Bye bye Space Elevator

wow zeppelins stay up for only a few days... wonder how they did the round the world flights

:-))

>From what I see "something else" will be around and operating before current ideas for space elevators will come around.

Healthy questioning is good, but one must also accept a certain amount without challenging... I think there is not much doubt that balloons have reached 100,000 ft and that the pics shown are "real" .

Oh well, discussing "balloons" is fun but they will either be doing something within a couple of years or not. Short enough time frame to see where these things go.

the gondola or control room seen hanging below the old dirigibles is deceptive, since the payload area was usually inside the airframe, not exterior.

Check out details sometime on the Hindenburg and you you'll see quite a bit of "stuff' including staterooms, salon, and more.

Modern day helium blimps like the advertising ones seen over sporting events etc. are in volume quite small in comparison to the huge dirigibles of old. Still, its pretty amazing to ride in one...

:-))

I'm a long time aficionado of lighter than air vehicles...

From: Robert
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 10:05 PM
Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Bye bye Space Elevator

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, wrote:
>
> have you checked out the website ? seems they have gotten up to
100,000 ft. looks similar to "space" pix at that point...earth
curve, black "sky" ...

yes ive checked it out. ive also checked out a site that had a
photograph of a person on mars. how many starts do you see in the
back ground of that photo
>
> the zeppelin folks talked about aircraft shooting the dirigibles
and noted that the holes were relatively small considering the volume
of the airships...and that was a WHOLE bunch smaller volume than this
2 mile behemoth.

even cross atlantic dirigibles did not stay up more than a few days.
they were also close to the ground so that the difference between the
air density of the hydrogen bags (yes they used flamable hydrogen)
and the dense air did not matter if they lost a little bit. have you
ever noticed how small the "car" was to the dirigible used then.
since they use helium now, its even smaller in compairison
>
> I think the size of the platform has to do with the air density at
that elevation...not a lot of air to provide buoyancy, and by that
same token, not much internal gas to have high pressure to leak out.

the amount of bouyance previded is determined by the difference in
the weight of the gas inside the gas bag, and the same amount of air
it replaces. if there is not much air, it does not matter how much of
a difference there is in the gas (helium compaired to normal air) it
will not be much of a difference, even with a 2 cubic mile balloon.
the size of the gondala will be small, meaning that it will not be
able to carry much fuel to accelerate the payload to orbit speed.
unless it can obtain orbital speed, it cant stay there more than a
matter of months at the best, days more likely.
>
> ISS or space station has to constantly get boosted up because of
drag (even at its altitude) or it will lose position, drop into
higher density air , create more drag and "fall" ... nothing is
permanent... :-))

not even the moon. the thing is that its a matter of how long it will
be there. the ISS will stay there for a year without a boost, and
they are talking about moving it even higher.
>
> I just think since so far space elevators materials are not even on
the horizon, and this IS doable now, that it would be interesting to
consider this more likely as reachable in next 10 years than
anything else I have heard of...
>
like I said. it depends on what you expect it to do. put something up
for a few days or perhaps even a month, with no control over where it
goes to, no problem. put something into orbit, or to a space station,
or to the moon, sorry. the space elevator will be here first. not
unless they come up with a better ion engine.