand somewhere and
Speaker 1: you hold a string with a ball on the end
Speaker 1: of it and spin around in a circle, the weight
Speaker 1: of the ball will pull the string right if you
Speaker 1: If you spin fast enough you start, the ball will
Speaker 1: lift off the ground. And if you're spinning quite fast enough,
Speaker 1: then it'll it'll be pulled taut and almost horizontal out
Speaker 1: from you. Yeah, and but so there are actually two
Speaker 1: forces acting on the tether. So there's the centrifugal force
Speaker 1: pulling the tether outward, and then there's the gravity, just
Speaker 1: the weight of the tether in the Earth's atmosphere pulling
Speaker 1: down on the tether. And these two forces pulling in
Speaker 1: each direction keep the tether straight so something can climate.
Speaker 1: So the the designs I've seen this very thin ribbon,
Speaker 1: it actually has a tapered um element to it has
Speaker 1: to be thickest in the middle. Right in the middle
Speaker 1: it's thickest, and then it tapers down to the thinnest
Speaker 1: points at either end. And it's very much for that
Speaker 1: reason too, in order for it to be strong enough
Speaker 1: to not only withstand the pull from the centrifugal force,
Speaker 1: but also withstand the massive amount of gravity that's pulling
Speaker 1: down on it as well. Um. It's it's interesting too
Speaker 1: that these designs are looking at this this incredibly thin
Speaker 1: ribbon that has to support a huge amount of weight.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the big challenges, right what kind
Speaker 1: of materials could possibly be stretched that thin? Well we'll
Speaker 1: get into that in a minute. But um, I mean,
Speaker 1: because that's the real question, right that that's the central
Speaker 1: can we do it? Well? Anyway, that's the tether, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's the tether um And another part of the
Speaker 1: tether is the question about where do you put it? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean you say that it has to be it
Speaker 1: has to be active equator, but can you make a
Speaker 1: base that holds it down at the bottom. One thing
Speaker 1: I've seen is that a lot of people propose making
Speaker 1: a mobile sea base, like one that floats in the
Speaker 1: ocean and can move around. And the reason for that is, um,
Speaker 1: what if something is flying towards the tether and you
Speaker 1: need to move it? Oh you know, um, interesting you
Speaker 1: you would want neither a rocket, nor an airplane, nor
Speaker 1: a very large bird to h to run into this.
Speaker 1: So therefore, it can also it's that can help but
Speaker 1: avoid like weather events, you know, yeah, like something in
Speaker 1: the in the Pacific is what I've heard people talk
Speaker 1: about that. So so anyway, so you have the tether,
Speaker 1: it's anchored at this mobile station at the bottom. It's
Speaker 1: got a big weight out in space. And then you
Speaker 1: have the climber and that's the part that's going to
Speaker 1: be most familiar to us. That's just like the elevator
Speaker 1: climber that we're used to. It's a pod or some
Speaker 1: kind of carrying device but rolls up the tether, some
Speaker 1: sort of container that has a means of gripping onto
Speaker 1: that ribbon and climbing it. Uh. Usually we talk about
Speaker 1: it just being using the force of friction. So it
Speaker 1: has to have something has a lot of torque to
Speaker 1: it that can grip onto that ribbon tightly enough to
Speaker 1: be able to climb up from the surface of the
Speaker 1: Earth all the way up with rollers or Yeah. The
Speaker 1: further up it goes, the less it has to deal
Speaker 1: with gravity. But then the centrical force can actually take
Speaker 1: over ultimately. But while you're trying to get it up
Speaker 1: that high, you have to have something that's gonna grip
Speaker 1: on quite tightly and uh so it's interesting also about
Speaker 1: how do you power something like that, how do you
Speaker 1: give energy to this climber so it keeps on going up.
Speaker 1: And by the way, these climbers can be of various sizes.
Speaker 1: There's there's some talk about some of the designs I've
Speaker 1: read talked about climbers that would carry a certain amount
Speaker 1: of like certain number of hundreds of pounds of material
Speaker 1: and you would be able to send up around six
Speaker 1: or so per day, um on every few hours, you'd
Speaker 1: be able to send another one up. Well, now let's clarify,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean six there and back none six you
Speaker 1: could launch essentially, so you could in this scenario you'd
Speaker 1: have multiple climbers going up the tether at the same time, right,
Speaker 1: or you might do it over the course of six days.
Speaker 1: One per day is being sent up. Because one of
Speaker 1: the issues about a space elevator, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the downsides compared to rockets, is it takes a lot
Speaker 1: longer for you to get out there than it would
Speaker 1: if you were on a rocket. You don't have that
Speaker 1: terrific initial burst you're talking about weeks. Yeah, you're not
Speaker 1: traveling at you know, thirty thousand miles per hour or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's it's climbing at a steady rate, but it could
Speaker 1: take several days or several weeks for it to get
Speaker 1: to where it's going. It's like driving across country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but more Yes, agreed, And and that means that if
Speaker 1: we're using it to transport people, it would essentially be
Speaker 1: like a hotel room or probably more likely cruise quarters
Speaker 1: on a like a naval vessel, where you would have
Speaker 1: a cramped but serviceable amount of space to yourself that
Speaker 1: would be climate controlled and protected from the elements so
Speaker 1: that you could survive, especially once you start getting out
Speaker 1: beyond the breathable atmosphere to have a pressurized cabin and everything.
Speaker 1: I've heard concerns about how these pods, if they carried passengers,
Speaker 1: would be subject to possible radiation and sure the atmosphere, Yeah,
Speaker 1: once you get beyond the Earth's protective atmosphere, that would
Speaker 1: definitely be a concern. It's you would have to have
Speaker 1: the right kind of shielding on these pods, even if
Speaker 1: you were just transporting uh, you know, just just raw material.
Speaker 1: Depending on that raw material, if you had created any
Speaker 1: circuit boards or anything. Yeah, they're they're electronics that could
Speaker 1: definitely be affected by by any tight of cosmic radiation.
Speaker 1: So you would definitely want to have shielding on your pods,
Speaker 1: whether they're going to be moving life people or whatever
Speaker 1: or inanimate objects. So now with the radiation, we're getting
Speaker 1: into talking about some of the challenges, but I think
Speaker 1: it's time to get to the big challenge. It's the
Speaker 1: one big thing that is making some people say, will
Speaker 1: never have this, it'll never work. Finding a material that
Speaker 1: has the tensile strength to be able to make one
Speaker 1: of these ribbons, that's the big challenge. It's it's just
Speaker 1: mind boggling how strong this tether would have to be.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've never seen a string that's thousands of
Speaker 1: miles long. Uh, it's just impossible to imagine that it
Speaker 1: could withstand the forces, right yeah, And and it would
Speaker 1: have to be uh, incredibly resilient and without it being
Speaker 1: super super super dense and heavy, because you know, the
Speaker 1: heavier it gets, the stronger it has to be in
Speaker 1: order for it to to withstand the the the eensine
Speaker 1: strength from its ownty you know, so uh yeah, And
Speaker 1: not to mention the fact that you're gonna have stuff
Speaker 1: climbing on it. So you you have to have something
Speaker 1: that's both very strong and not super dense. The most
Speaker 1: promising material that we have happens to be carbon nanotubes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well but but but right right now, I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: well there's some different research being done classically, carbon nanotubes,
Speaker 1: once you get them into a into a long string,
Speaker 1: have only been about a millimeter long, right, yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not quite long enough to get into space. I
Speaker 1: need a lot of those. Well let's stop for a second,
Speaker 1: just quick definition. What is a carbon nanotube? Okay, you
Speaker 1: take a sheet of graphing. This is a sheet of
Speaker 1: carbon atoms that are all bound together. It looks like
Speaker 1: a bunch of a hexagons, right, that are all bound
Speaker 1: on each side with other hexagons. And it's a sheet
Speaker 1: of graphing. And then you roll that sheet of graphing
Speaker 1: into a tight tube and the edges buying together. That's
Speaker 1: a carbon nanotube. And depending on the way you roll
Speaker 1: that sheet of graphene, so that you know, the various
Speaker 1: edges of those hexagons line up, depending on on what
Speaker 1: direction you roll it, the carbon nanotube will have different
Speaker 1: uh features. It'll if you roll it one way, it's
Speaker 1: an incredible semiconductor. If you roll it another way, it's
Speaker 1: as stronger than steel and many more times lighter than steel.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's kind of talked about as a
Speaker 1: miracle material because there's so many different potential applications for it.
Speaker 1: It shows up a lot in these like well if
Speaker 1: we could do this, yeah, right, carbonanotubes a right kind
Speaker 1: of like that's that's where yeah, except it's real stuff.
Speaker 1: It is real stuff. Yeah. Yeah. They were discovered back
Speaker 1: in by Sameo E Jima UM. But but you know,
Speaker 1: research into this kind of stuff goes back to the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and uh, some some new research continuing today.
Speaker 1: Rice University back in January of this year started talking
Speaker 1: about this UM this lamp that they had suspended for
Speaker 1: um A a wet spooled carbon nanotube string that could
Speaker 1: be hundreds of meters long, UM being being suspended and
Speaker 1: powered by this carbon nanotube string due to the electromagnetic
Speaker 1: properties and the kind of the fact that's strong and
Speaker 1: strong enough to yeah, and its online. It's incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is neat stuff. And so that's very promising. The
Speaker 1: the I've seen some recent criticisms that say that even
Speaker 1: at the proposed strongest that we could make a a
Speaker 1: carbon nanotube right now based upon what we know right now,
Speaker 1: it's still would not meet the requirements of what we
Speaker 1: would need if we were to build this tether. That
Speaker 1: that the tensile strength is not quite what we would require,
Speaker 1: and also that carbon nanitubes, while they be very strong
Speaker 1: in one direction, are very weak in other directions, So
Speaker 1: an impact along the side or some other uh compromising
Speaker 1: event could end up having it just read apart. You
Speaker 1: get a snowstorm or a kite or something and right, yeah,
Speaker 1: or some some some naughty person with scissors. What I've
Speaker 1: seen described is like the chemical bonds on zipping sort
Speaker 1: of zipping the word. The analogy I saw would be
Speaker 1: it would be like getting a run in your stockings,
Speaker 1: which I hate when that happens to me. I know
Speaker 1: you do, Yeah, well, I mean don't don't we all
Speaker 1: you also hate it when it happens to me. That's
Speaker 1: very sweet you, um so? But well okay, so, but
Speaker 1: that's one challenge right there is the biggest one. Well
Speaker 1: not we're not even done with carbon nanotubes, um so, okay, No,
Speaker 1: we're not down earlier, isn't it, Joe. Some experts say, like,
Speaker 1: you can't do the carbon, they're not strong enough. Let's
Speaker 1: imagine that they are strong enough. Some experts disagree, right,
Speaker 1: there's there's materials who say that, yeah, it is strong enough,
Speaker 1: and so obviously we don't know enough to arbitrate on
Speaker 1: that um. But Eve, and if they are strong enough,
Speaker 1: do you know how long it takes to make these
Speaker 1: things and how tiny the amounts we can make at
Speaker 1: one time are. Well, it's like the ways that we
Speaker 1: make them earlier. You describe this hypothetical thing where you're
Speaker 1: rolling up graphinge and that sounds like, oh, it's like
Speaker 1: a big thing of wrapping paper you just rolled out
Speaker 1: the way they make these the atomic scale for that
Speaker 1: to work. But yes, for these extremely uh intense reactions
Speaker 1: you do in some controlled chamber in a lab, like
Speaker 1: you you create arcs of hot electricity between two pieces
Speaker 1: of graphine and some chamber or not graphing graphite and
Speaker 1: uh and that causes like these little pieces of soot
Speaker 1: to come off that that have carbon nanotubes in them,
Speaker 1: and you can collect them. I mean it's it's a
Speaker 1: tiny scale operation. Sure, Yeah, and also there's the problem
Speaker 1: where they cause cancer a lot um in it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's worse than asbestos when they get into year lungs.
Speaker 1: Never breathing carbon nanotubes if you can avoid it, it's
Speaker 1: a it's it's thought that perhaps um a lot of
Speaker 1: the air pollution UM diseases that are caused are caused
Speaker 1: by carbon nanotubes from naturally occurring processes. Right well, I
Speaker 1: would also go ahead and say that that while that's
Speaker 1: a limiting factor right now, one of the wonderful things
Speaker 1: about technology is that if we see that there's the
Speaker 1: potential for a really transformative material out there, it gives
Speaker 1: lots of companies the incentive to find new and better
Speaker 1: processes for producing it. I mean, otherwise, we wouldn't even
Speaker 1: have microprocessors because transistors were really hard to make. As
Speaker 1: we've said many times before, this is not a statement
Speaker 1: of don't try, no, no, it's just one of those
Speaker 1: things how hard it is right now, exactly right now,
Speaker 1: right now. Space elevators are a super cool idea. There
Speaker 1: is no way we could start building one right away,
Speaker 1: like well, we just we're just not the air the
Speaker 1: to be clear, the tether is like that the climber
Speaker 1: were pretty good on right. Yeah, yeah, I mean we
Speaker 1: there's still the question of how you deliver the energy
Speaker 1: to it. The most common answer I see to that
Speaker 1: is that the climbers, the pods themselves would have solar
Speaker 1: panels on one side to help collect solar energy and
Speaker 1: use that or generating electricity. And also they would have
Speaker 1: sensors that you would aim lasers at, and the lasers
Speaker 1: would provide the energy necessary to convert into the electricity
Speaker 1: it would need to climb the ribbon. So, uh neither
Speaker 1: of those things are impossible. Obviously, we have solar panels,
Speaker 1: and we can do things like that with lasers. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are other people who say that you could use
Speaker 1: microwaves instead of lasers, but I mean, these are the
Speaker 1: various ways that we could use to power the thing.
Speaker 1: All of that is not just in theoretical. We could
Speaker 1: build that. We just don't have anything for it to climb,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of a problem. And climbing infrastructure is
Speaker 1: clearly the hardest part. And uh so it's not just
Speaker 1: how difficult it is to make the material for the tether,
Speaker 1: but it's also even if we had the super strong
Speaker 1: material actually implementing it. And I'm talking about having this
Speaker 1: tether stretching from the Earth to space without the force
Speaker 1: like the Coriolis force that would be caused by the
Speaker 1: spinning of the Earth um that would create drag on
Speaker 1: the tether or on the climber um that could cause
Speaker 1: these dreadful bends in the tether, which is another another issue,
Speaker 1: another reason why people say carbonano tubes are a bad
Speaker 1: idea because while it can be very strong if you're
Speaker 1: pulling on it, if you were to push it in
Speaker 1: any way, if you were to insert a bend, that's
Speaker 1: where things you start running into problems. And then there's
Speaker 1: then there's this issue of apparently space right outside the
Speaker 1: Earth's atmosphere is kind of a junkyard. Yeah, we've left
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff up there as we've gone exploring,
Speaker 1: and uh, because of the speed with which things fly
Speaker 1: around the Earth, they gather ma massive kinetic energy. Even
Speaker 1: just a tiny little paint chip in orbit if it
Speaker 1: hits you going you know how many however many thousands
Speaker 1: of miles per hour something in orbit like that is
Speaker 1: going that it's a huge impact, even if it has
Speaker 1: almost no mass, because momentum is mass times you know,
Speaker 1: the force the speed. So if your speed is really
Speaker 1: high and your mass is really low, it's still a
Speaker 1: big impact. So we'd have all this story about having
Speaker 1: something stretching from the Earth into space is a liability.
Speaker 1: If something hits it, it could very well sever it.
Speaker 1: Well if it if it only damages that. The answer
Speaker 1: I've seen to that is that every space elevator would
Speaker 1: have as part of the Space elevator repair climbers. So
Speaker 1: these would be climbers that would do regular maintenance on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, climbing up and down the the the
Speaker 1: ribbon and reinforcing it or repairing it. Uh, so that
Speaker 1: those sort of dangers would be minimized. Uh, it's still
Speaker 1: something that you have to be concerned about because if
Speaker 1: it's if it's hitting just right, which you know, let's
Speaker 1: be fair, space is big, so it the odds are low,
Speaker 1: but it's not impossible, you know. If so, if it
Speaker 1: hits it just right, you could still end up with
Speaker 1: a disaster as far as the Space elevator is concerned. Also,
Speaker 1: you do have the you know, unpleasant but not entirely
Speaker 1: unlikely suggestion that um that terrorists would see this, you know,
Speaker 1: sixty two thousand mile long target and say, hey, this
Speaker 1: is a thing that we can mess with right now
Speaker 1: if you're but if you're space elevator, if it's mainly
Speaker 1: used to to move materials around, uh, and if it's
Speaker 1: anchored to something like an asteroid, then you know, it
Speaker 1: would be a huge economic loss. But at least it
Speaker 1: would just be an economic loss, as opposed to if
Speaker 1: if you have a space station on the other end,
Speaker 1: or there are people on transport obviously, then the cost
Speaker 1: is much higher because you're talking about human lives that
Speaker 1: are at risk. Um. Although I guess depending on what
Speaker 1: you can imagine, any attack would be good. No attack
Speaker 1: would be good. I'm saying there's some attacks that are
Speaker 1: by their very nature way worse well. But but but
Speaker 1: also there would be you know, this would probably be
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that global scientific communities would come
Speaker 1: together to work on, and so it would probably be
Speaker 1: very well protected. This is not something that I think
Speaker 1: one nation would be behind. This is something that would
Speaker 1: require a consortium of of nations too, And in fact,
Speaker 1: there are consortiums that are working on this where it's
Speaker 1: you know, European Union, United States, Japan, lots of countries.
Speaker 1: Well that brings me to so, um, we've talked about
Speaker 1: in theory what would it look like, what are the challenges?
Speaker 1: But is anybody doing any work, Like have we designed
Speaker 1: prototypes for this? Well, there are there are lots of
Speaker 1: organizations that are working on the problem, whether or not
Speaker 1: prototypes for things like climbers definitely exist. Yeah, I've seen
Speaker 1: stuff about that, Like they've had contests, um to have
Speaker 1: people design climbers. You know, the question is how fast
Speaker 1: can you get this thing up the tether? Right right?
Speaker 1: In two thousand and twelve, a company called lift port UM,
Speaker 1: which if you happen to look up the how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works article UM how space elevators work. Lift port is
Speaker 1: the main company that we were talking about their their
Speaker 1: concepts for in that article. Um. They just in September
Speaker 1: of two twelve raised over sixty two dollars on Kickstarter
Speaker 1: for building robot climbers on a two kilometer skyboard cable. Um.
Speaker 1: That's that's going to be held aloft by helium balloons
Speaker 1: hypothetically trusted to test stuff out. And then there's the
Speaker 1: International Space Elevator Consortium, which is kind of what I
Speaker 1: was referring to earlier or Isaac as some people may
Speaker 1: know it, that are all about looking into promoting and
Speaker 1: developing space elevator technology, and they make the point that
Speaker 1: kind of like what we had mentioned earlier, especially you, Lauren,
Speaker 1: you brought it up, that there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: we can associate with developing space elevators that could end
Speaker 1: up giving us enormous benefits, and they are not necessarily
Speaker 1: they won't necessarily directly lead to a space elevator, but
Speaker 1: we'll still be able to use that that kind of
Speaker 1: material or technology that we developed in other ways that
Speaker 1: we can't necessarily anticipate right now, and therefore it's a
Speaker 1: valuable process even if ultimately we come to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that a space elevator is not feasible, Because yeah, that's
Speaker 1: our motto around here, right, even if you can't do it,
Speaker 1: you can learn something from it, that's right. Even if
Speaker 1: the only thing you learned is that you can't do it,
Speaker 1: that's still learning something. I mean, it really is. That's
Speaker 1: that's kind of the way science is, um and I
Speaker 1: want to talk a bit about about. All right, So
Speaker 1: let's let's assume we reach a point where we can
Speaker 1: do this. It's all doable, we've built it, it's working,
Speaker 1: and uh, and we can move stuff into space. What
Speaker 1: would this mean We kind of touched on it before.
Speaker 1: We could build things directly in space, not building them
Speaker 1: here on Earth, which allows me to move into my
Speaker 1: rant that I told Lauren I was going to do. Yes,
Speaker 1: that there might There was a documentary that Jonathan has
Speaker 1: seen that came out in two thousand nine, directed by J. J. Abrams,
Speaker 1: the re launch of a beloved franchise called Star Trek
Speaker 1: and uh and this is where I have my rent.
Speaker 1: There is a scene in this movie where, uh, you
Speaker 1: get to see the Starship Enterprise as it's being built.
Speaker 1: This is early, early, early in the movie, and it's
Speaker 1: being built on the surface of the Earth, which makes
Speaker 1: no sense whatsoever. Okay, the Enterprise is not designed to
Speaker 1: fly in atmospheres, so why would you build it on
Speaker 1: the surface of a planet. Anyway, It's going to have
Speaker 1: to withstand stresses that it wouldn't withstand within space, so
Speaker 1: it makes no sense to do it. From that sense,
Speaker 1: Then you have to figure out how to get this
Speaker 1: huge thing out into space. Wouldn't it just be easier
Speaker 1: since there are spaceports orbiting the Earth at this in
Speaker 1: this universe. Wouldn't it be easier to just build the
Speaker 1: whole thing in space in a space doc And that
Speaker 1: way it doesn't have the stresses of being built on
Speaker 1: a planet. You don't have to worry about getting it
Speaker 1: to escape the planet's atmosphere or gravity, and uh, everything's
Speaker 1: really easy to move around. It makes no sense. But
Speaker 1: if you build it in space, you don't get to
Speaker 1: have a little like clan clan workshop sound effects. This
Speaker 1: that's why people's arguments always come back to but it
Speaker 1: looks so cool, like no, no, no, I'm sorry. I
Speaker 1: want you want your clean clang workshop sound effects, just
Speaker 1: like anybody else. When somebody's knocking on the exterior of
Speaker 1: the starship Enterprise, you want to hear the little clean clangs,
Speaker 1: right and and and also I'm sure a politician you know,
Speaker 1: I positive that the politicians kid really wanted something to
Speaker 1: play on while you know, in their backyard. Whether and
Speaker 1: then the skeleton of you know, star class. None of
Speaker 1: this makes sense. The whole reason why we want something
Speaker 1: like talking about this because when the counselor Troy inevitably
Speaker 1: crashes that ship into a planet later, it will have
Speaker 1: been already power tested Uh, your argument is invalid because
Speaker 1: we're talking the original series, not next generation. That's Enterprise
Speaker 1: D you're talking about. I'm talking about seventeen o one,
Speaker 1: not even Enterprise A. Hey, y'all heard about those space elevators,
Speaker 1: So that's why I'm saying though with the space elevator,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons we would want one is because
Speaker 1: we would be able to build things in space directly
Speaker 1: as opposed to having to construct them here on Earth.
Speaker 1: That's a big deal. That is a huge deal because
Speaker 1: it means that we can build things that are just
Speaker 1: meant for travel through space or adjustment to be in space.
Speaker 1: They're never meant to be on a planet that has
Speaker 1: gravity or atmosphere, and that that moves a lot of
Speaker 1: limitations we have. Well, this contrast actually brings up something interesting,
Speaker 1: which is that while so the material science challenges and
Speaker 1: making the tether from Earth are really big, but basically
Speaker 1: from what I've read, we could make a space elevator
Speaker 1: on the Moon. It could be done. That's a lot different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're not the gravity is one sixth that of
Speaker 1: what's on Earth, so you would at least be able
Speaker 1: to take that into account. So if you're talking about
Speaker 1: like hardcore lunar exploration or using the Moon as a
Speaker 1: base for further space exploration, which a lot of people
Speaker 1: think we will because it's easier to launch from the Moon,
Speaker 1: even if you're using rockets and stuff. Um, that that's
Speaker 1: a good possibility, except that, how do you get the
Speaker 1: stuff to the Moon in the first place? You still
Speaker 1: so yeah, so even if you're talking about building things
Speaker 1: into space, you still would have to get the materials
Speaker 1: to the Moon first, unless you could use the material
Speaker 1: on the Moon itself that regularly in some way to
Speaker 1: actually construct useful things for space exploration. If you could,
Speaker 1: If you could use the stuff that's on the Moon
Speaker 1: and use that as raw materials, then designing something like
Speaker 1: a base station on the Moon would be amazing. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: all you've really done and said, Okay, instead of trying
Speaker 1: to get all this huge amount of material into orbit,
Speaker 1: we have to actually get all this huge amount of
Speaker 1: material to the Moon and then from there we'll put
Speaker 1: it on a space elevator and then get into somebody
Speaker 1: wants all that helium three. By the way, what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is that the Starship Enterprise, it makes no sense
Speaker 1: for it to be built on the planet. Okay, no,
Speaker 1: but what what else would a future with space elevators
Speaker 1: look like. I mean, one thing that it almost goes
Speaker 1: without saying it is that it would open the floodgates
Speaker 1: for and colonization down the road, but exploration certainly, like,
Speaker 1: especially if you're talking about unmanned spacecraft, it would make
Speaker 1: it so much easier to launch unmanned spacecraft so that
Speaker 1: you could you know, you wouldn't have to look at
Speaker 1: some company that it's the only company in the world
Speaker 1: that makes these rockets, and therefore you are stuck at
Speaker 1: whatever price it's going to be set there. If you
Speaker 1: had a way of getting stuff up into space without
Speaker 1: having to rely on rockets, then the cost of launching
Speaker 1: a vehicle drops so dramatically that I think we would
Speaker 1: see many more probes being sent out, which is fantastic
Speaker 1: because we've seen uh programs that NASA has has suggested
Speaker 1: be shelved because the costs were so high costs, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the launch cost being a huge part of any missions cost. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were so high that they were canceled. So that's
Speaker 1: really what the future would look like. It would look
Speaker 1: like a lot more space exploration and a lot more
Speaker 1: space elevators. Right, once you've got one up there, exactly,
Speaker 1: it becomes that much easier to build the next one
Speaker 1: and the next one. Um. Yeah, to the point where
Speaker 1: the equator just becomes a hub and there's like spokes
Speaker 1: coming out of it everywhere. Yeah, it turns into like
Speaker 1: a little grass skirt kind of thing. It would be
Speaker 1: like a giant planetary tilta whirl, which is awesome. Now.
Speaker 1: I think it's really an interesting idea, and I really
Speaker 1: think that if we can, if we can master this
Speaker 1: technology and actually make it happen, it will have such
Speaker 1: a dramatic impact on the space exploration industry that it's
Speaker 1: hard to even imagine it right now. Um, but that's
Speaker 1: a big if if we can conquer it, because it's
Speaker 1: the challenges are not you know, they're not trivial. No,
Speaker 1: I want to caution the challenges, but I want it
Speaker 1: so bad. Yeah. Well, I I'm glad that there are
Speaker 1: people who are determined and slash or crazy enough to
Speaker 1: pursue this because it means that again, we are going
Speaker 1: to benefit from this even if it doesn't work, ultimately,
Speaker 1: we will still benefit from the whole process. So uh,
Speaker 1: that's really what I would leave off with saying that
Speaker 1: no matter what things are going to we're gonna learn
Speaker 1: stuff and we're going to benefit from this, uh this process,
Speaker 1: even if it ultimately doesn't work. Research is winning, Knowledge
Speaker 1: is power, and knowing is half the battle and etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: All right, well, that wraps up this episode Forward Thinking.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed it. Remember you can get
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