• grahamja@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      I also am under the assumption that no material exists that could be stacked tall enough to build a space elevator.

      • seaQueue@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You’d want tensile strength rather than compressive. The trick is to anchor a counterweight out beyond your target distance and let it pull the weight of the cable up rather than building a tower. Think of swinging a ball on a string rather than building a skyscraper. Assuming a sufficiently sized counterweight you can support the weight of the anchoring cable plus whatever else you want to hang off of it (space dock, elevator terminus, etc.)

      • crystalmerchant@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        stacked tall enough…? The space elevator concept is a geostationary node orbiting earth directly above a fixed point, with cables running between them. Not a gigantic skyscraper up into the sky. What am I missing?

        • Cosmicomical@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          You probably haven’t read 3001: the final odissey, in any case i think most ideas of space elevators are not like a lift, they are more like skyscrapers indeed.
          Edit: i might be very wrong though, i’m not up to date on this

      • Heggico@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If you build it tall enough, centrifugal force will start pulling on it. Building it that way though… But yeah. Doubt the right material exist atm.

    • seaQueue@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m thinking we’re going to want either really big spiders or a whole lot of goats now that we’ve spliced the spider silk genes into goats milk.