Space Elevator Planned for the Moon

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
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Umm, top floor please. Are you ready to go to the moon…..in an elevator? We’ve heard the plans before from different concerns around the world, but this one is a bit different: it’s a Kickstarter project. The Liftport Group is aiming at raising up to $800m to get the project off the ground, so to speak. :D

"Using our models, we believe we can build a LSEI [Lunar Space Elevator Infrastructure] that can transport three dozen people to the Moon per year, before this decade is out."
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Wow.. who would ever have though Kickstarter would be used to help fund R&D on a space elevator to the Moon.
 
oh good fucking hell, a kickstarter project? This will be interesting to watch, if anything see how many people "promise" to donate crazy amounts of money (that they don't have)
 
If they can't post a video with synced audio, how do they expect to get to the moon.
 
riot8ap said:
Isn't the distance to the moon variable?
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Yes it is. The furthest distance is known as "apogee" and the closest is called "perigee". Plus the Moon is slowly moving farther and farther away from the Earth every year (but only by fractional amounts).
 
The $10,000 Pledge made me laugh :

THREE WISHES: We’re going to have a long conversation. In person. Probably several. When you feel you’ve heard enough, you may ask me for three wishes… and like a genie, if it is within my power to grant, I’ll do it. Is this a gamble? Yes, I’m gambling a lot! Is this a gamble for you? Not hardly. I know I’ve got lots and lots of stuff worth this price. But this is a value for value exchange; I’m not giving you control of the project, or all of our intellectual property or something else that is way out of proportion. It’s a trade; I’ll give you something worthy of the price you are paying.
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Lol.
 
....Many people were scammed and the CEO lived happily ever after on a big pile of money.

The end.
 
riot8ap said:
Isn't the distance to the moon variable?
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Yes. This is a scam. Besides, we don't need an elevator to the moon. We need an elevator to space. Getting off the planet is the hard part. Once you are in space, getting to the moon is easy.

This is so stupid. It's like believing that the king of Americuh has left certain monetary funds available to your family. However, you must send a blank check to the Congo care of Metuba Fussey in order for the King of Amerika to know that you are serious.:D
 
best bet would be to just do a elevator to ORBIT...then

take people from ground to orbit, then go from orbit to moon in a rocket/shuttle.

i'm thinking if i remember correctly around the equator is the best place for one. say near the galapagos island/new ginea/indonesia
 
Wasn't a concept such as this shot down because of two things:
  1. Materials. The cable necessary for this needs to be very strong. Carbon nanotubes is probably the best material with a theoretical breaking length of around 5000-6000 km. However, such material has not been able to be mass produced even cheaply enough.
  2. Costs. I think the last thing I've read was that these would skyrocket into the hundreds of billions of dollars, possibly low trillions. That's including R&D costs plus research into cable materials.
A Kickstarter project might help them get to the 60 mile altitude but beyond that, it will most definitely need outside funding-- private and public from different institutions and countries.

And, to get any further, they'd have to look into getting exotic materials such as carbon nanotubes necessary for LEO (low earth orbit) or geostationary orbit to be mass produced and cost effective.
 
octoberasian said:
Wasn't a concept such as this shot down because of two things:
  1. Materials. The cable necessary for this needs to be very strong. Carbon nanotubes is probably the best material with a theoretical breaking length of around 5000-6000 km. However, such material has not been able to be mass produced even cheaply enough.
  2. Costs. I think the last thing I've read was that these would skyrocket into the hundreds of billions of dollars, possibly low trillions. That's including R&D costs plus research into cable materials.
A Kickstarter project might help them get to the 60 mile altitude but beyond that, it will most definitely need outside funding-- private and public from different institutions and countries.

And, to get any further, they'd have to look into getting exotic materials such as carbon nanotubes necessary for LEO (low earth orbit) or geostationary orbit to be mass produced and cost effective.
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Carbon Nanotubes will be the way to make a true space elevator possible but the issue with nanotubes is mass production right now. Once that issue is solved we'll have one up within 10-15 years if the funding is there.

This project is truly in the infancy stages right now. People can mock it all they want but the goal is ambitious and interesting.
 
If you read through the kick starter you'll see this isn't for the actual elevator. It's to do preliminary experiments in preparation for building both an Earth based elevator to get us to space and a lunar based elevator to get us the rest of the way. They aren't promising they'll be dropping people off on the moon within the year. They state it's basically a decade long plan that requires several large steps to occur before building even has a chance of occuring.

It's great to postulate how this might work but stop bashing on something you haven't even read through. I hope the project is successful since NASA is getting cut more and more we need private individuals to find ways to push the limits.
 
Though this would be great, Kickstarter is probably the silliest way to go about this..,Amazon would get $40,000,000 via the 5% payment charges...is there even 800m people who view kickstarter?

I'm guessing they're doing this for publicity, so that investors with more money will know about it.
 
Space elevators will be nice as a cost effective alternative to launching rockets into LEO or geostationary orbit. From there, a station tethered at the other end can have ships docked there to ferry them beyond Earth or the Moon.

It's cheaper than using chemical based rockets or solid boosters, well, after the initial costs of building the elevator itself. To put it into perspective, the SpaceX Falcon Heavy will cost $128 million dollars US for any payload above 6.4 tons to geostationary orbit (GTO). But, costs add up over time and launches can't be done each day or each month, because they have to be planned ahead of time. A space elevator would have one initial upfront cost-- the construction of the elevator-- and subsequent fees for ferrying items into space based on weight and such. And, cargo lifts can be done more frequently thus bringing costs down further.

Ambitious goal as you say, GM, but it's worth an investment to start a basis for it.

If they can get this to reach the limits of space around 60 miles up, that'll be great. All that's left is getting higher than that, and that'll take more years of research and allow carbon nanotubes to be more cost effective. Ten to 15 years from now is a good estimate.
 
I'm only concerned about what muzak will be playing in the elevator as you're traversing space. It's a long way to the moon and I'd hate to be stuck with pops from the 80s/90s the whole way. Maybe that can be the $10K donation prize wish (pick your own).
 
renixinq said:
It's great to postulate how this might work but stop bashing on something you haven't even read through. I hope the project is successful since NASA is getting cut more and more we need private individuals to find ways to push the limits.
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C'mon now, it's the new [H]. You don't really expect people to read past Steve's click inducing headlines do you, let alone RTFA? :cool::rolleyes:;):):D

And yes that $10k Donation text is hilarious.
 
DeathPrincess said:
Though this would be great, Kickstarter is probably the silliest way to go about this..,Amazon would get $40,000,000 via the 5% payment charges...is there even 800m people who view kickstarter?

I'm guessing they're doing this for publicity, so that investors with more money will know about it.
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Maybe I am reading it wrong, but it looks like they are asking for $8,000?

$800 million would be the cost of a fully realized and executed project.
 
XamediX said:
C'mon now, it's the new [H]. You don't really expect people to read past Steve's click inducing headlines do you, let alone RTFA? :cool::rolleyes:;):):D

And yes that $10k Donation text is hilarious.
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Actually, Al posted this time.
 
I suppose there is no point in asking what are you are going to do when you get there.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Maybe I am reading it wrong, but it looks like they are asking for $8,000?

$800 million would be the cost of a fully realized and executed project.
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They are, but the point was that the way Kickstarter works, via Amazon payments, they'd lose 5%. At that proposed goal, they be losing $40m, so Kickstarter isn't really an efficient system..
 
DW-UK said:
I suppose there is no point in asking what are you are going to do when you get there.
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That's easy! You'll inhale bottled air and maybe gawk at the Earth through a telescope. (I'm keeping my curtains drawn after this happens because of peeping toms who will watch me make pancakes and feed my cat!)
 
Space tethers have a big problem with electric generation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrodynamic_tether

This at first seems like a good thing, until you realize that they convert kinetic energy to electric energy in the process, producing a huge amount of drag on the tether (requiring it to be very strong) and potentially slowing the rotational speed of the earth, or the orbital speed of the moon.

Not to mention that this seems like a stretch to begin with.

If they had started small, maybe with an elevator to stationary orbit, that would be more believable, but even so, a stretch.
 
DeathPrincess said:
They are, but the point was that the way Kickstarter works, via Amazon payments, they'd lose 5%. At that proposed goal, they be losing $40m, so Kickstarter isn't really an efficient system..
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I'd think they would get investors for that goal rather than put it up as a Kickstarter project.
 
Sounds like some Bugs Bunny episode. Marvin the Martian will be waiting at the top to blast you with his space modulator.
 
PornoSatan said:
Kickstarter is starting to annoy me
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There isn't even a good spoof site of it. :(

But there is an occasional good idea on it, but those are usually already funded and just use it for more advertising. Then there are piles of crap and scams which get lots of funding, and even though they are obviously stupid, people are even more obviously stupid. Like the "pair of glasses that do high quality 1080p HD for $200"...which surprisingly hasn't happened... :D

Just needs one even more overt scam or "expose~" and the "gold rush" will end. Still there is the 1 out of 10000 that is worth looking at.
 
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