spaceflight, 1 year ago

#ScientificAmerican 📆 November 25, 2022 Stephen Cohen has been working on #SpaceElevators 🚠 for almost 20 years. He believes they will exist soon— in two or three decades. To build it, we need a #material whose specific strength 💪 is about 50 times higher than #steel https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/space-elevators-are-less-sci-fi-than-you-think

#SpaceElevator

spaceflight, 1 year ago

Promising material for a #SpaceElevator 🚠 : #Graphene in the form of a nearly transparent (to visible light) one #atom ⚛️ thick sheet. It is hundreds of times stronger 💪 than most #steels by weight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-layer_materials#C:_graphene_and_graphyne

The invisibility 🔬 of the two-dimensional material structure was a problem for #quality assurance, now tackled by the #Universities of #Amsterdam, #NewYork and the #Spanish National Research Council (#CSIC) 📆 18 March 2023 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37222-4

Also see the @isecdotorg International #SpaceElevator Consortium FAQ https://www.isec.org/faq

Picture : :ccby: :cc_sa: Graphene structure https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graphen.jpg

NovemberMan, 8 months ago

@spaceflight 👍👍

astrodad, 4 months ago

@spaceflight It's still going to be sci-fi for a loooong time. Need to get that high-strength cabling, and so far all that is "could be used" or "promising", but we're still talking about a strutcture that's 55-65,000km long. Plus all the ground anchoring, inertial control on the counterweight. It's a huge project, likely bigger (+$) than the moonbase itself.

This spreadsheet is a little old but may be useful if someone wants to throw in some numbers:
https://www.spaceelevatorblog.com/?page_id=968

spaceflight, 4 months ago

@astrodad as of 2005 "Lunar space elevators are twice the length of the Earth space elevator, but because of the Moon’s much smaller mass they can be constructed of existing materials. In addition, there are few satellites in lunar orbit, no man-made #debris, and fewer #meteoroids are expected." https://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/1032Pearson.pdf

NovemberMan, 8 months ago

@spaceflight 👍 so cool 👍