What is it with Japan and Orbital Elevators? The represent more in their fiction, both science fiction and even fantasy, than any other cultures fictional works.
What is it with Japan and Orbital Elevators? The represent more in their fiction, both science fiction and even fantasy...
Gabriel Mitchell
Other urls found in this thread:
en.wikipedia.org
twitter.com
Aaron Powell
Japan just overall seems to like megastructures like space elevators and space colonies more than the west does in scifi. This isn't to say that they don't exist elsewhere, but Japan really takes the idea and loves to run with it.
I have to assume its a cultural thing, like their cultural approach to the topic of infrastructure or something.
Chase Bell
Well, they always seem to end up in Tokyo Bay when the story is Japan centric, or near the equator. Pirel is an odd one out with it being in Kansas City. And yes, thats the other thing notice much. A big hardon for megastructures. The West only seems to show it in Star Wars and to light degree Trek with some outliers. Do you think it IS optimism or just expanding on Western ideas?
Isaiah Parker
ironically an orbital elevator built in japan would be a terrible idea because of the earthquakes and shifting plates
Lucas Morgan
Best place to put one? Sri Lanka sounds decent.
Grayson White
Those would be less of an issue for an orbital elevator in japan than just the latitude. There are a number of factors that are really difficult to manage related to the orbiting side's orbit and the axial tilt of the earth. Those factors are worse the farther from the equator you are, they are still a bitch and a half at the equator.
Logan Garcia
well ideally you want it built right on the equator and there are surprisingly few geologically stable regions along that line. middle of africa or the pacific (if youre willing to build on the seafloor) would be your best bet. bottom line is it would never last forever because plates are always shifting and youd get away from the equator eventually
Julian Martin
japs are ant people so it makes sense that theyd like megaprojects where they all get together and build a big anthill
Aaron Ortiz
Fun fact: the math has been done, and current materials are sufficient to construct and maintain a ring-type orbital tether (single-point elevators remain laughably impossible). Unfortunately, the need to hug the equator and the spacing of the tethers demand that African and South American nations host the dry-land infrastructure, which of course would be a tremendous asset of influence. No current power wants to live in a world where places like Congo can put up spy satellites on the cheap, so it'll never be permitted to happen.
Lucas Smith
why not make a huge pyramid that leads to space? seems safer than building a straight tower
Isaac Price
They're in Brazil, the pacific, and Africa in 00
Camden Hughes
they're cool
requires way more resources
Noah Phillips
It's not a tower though. It's a cable that is being pulled up and not down.
Nicholas Bailey
Because hyperstructures are an even bigger bitch tham mega. In short, its 5000-7000 years too early for that.
Adrian Allen
There are still fuck massive engineering problems with it besides the political ones, just in the realm of vague possibility instead of Hope We Invent Vibranium
(Rotten luck we evolved on a planet large enough where we couldn't build a space elevator with kelvar)
Josiah Barnes
You fell for the meme. Kelvar is, in fact, sufficient.
Gavin Wright
For a single-point elevator?
Ayden Thompson
Oh god no, I was talking about a distributed ring structure. Single-point is mega impossible.
Charles Walker
niggers need to all go read Fountains of Paradise.
Robert Diaz
a made-man ring the circumference of GTO seems like an even bigger pipe dream to me to be honest desu
Blake James
You’d probably start seriously messing up the crust in that area, even if you could amass all the ressources required to build that humongous mountain.
William Hill
It is
Carson Young
A single point elevator is actually a reverse tower, the anchor (all the mass) is in space! And it would in fact be a pyramid, with the most surface area at the anchor in space and tapering off as you reach the earth.
(As I understand it. physics user please confirm im not retarded)
Ayden Perez
Like New Mombasa, say
Noah Watson
Yes it would require a taper. What I’m wondering is if there ever were proper simulations conducted for a fuckhuge wire like that or it’s all backed by fuzzy napkin math. I would think tidal forces from the moon could create wonky behaviour on such a long cable.
Joseph Ramirez
Wiki has whole section about it, it's an interesting read.