Re: New (?) take on orbital elevators (perhaps dumb!)
- From: Mike Williams <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 11:11:50 +0100
Wasn't it Richard Burke who wrote:
Actually, like my helicopter rotor analogy, I was assuming the structure
would rotate, and that the ends would necessarily be going at or near
orbital velocity...
Don't the ends have to move faster than orbital velocity? If the ends
move at less than orbital velocity then the rotor blade is in
compression. I can't imagine a 300 kilometre rotor that wouldn't buckle
under compression.
One big snag is that if the ends are moving at near orbital speed, and
the rotor is only a few hundred kilometres long, then there's going to
be some part of the rotor that's moving at a significant percentage of
orbital speed through atmosphere. That's going to cause drag, so you
have to keep adding energy to the system to keep it going.
Also, the friction from moving through the atmosphere at near orbital
speed is going to cause heating. So you need a material that copes with
such heating, and doesn't need to be replaced quite as often as the
tiles on a NASA Shuttle heat shield.
--
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure
.
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