Soon, flying into space on rockets will seem as eccentric as traveling long distances in a sleeping car. Of course, the rockets will be preserved for long flights - for example, to other planets - but we will get to orbit exclusively by elevator. The starting point will be a giant floating platform at the equator, from where passengers will be picked up by an elevator, which will take off into the sky at a speed of about 2000 km / h. The first stop will be a space platform, where passengers will already feel weightlessness. It will hang in space at an altitude of about 35,000 km above Earth's level. The structure will be balanced by an asteroid, which is still about 10,000 km away. We just sketched out the idea of a space elevator.
Many generations of earthlings dreamed of a tower that goes into the sky. The most famous such project is the Tower of Babel, immortalized in the Bible. And the space elevator was invented by the Leningrad engineer Yuri Artsutanov. He described his project in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper on July 31, 1960. The article was called "Into Space on an Electric Locomotive." But the idea gained worldwide fame in 1978, with the release of Arthur Clarke's novel "Fountains of Paradise". In the preface to the Russian edition of the novel in the journal Technics for Youth, Clark acknowledged the primacy of the Soviet scientist. Today, when the space elevator has ceased to be science fiction and moved to the category of promising projects, it is interesting to compare how Clarke imagined the elevator and how modern scientists and engineers see it.
Weight management
Clarke considered the main challenge to be making a material strong enough to withstand the entire structure. He invented a super strong "pseudo one-dimensional diamond crystal". Its hero, engineer Morgan, says: “This is the result of 200 years of development in solid state physics - a pseudo-one-dimensional diamond crystal. True, this is not absolutely pure carbon, there are dosed microinclusions of some elements. Mass production of such threads is possible only in orbital industrial complexes, where there is no gravity that interferes with crystal growth."
Modern scientists are racking their brains over the same problem. A tower made of steel will not support its own weight at a height of about 5 km, from aluminum - 15 km, from a compound of carbon and epoxy resin - 115 km, etc. The main problem when working with such materials is that they resist stretching much better rather than compression. This is well known to the builders of skyscrapers, and their experience suggests a solution: the structure needs to be compressed, while the materials holding it in place will constantly experience tensile forces.
Floating super tower
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Where to place the base of the tower is also a serious problem. Obviously, the location should be at the equator. However, there are many other, often mutually exclusive, factors: the terrain should be mountainous, but seismic activity should be low, hurricanes and strong winds are unacceptable there. An additional problem is that there is very little land on the equator. Clarke made an excellent choice: the island of Taprobani, which he invented, is almost identical to his beloved island of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), satisfies almost all parameters. True, he had to double the height of the Sacred Mountain, making it five kilometers long. The modern approach is more flexible - it is supposed to create a floating platform. This has a number of advantages: you can build anywhere on the equator, not just where there is land,if necessary, the location of the structure can be adjusted, etc.
Into space for a few dollars
Clark's elevator was a structure based on four belts, very thin, 5 cm wide, which were attached to the top of the mountain on Taprobani Island at an altitude of 5 km. Now it is assumed that the base of the elevator will be a tower 20 km high, to the top of which a space cable will be attached.
Otherwise, Clark's description is quite modern. “The capsules for passengers, cargo and fuel will move up and down the pipes at a speed of several hundred kilometers per hour. Since 90% of the energy will be returned to the system, the cost of transporting one passenger will not exceed a few dollars. Indeed, when a capsule descends to Earth, its electric motors act as magnetic brakes that generate electricity.
Unlike spacecraft, such a capsule does not consume energy to heat the atmosphere and create shock waves; its energy will return to the system. Electric trains going down will help trains going up. By the most conservative estimates, an elevator is a hundred times more economical than any rocket."
We will live
In full accordance with what is described in the novel, today there is an army of skeptics. However, optimists argue that the Egyptian pyramids are more massive than the proposed structure, and its length is significantly less than the total length of American highways.
The topic of the elevator constantly attracts the attention of scientists. A famous event is the Seattle, Washington conference, hosted by High Lift Systems many years ago. Behind her is NASA, which has invested more than $ 500 million in the project. The estimated cost of such a project was then estimated at $ 10 billion.