Patent filed fo 20km space launch tower
- Thread starter Greebo
- Start date
Did you read the article?
"The tower would be 9 miles tall—12 miles above sea-level at the peak when built atop a 3-mile high mountain."
12 miles is 19.xx Km so near enough.
But as people have said pipe dream.
Yes. But why would a company bother to invest in a resort there given how dangerous it is.
Goofy is on it...
same reason you can take a tour of Pripyat, theres a gift shop at cape Canaveral and airports aren't hardened bunkers.
risk is limited.
Soldato
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- 18 Oct 2012
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Very interesting but where does it say no tether to the ground is necessary!?
If its long enough the weight of the top of it in orbit (being sustained by the earths rotation) would hold up the bottom, same idea as geostationary orbit but tethered to the ground.
Think swinging a rock on a bit of string, only the rock is a space station.
Difficulty is the orbit distance required is massive (given you need a 24 hour orbit) and the iss orbit is under an hour, cant recall the distance but 3500km bouncing around my head for some reason (disclaimer thats definately not accurate or even vaguely right)
The material is the main issue as the tension in the "string" would be massive even considering just its own weight let alone orbital and atmospheric factors. I doubt even carbon nanotubes have the strength to weight to cut it.
You should patent that before NASA steals it.
The risks at an airport isn't the same as at a rocket launch pad.
They aren't talking about visits to the launch pad, they are talking about building hotels in the same structure they are launched from.
The Cape Canaveral shop is 7 miles away from the launch pad. There's a difference between placing hotels/shops 7 miles across land from the pad, and have them 7 miles below the pad, where an explosion and flaming debris is more likely to cause an issue.
yeah but you don't tend to fill the shops etc with people on the launch day do you?
fiery explosions and death?
Correct, but the property is still there.
+ Noise.
But they aren't on the same level, rockets are statistically more likely to fail and explode than traditional aircraft, and when they do, the damage done by igniting a few 100,000 gallons of liquid oxygen+hydrogen is greater than 50,000 gallons of jet fuel. Airports aren't evacuated during take-offs, rocket launch pads are evacuated.
Soldato
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- Derbyshire
BRB, off to build a bungalow on top of Everest so it is tallest building in the world
.It is still a 9 mile high structure!
