From: Brent Thomas (bthomas@avatar-intl.com)
Date: Tue Sep 09 2003 - 09:15:48 MDT
"Kevin Freels" megaquark@hotmail.com <mailto:megaquark@hotmail.com>
had questioned the breakage scenario and mentioned a possibility of:
>>Way bad idea. imagine a scenario where a space elevator were placed =
into GEO with an altitude of 36,000 km (22,369 miles). If that happened
= to come loose, seperate, or >>otherwise have a problem with the orbit,
the = entire length would come crashing to Earth wrapping itself almost
= entirely around the planet. (circumference of 24901.55 miles at the
>>equator) This could be rather ugly.
I understand this concern to have been a possibility raised in the early
days of beanstalk engineering and it was addressed in the faq from the
informational site.
(main site at http://www.isr.us/SEHome.asp specific faq at
http://www.isr.us/SEScienceFAQs.asp#2 )
What if it falls?
The majority, the long end out in space, gains enough speed that it
burns up in the atmosphere, with the lower portion falling into the sea.
It will not fall on top of anyone.
Additional breakage theories seem to generally indiate that the
remaining long portion will either be flung free via the earths
rotational momentem or be destroyed on re-entry. I dont think there is
anything to fear here about this concern although more detailed studies
should be part of any such project (perhaps even including a sacrificial
test stalk that is intentionally "brought down" while not yet fully
formed for some "real world" analysis)
Although the initial stalk could be a terror target there are 3 major
things which will operate against this:
1) the location will be somewhere in equatorial waters in a zone which
could be heavily patrolled and controlled. It would take signifigant
resources to penetrate that.
2) the obvious benefits of the structure and the "global" usage it would
provide would tend to limit focus by "special interest" groups as they
would have no specific "owner" to hate
3) After construction of the initial stalk the plan is for additional
stalks (at different locations) to be quickly built. Even if one was
taken out there would be other stalks present and more could be quickly
built.
Check out the site more throughly and have a look at the concepts and
FAQ's (also see specifically
http://www.isr.us/Downloads/niac_pdf/contents.html for some in-depth
analysis performed for NASA) I think you'll find many of your concerns
answered.
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