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And I thought *I* had too much free time on my hands...

So is this object heavy enough to rip through the ground? If not, we'll blow up the ground around it!

Cool... I just cant wait to see this thing...

Not in the mood to argue, i just think itll happen.

Okay, to put it simply, it's a satellite orbitting the Earth, with one end actually touching the earth and the other end opening off into space. So no, blowing the supports on the ground (after it's completed) would not make it fall and smash into the ground.

The idea was explored by Arthur C. Clarke in the book "The Fountains of Paradise". Quite a good book actually, but then again, I enjoy Clarke's style of writing, so it could be just me. Of course, to push this idea even further into the future...

How about multiple elevators going up from the earth, like spokes on a wheel, that connects to a huge ring space station around earth at geostationary orbit? Now THAT would be a really big achievement. Of course, to accomplish this would require engineering beyond our grasp. Today anyways...who knows in a century or so?

If the elevator fell, it is so high in the sky (reaching into space) that a very large percent of it would burn up in the atmosphere.
If however you assume there is no atmosphere to burn it up, and assume that something 100 gigapascals isn't too tough not to break after that greath of a fall, the nano-tube w/e thing would rap around the earth at least twice, if not three times (I can't remember the distance around the earth).


What do pascals measure again? Because last I checked, steel is more hard, and more durable than diamond.


That's because many of the meteors and meteorites burn up going through the atmosphere. You're memory (or knowledge) Is wrong. Meteorites make it through the atmosphere quite often actually... And you'd be shocked at the number of meteorites and meteors that hit the atmosphere. What was made that was 69 giga-pascals strong?

ROFL, Diamond is currently the hardest, and most durable with highest viscosity non-manmade material on earth.

Ugh, what don't you understand that it won't fall like a tall tower? If it's center of mass is in geostationary orbit, it'll just float there in orbit.

Diamond is harder than steel. Grade 4 Science.

Diamond is the hardest material known to man. Currently anyways, I think there've been a few man-made diamonds that are harder that was produced in laboratories.

Durability is a subjective term. On one hand, you probably won't be able to scratch a diamond - you'd need another diamond. However, diamonds can shatter more easiliy than steel - it's far more brittle. So depending on your application, steel could work better than diamond.

Diamonds cannot shatter more easily then steel.

Steel is just a large sheet of molecules which if a section of it is removed by an outside force, say a large weight ont op of it, the sheet of steel will still be as strong because it's molecular structure is made by interlocking rings of diamond shape molecules.
On the contrary, a diamond is a tetrahedron which means it is composed of triangular prisms. If one prism is broken, then the whole system fails.

How much force an object can take isn't determined by how hard it is, it's determined by it's Molecular Structure.

Strenght is how much force an object can take before collapsing, hardness is when an objects scratches anothor objects.



A diamond can't have viscosity becasue viscosity is a measurement of the stress that a liquid can take before it deforms.



It wouldn't burn up in the atmosphere because it is desinged to go through the atmoshpere, meaning that it can easily withstand the heat.



A pascal is the amount of newtons of force per square meter.



As said in the article, it will be in a movable ocean platform at sea. It will also have a very low amount of force on that platform because of the centrifugal force exerted on the tower making it want to fly out into space.



It wouldn't be so far away actually. If we can build one tower, we can build several more for sure. Now to build a ring space station around them, or better said through them, would require lots of man-power but it could be done.

Also, if it was that big, they would probably build it like they did the WTC, so it'll implode instead of just fall down, it'll collapse upon itself.

This'll be cool when it comes, but I don't think I'll ever ride it. 100,00 KM in the air is a little too much for me. Hell, about a story is too high for me :/

The fact that it probably won't fall in the first place and just float there means that it wouldn't even burn up.

It will probably stay stationary. Meaning within a kilometer or so. However, there is a slight engineering challenge of braving the storms of the ocean. Hurricanes/typhoons tend to wreck engineering projects when it's being constructed, especially ambitious ones like the space elevator. After it's built and "anchored", it probably won't be effected as much - I assume that the design will allow it to weather such storms easily.

From what is stated in Fountains of Paradise, it is the first tower that is the hardest to make if we do th spokes & wheel idea. Once one tower is established and stable, the construction of the other towers would be able to be supported by the first tower. Of course, the amount of material needed is...well, a lot. However, probably only the shaft and supports would be made of carbon nanotubes, the "skin", and probably even the station would probably be made of steel.


Now, I say that hopefully, something like this will start within my lifetime. Knowing how freaking stupid the human race is, probably not, as we'd kill ourselves before that, but hey, I can hope, right?

EDIT:

Don't worry, halfway up the full length of the elevator, you'd find it difficult coming down, as you'd be flying out into space.

Bleh, who cares about rock climbing upwards, when you can space climb downwards!

This is definately an interesting idea. Carbon has always been the interesting substance.

There's no way in hell we're gonna have this up by 2020. I say add at LEAST another 10 years to it. But if this were to work, it wouldn't be all that great. We should solve more of our problems first, before we start heading out into space infesting people with our current bullshit problems.

I'll condense this for some of you. A chile is 500 scoville units. A habanero is 5,000 scoville units. If this nanotube was a pepper, it would be 500,000 scoville units.
The chile pepper symbolizes the steel, the habanero sybolizes the diamond.
Which leads me to the question, if the material is that strong, why don't they use it in war?

For some reason I find that sentence hillarious. lol

Money probably - they're expensive, and we can't mass produce them yet. We can't make really long tube of the stuff today. Say, a decade or so before we start seeing widespread use of it when someone figures out how to manufacture the stuff en masse.

Go take a 3 pound sledge hammer and wail on a piece of steel about a centimeter thick. I guarantee you'll only go as far as to bend it. Do that to a diamond and it goes bye bye very fast. Honestly, if you know about molecular structures and not just what people say then you wouldn't be trying to promote diamonds as super structures.

He says they are just made from carbon and a magnet, sounds less expensive than a pistol.

It's a whole different story if you try to stab the two.
So it might make a good chain mail or something. lol

Look, if we can only produce a few centimeters of the stuff at a time, it ain't gonna help us build a 100,000 kilometer high tower. Maybe extruding it with polycarbonate (aka Lexan or bulletproof "glass") would make it work, but I don't know the material properties of such an extrusion. Polycarbonate is quite an amazing material - just take a 1/2" thick piece of it, place it between two bricks, and slam at it repeatedly with a 20 lb sledgehammer. The damn thing doesn't even bend (well, permanently - it pops back almost instantly), though it scratches very easily.
...you do realize that if you slam both of them at really high speeds, the diamond shatters, right? Even if it is a stabbing motion. However, you can somewhat slowly cut through the steel with the diamond, because the diamond is harder. That's why they use diamonds in cutting tools.

Oh, just a clarification, by "really high speeds", I mean as in bullet-type speeds.

If you don't know what you're talking about don't post. Please

It aint gonna work

People are just in love with their post counts or mineral accumulations

He IS right, I suggest you try to learn from that message you just posted.

You cant use diamonds, or that super material as armor or chainmail, jet_blast. Just think about it. TOO hard.


We arent knights.

Knights of the Round Table? Do we sing and dance?

Honestly, the only reason we haven't tried this is because humanity is lazier than shit.

First of all, we're discussing the material to make the elevator, which happens to have driffted to diamond vs. steel.

Second of all, it can only be cut and scratched by itself. I can be broken by many other things. Try a sledgehammer, or some heavy, blunt object. Concrete and hard metals work quite well.

Negative. Take a chunk of diamond and keep rubbing it hard on cement or dry asphalt, it'll get more scratches then you can think of.