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Can we build an elevator to space? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know?
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Speaker 1: From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck
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Speaker 1: Bryant and that makes this stuff you shouldn't know? So
0:24
Speaker 1: did you hear Snoop Dogg's son got a football scholarship
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Speaker 1: to I think you see? Yeah? So did h P. Diddes?
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Speaker 1: No way? Yeah? And actually Sean Combs was the first
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Speaker 1: to happen. It was about a month ago, and a
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Speaker 1: lot of people got upset because they were like, we
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Speaker 1: shouldn't you know, be paying for this millionaire multimillionaire son
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Speaker 1: to go to college. I should, But it was all explained.
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Speaker 1: The sports guys came out and really defended and said,
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Speaker 1: it's not you paying for it. It's athletic scholarships that
0:55
Speaker 1: are earned by athletes. And it's as well probably, but
1:01
Speaker 1: it was like, basically, it's not like some kid is
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Speaker 1: missing out on an education because p DDI's son earned
1:07
Speaker 1: a football scholarship, he should be treated the same and
1:09
Speaker 1: so should Snoop Dogg. Sign Where was there an outcry
1:12
Speaker 1: about Snoop Dogg sign. Uh, not as much because he's
1:15
Speaker 1: the g you see. No one likes Puffy going on.
1:20
Speaker 1: I don't understand. He seems like a nice enough guy. Uh,
1:23
Speaker 1: here's friends with Biggie Smalls. I was in his house once.
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Speaker 1: Di'd ever tell you that I had to. I was
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Speaker 1: working on a music video with him and I had
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Speaker 1: to deliver as a p a something to his home
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Speaker 1: in Beverly Hills. And I went to the door and
1:35
Speaker 1: I rang the doorbell and some really large guy in
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Speaker 1: a warm up suit and like a kangol hat invited
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Speaker 1: me in and took my thing and then escorted me out.
1:46
Speaker 1: So I was like in the little fourier and it
1:48
Speaker 1: was like lots of white marble, and I mean it
1:51
Speaker 1: looked it could have been like the King of France
1:54
Speaker 1: living there as far as I know. Yeah, there's like
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Speaker 1: a fountain of rock. It was really like pretty plush.
2:00
Speaker 1: Of course, you know he's rich. But I took your thing.
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Speaker 1: Is that legal? Are you talking about everything above the boards? Oh? Yeah,
2:07
Speaker 1: it was. It was like a video cassettes for the
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Speaker 1: shoot or something like that. I wouldn't be delivering anything illegal. Well,
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Speaker 1: I didn't know if he did something illegal to you
2:15
Speaker 1: by taking your things. You put it. It was all
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Speaker 1: on the up. Good go and Chuck anyway, I haven't
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Speaker 1: been to Snoop's house yet, although I did see him
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Speaker 1: one night in Atlanta. You did, Yeah, I can't tell
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Speaker 1: that story though. He let's hear a part time, doesn't he?
2:29
Speaker 1: I'm used to, I believe. I'm not sure what a
2:32
Speaker 1: weird start for the show. Yeah, it is a little weird,
2:34
Speaker 1: especially since we're talking about space elevators. Has nothing to
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Speaker 1: do with it. This is not like we're talking about
2:39
Speaker 1: like p Funk or George Clinton or something like that,
2:42
Speaker 1: or even Bill Clinton. Although I bet George Clinton could
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Speaker 1: build a space elevator in his mind. You know he
2:48
Speaker 1: has many times. Chuck. Um, Well, I've got I've got something.
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Speaker 1: I have an actual Yeah, it seems kind of stupid, now,
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Speaker 1: let's hear it. Uh well, okay, um five seven am.
3:03
Speaker 1: On July twenty one, two thousand eleven. About a year ago,
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Speaker 1: something big ended, something that really helped with our childhood,
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Speaker 1: like really was an icon of our childhood. I'm not
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Speaker 1: even gonna let you guess. The Space Shuttle. Of course,
3:19
Speaker 1: the program ended. It started in one and it went
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Speaker 1: all the way to two thousand eleven, thirty great years
3:28
Speaker 1: yeah um and uh more missions um. And actually, there's
3:35
Speaker 1: this awesome thing on Gizmoto. It's you can watch all
3:38
Speaker 1: of the Space Shuttle launches at once. It's just like
3:42
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty five little tiles on the screen
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Speaker 1: and it's like, you know, starting from countdown to lift
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Speaker 1: off and like it's got everything. Well, they probably don't
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Speaker 1: have the one ill fated attempt. There were two accidents,
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Speaker 1: one of yeah, it's there, I think I found it,
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Speaker 1: and it just goes dark at about the time the
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Speaker 1: Challenger UM exploded. Yeah. Um, but it was this was
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Speaker 1: a huge deal for our childhood. But it was also
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Speaker 1: you know a huge deal for the space program because
4:10
Speaker 1: when they launched the first shuttle, I think it was Columbia. Um,
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Speaker 1: it was the first time that anyone had ever shot
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Speaker 1: a spacecraft into space and then brought it back intact.
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Speaker 1: Reusable is huge. Yeah, we're not talking like a capsule
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Speaker 1: where like Larry Hagman comes down and splashes into the
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Speaker 1: sea and then gets out, because those capsules weren't reused.
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Speaker 1: This was like we have an appropriately named space shuttle
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Speaker 1: there and back. Basically exactly. It even looked like a plane.
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Speaker 1: So it was a big deal when this happened and
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Speaker 1: it proved like, okay, we can go to space and
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Speaker 1: back using the same equipment. It brought costs down tremendously. Sure,
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Speaker 1: they're still pretty high. Um. And then the Space Shuttle
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Speaker 1: program ends and everybody's like, how are we going to
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Speaker 1: get to space and back? Now, Obama, did you think
4:56
Speaker 1: that's through? And uh, Obama didn't say it, but I'll
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Speaker 1: be was thinking when he was kind of skulking away
5:02
Speaker 1: after being shouted at for basically closing NASA. Not true. Um,
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Speaker 1: he probably thought, have you ever heard of the space elevator? Dummy?
5:13
Speaker 1: You should say that. Yeah. Uh, that's what we're gonna
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Speaker 1: talk about. Josh, and I thought this was a thrilling article.
5:20
Speaker 1: You thought the article itself was thrilling. No, no, no,
5:22
Speaker 1: the concept of the space elevator, well it is. Yeah,
5:25
Speaker 1: the article self was a little it was a little
5:28
Speaker 1: two thousand five. It's all outdated, but it's pretty cool. Um.
5:31
Speaker 1: So you mentioned the Space Shuttle, even though the Space
5:34
Speaker 1: Shuttle took place over the span of what do you say,
5:37
Speaker 1: thirty years? Yeah, anyone to two thousand eleven. The price
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Speaker 1: of getting the thing going didn't change a whole lot,
5:43
Speaker 1: which was pretty remarkable. Yeah, it stayed about ten dollars
5:48
Speaker 1: per pound. Right. And they originally predicted when they were
5:51
Speaker 1: working on the shuttle program before it started, that it
5:54
Speaker 1: was gonna be about fifty million a mission. Yeah. It
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Speaker 1: came to about five million a mission. And every mission
6:01
Speaker 1: they spent half a billion dollars on the shuttle the
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Speaker 1: Shuttle mission. Um. And uh, that ten dollars per pound
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Speaker 1: of that is fuel? Yeah? Is that the per pound
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Speaker 1: of everything on there? Yeah? I think it's just like
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Speaker 1: that kind of equation. So a lighter astronaut would be cheaper.
6:22
Speaker 1: It's really symbolic, I think, yeah. And no, I think
6:24
Speaker 1: it's more like like if you if you take the
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Speaker 1: full weight of this this, yeah, and divided by the
6:31
Speaker 1: money spent. Yes, I get it. So in theory, a
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Speaker 1: lighter astronaut would make it cheaper, but not really not really, um,
6:39
Speaker 1: because I think they had those astronauts like way down
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Speaker 1: to the Graham exactly what they wanted in a way,
6:44
Speaker 1: like they would probably be like, you need to excrete
6:47
Speaker 1: because you're about to suit up, go excrete. You need
6:50
Speaker 1: to p six ounces, right, now i'd be a great
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Speaker 1: astronaut then, because I can be on command? Can you
6:56
Speaker 1: really almost always? Okay, So I've had something for you
7:00
Speaker 1: about six ounces? Um there, have you seen the little
7:04
Speaker 1: diagram of a solo cup? You know the lines on
7:06
Speaker 1: a solo cup. Yes, their measurements. The bottom one is
7:11
Speaker 1: an ounce, the top one so like liquor. Yeah, the
7:15
Speaker 1: the middle one five ounces for wine. And then I'm
7:19
Speaker 1: not kidding that the lowest top band is that's that's
7:27
Speaker 1: twelve ounces for beer. I never knew that that's ingenious.
7:31
Speaker 1: It is. I love little tidbits like that, Like the
7:33
Speaker 1: amount of matches in a matchbook is equal to the
7:36
Speaker 1: amount of cigarettes in a pack. I didn't know that.
7:39
Speaker 1: It makes sense. We should just talk about those things
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Speaker 1: all day instead of space all vators. No, let's talk
7:44
Speaker 1: about space elevator. All right, let's talk about it, um quickly,
7:49
Speaker 1: a space elevator, and we'll we'll get into the specifics here,
7:52
Speaker 1: but what it basically is, it's a ribbon, a carbon
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Speaker 1: nano tube composite ribbon anchored to a plat form offshore
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Speaker 1: way out in the Pacific Ocean, and it's has a
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Speaker 1: counterweight way up in space and they basically would that
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Speaker 1: would be the elevator shaft, and they would send stuff
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Speaker 1: crawling up and down this ribbon. Uh two outer space. Yes,
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Speaker 1: have you ever seen somebody like a piano mover lift
8:21
Speaker 1: the piano through a second story apartment that exceptance space? Yeah,
8:26
Speaker 1: that's pretty much it. I don't like the comparison to
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Speaker 1: the game of tether ball here. I thought it was
8:31
Speaker 1: a terrible, terrible analogy, So let's just skip it because
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Speaker 1: it didn't make much sense to me. Yeah, I think you.
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Speaker 1: I think you said it like, basically, we're connecting a
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Speaker 1: line between a platform in the ocean and the satellite
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Speaker 1: up in space, and we're putting something on it that
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Speaker 1: can go up and down. Yeah, and the whole thing
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Speaker 1: of we should just stop right there. The cool thing
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Speaker 1: about this is to me is that every single part
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Speaker 1: of this is feasible right now to do except for
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Speaker 1: the one thing that they need to do it, which
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Speaker 1: are the carbon nanotubes that go sixty miles into space. Yes,
9:07
Speaker 1: they're around right, but we can't make them that long yet. Right.
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Speaker 1: There's um that's I think I think that's that's a
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Speaker 1: really good point. Like we all of this is just
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Speaker 1: waiting and I saw a little video that Michio Kaku
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Speaker 1: or cucku Um made about this explaining it, and he
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Speaker 1: was saying, like everything's been surmounted now, like now it's
9:27
Speaker 1: all in the realm of physical possibility. There's just a
9:30
Speaker 1: few more breakthroughs. And it's all carbon nanotubes, which are
9:35
Speaker 1: we've talked about graphine before, right, strongest substance known demand
9:39
Speaker 1: or humankind. That's right. Um, it's one atom thick layer
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Speaker 1: of carbon, incredibly strong. It's like a hundred times stronger
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Speaker 1: than steel at about one fifth of the weight. And
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Speaker 1: a carbon nanotube is a layer of graphine rolled into
9:54
Speaker 1: a tube like it looks like chicken wire, exactly like
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Speaker 1: a soccer ball chicken wire. Yeah, it's like like if
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Speaker 1: you spread out a length of chicken wire and then
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Speaker 1: roll it up nanotube. And we say soccer ball because
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Speaker 1: the shape of the traditional soccer ball, not these crazy
10:10
Speaker 1: ones are used in these days. I don't even recognize
10:13
Speaker 1: it as a soccer ball. Yeah, but the old school
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Speaker 1: soccer ball, that shape is the same, the same shape
10:19
Speaker 1: as as these carbon atoms, which is the key to
10:22
Speaker 1: it it's strength. Um. I've been at I've seen it
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Speaker 1: described as um stiff but flexible like a steel guitar string,
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Speaker 1: So it moves, but it's still super super strong and um.
10:35
Speaker 1: Even though it's just a few atoms across, they are
10:39
Speaker 1: ten million times as long as they are wide. Once
10:42
Speaker 1: you get this thing going, so like a guitar string. Yeah, well,
10:46
Speaker 1: because these are nanotubes, so like they're diameters like a
10:49
Speaker 1: few billionths of a meter I think one, is that right? Yeah,
10:53
Speaker 1: because nano is a billion a billion yes, yeah, but
10:58
Speaker 1: so so it's very thin. Um. That's the point. And
11:02
Speaker 1: ultimately I saw that the sixty two thousand mile cable
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Speaker 1: would be It could be as thin as a piece
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Speaker 1: of seran wrap. Yeah, it would still be strong enough
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Speaker 1: to not snatch under its own weight sixty two miles. Like,
11:18
Speaker 1: there's no quality of material outside of this that wouldn't
11:24
Speaker 1: just snap like a hair, like pulling one of your
11:27
Speaker 1: hairs in half. This one will. But the problem is
11:32
Speaker 1: is you don't make carbon nanotubes. You grow them. Yeah.
11:38
Speaker 1: There's a really cool Nova video too on YouTube where
11:41
Speaker 1: it shows a guy in the lab pulling a uh
11:46
Speaker 1: braided forest of carbon nanotubes and he starts pulling it
11:52
Speaker 1: and you see it all like coalescing together, and he
11:55
Speaker 1: gets like ten ft away and then it finally snaps
11:58
Speaker 1: and then it just it's smaller than a human here.
12:01
Speaker 1: It just like floats away almost. Okay, so that's that's
12:04
Speaker 1: longer than I've I've seen. The record that I saw
12:06
Speaker 1: was four centimeters in length. Yeah, well this was ah,
12:11
Speaker 1: I don't think I think it was stretching. I don't
12:13
Speaker 1: think it was the original. Okay, So they they the
12:17
Speaker 1: carbon nanotubes grow and then after like that's the world
12:21
Speaker 1: record four centimeters, which is like one point six inches, right,
12:26
Speaker 1: that's short, and then it just stopped one of the
12:29
Speaker 1: right exactly. One of the problems with them not being
12:33
Speaker 1: able to figure out why it stops growing is that
12:37
Speaker 1: scientists don't know why it grows in the first place.
12:40
Speaker 1: Like they have no idea. They're just like, oh, this
12:42
Speaker 1: happens when you when you do this, um. And they
12:45
Speaker 1: figured out that there are some things like hydrogen gas
12:48
Speaker 1: in certain amounts makes it grow longer. Um. If you
12:52
Speaker 1: do a little too much hydrogen gas, it won't grow
12:54
Speaker 1: at all. So like there's they're they're figuring this out,
12:57
Speaker 1: but they still are really at a point where they're
12:59
Speaker 1: not they don't understand carbon nanotubes at all. They were
13:02
Speaker 1: only officially discovered in which is a blip in the
13:07
Speaker 1: scientific community. But we're making headway. And like you said,
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Speaker 1: once the carbon nanotube technology is able to be made
13:15
Speaker 1: into things that are maybe several meters long, or they
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Speaker 1: can figure out how to basically wrap it smaller pieces
13:22
Speaker 1: together in like you know, how you insulate wires with
13:25
Speaker 1: plastic something like that, without the the alloy coming away.
13:30
Speaker 1: Then we'll be able to make this space ribbon ribbon
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Speaker 1: for the elevator space ribbon, which essentially is going to
13:37
Speaker 1: be like there. They would braid these things together like
13:39
Speaker 1: a rope, correct, yes, which would still be tiny though. Yeah,
13:43
Speaker 1: so it'll either be like you know, several meters in
13:47
Speaker 1: length braided together or really short ones braided together. But
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Speaker 1: either way, they're not just gonna make one continuous sixty
13:52
Speaker 1: two there's sixty two mile strand yeah. The one thing
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Speaker 1: I didn't get though, if it's so small, like it
13:59
Speaker 1: needs to be a certain size to have these lifters
14:04
Speaker 1: attached to it, you know, like it can't be a
14:06
Speaker 1: human hair, right like that? What what could you attach
14:09
Speaker 1: to that they have to gain traction with it? So yeah,
14:13
Speaker 1: there there. It couldn't it couldn't just be as thin
14:15
Speaker 1: as plastic wrap, even though strengthwise it could be. So
14:21
Speaker 1: that's one of the things they're working on, is up.
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Speaker 1: I guess so, because you have to put the lifter
14:27
Speaker 1: on it, like you're saying, so the lifts are all
14:29
Speaker 1: from now on, everything like this all exists. We can
14:32
Speaker 1: make this today, you and I can make it right now, Well,
14:35
Speaker 1: let's get it into space first. What what the idea
14:37
Speaker 1: is that they would spool the sing up once they
14:39
Speaker 1: created it, they would shoot it into space with some
14:42
Speaker 1: kind of spacecraft. Uh. Once it's in space, they would
14:46
Speaker 1: start lowering it back to the Earth um towards the
14:50
Speaker 1: platform out in the middle of the sea. While it's
14:52
Speaker 1: still going out into space, right, they'd start lowering the ribbons. Yeah,
14:55
Speaker 1: so it's it's still going in. It's going in two
14:58
Speaker 1: opposite directions. Would be like some kid walking the dog. Yeah. Uh.
15:03
Speaker 1: And eventually it gets lowered and there's a dude standing
15:06
Speaker 1: on a platform saying all right, back it down. Then
15:10
Speaker 1: he would take it and clip it onto a c platform,
15:14
Speaker 1: although it would be much more complicated than I think
15:16
Speaker 1: about that operations. So this platform is going to be
15:19
Speaker 1: like four miles from any shipping or air lanes, which
15:23
Speaker 1: is important in the Equatorial Pacific, and a sixty two
15:28
Speaker 1: thousand mile long strand of rope. Even say you'd say
15:32
Speaker 1: it's it's thick as like a cable, one of the
15:36
Speaker 1: cables holding the Golden gate Bridge. Imagine catching that. I
15:40
Speaker 1: mean it's obviously not, but still like there's somebody piloting
15:45
Speaker 1: machine that and you I don't know how you would
15:50
Speaker 1: move the counterweight around the spool so that how are
15:57
Speaker 1: you going to get the threat? This is the most
16:01
Speaker 1: difficult aspect of the whole program, if you ask me,
16:04
Speaker 1: I think grabbing that that ribbon and connecting it. Although
16:07
Speaker 1: they act like they've got that all figured out. They're like,
16:10
Speaker 1: we had this nanotube that was this long. We're all
16:13
Speaker 1: set to trust. Like they've got a guy out on
16:15
Speaker 1: a platform just sitting around waiting waiting for this thing
16:18
Speaker 1: to come down from space. So they so that guy
16:21
Speaker 1: catches the ribbon, ties it off probably with a pretty
16:25
Speaker 1: decent sailors not um, and then you attach the lifter
16:30
Speaker 1: to it. Right, that's right, Um. The lifter is a
16:35
Speaker 1: robotic thing, and basically it's it's sort of like a
16:37
Speaker 1: train track. It uses these traction shread rollers. Uh, and
16:41
Speaker 1: it would clamp onto this ribbon and through something a
16:47
Speaker 1: little more advanced than a gasoline engine. I think, what
16:49
Speaker 1: are they using a free electron laser to create the
16:53
Speaker 1: energy to do this? Basically, what they're doing is they're
16:56
Speaker 1: gonna put solar panels but made of stuff that really
16:59
Speaker 1: absorbs light from a laser right on the bottom or
17:03
Speaker 1: on the top, probably on both sides, and then they're
17:06
Speaker 1: just gonna shoot lasers up and down the ribbon and
17:09
Speaker 1: then that laser just powers It's basically like directing sunlight
17:13
Speaker 1: onto full of photovoltaic cells and then converting that to electricity.
17:19
Speaker 1: Then it's just plain old mechanical energy. It's like a
17:21
Speaker 1: little motor that would crawl at a hundred and eighteen
17:26
Speaker 1: miles an hour. Mind you, it's exactly a crawl. It
17:30
Speaker 1: would shoot up this ribbon into space to the final destination,
17:36
Speaker 1: which would be anything. I think that first they talked
17:39
Speaker 1: about capturing an asteroid to serve as the which is
17:43
Speaker 1: just is the counterweight to um What I think is
17:46
Speaker 1: smart which would potentially be a satellite or the spacecraft
17:50
Speaker 1: that brought it out there. To begin with. Yeah, just
17:52
Speaker 1: unfolding or reconfiguring or whatever, and of a sudden bam,
17:55
Speaker 1: there's your counterweight. There's the other end of the string,
17:58
Speaker 1: right dude, that's it. I mean, after they get this going,
18:01
Speaker 1: they're saying it can basically be a constant operational elevator
18:06
Speaker 1: to the sky, lifting as much as thirteen tons of
18:10
Speaker 1: payload at a time in some cases humans maybe eventually. Yeah, crazy,
18:17
Speaker 1: And I guess the whole point now would be to
18:19
Speaker 1: just shuttle stuff to say this. The International Space Station
18:24
Speaker 1: UM supplies that kind of thing, gruel food UM, or
18:31
Speaker 1: if you had some sort of asteroid mining operation, you
18:34
Speaker 1: could take your daily hall to the space elevator to
18:38
Speaker 1: be brought down. The point is this thing could be
18:41
Speaker 1: used for trips to UM lower Earth orbit every day,
18:46
Speaker 1: several times a day, because I think lower Earth orbit
18:49
Speaker 1: is UM between five and fifteen hundred miles, so that's
18:55
Speaker 1: like UM four to twelve hours trip based. And they're
19:00
Speaker 1: talking about going further than that though, right. But lower
19:03
Speaker 1: Earth orbit is where like all of the all that's
19:06
Speaker 1: where all the action is generally UM. The problem is
19:10
Speaker 1: is that's also where all the space debris is. Yeah,
19:14
Speaker 1: and I think I don't think we mentioned what the
19:16
Speaker 1: best part about all this is is that it would
19:19
Speaker 1: cost about the closest sestem I've seen is about two
19:22
Speaker 1: d a pound to deliver stuff to outer space, and
19:26
Speaker 1: what was the Space Shuttle costs a pound? So that's
19:29
Speaker 1: why they're pursuing this is because it's much much more affordable.
19:32
Speaker 1: They likened it to the Transcontinental Railroad back in the day,
19:36
Speaker 1: linking space to Earth. Yeah, okay, so the problems Josh
19:41
Speaker 1: avoiding um junk flying around in space, Like it would
19:46
Speaker 1: suck if you got this thing all looked up and
19:48
Speaker 1: some asteroid came flying out of nowhere and snapped this
19:51
Speaker 1: thing and half well, not just asteroids, Apparently space debris
19:54
Speaker 1: UM largely refers to junk man made jump and lower
20:00
Speaker 1: Earth's orbit is a lousy with it. Um. One, there's
20:03
Speaker 1: a satellite, an old out of use satellite, collided with
20:07
Speaker 1: a new in use satellite recently and blew it up,
20:11
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, two pieces became four thousand pieces.
20:15
Speaker 1: And that's and nothing. That's a drop in the bucket.
20:17
Speaker 1: It is so um. The problem is is like even
20:20
Speaker 1: the small like one centimeter diameter piece is a threat
20:24
Speaker 1: to the space elevator. Um so right now, nora D
20:28
Speaker 1: tracks things as small as ten centimeters. Did you know that?
20:32
Speaker 1: I didn't once I read this, but I was pretty
20:34
Speaker 1: I was pretty shocked. But they're gonna have to start
20:36
Speaker 1: tracking stuff down to one centimeter. So this is another
20:39
Speaker 1: kind of challenge that I don't think people talk about,
20:41
Speaker 1: is tracking space debris. Or they're also proposing that we
20:45
Speaker 1: just go up there and get rid of it, like
20:47
Speaker 1: pay contractors to go to space and bring these things
20:50
Speaker 1: down and cleanup. That'd be a unique approach, right, Um
20:55
Speaker 1: it's called active avoidance, and UM, it's pretty amazing that
20:59
Speaker 1: you could actually, potentially, because this thing is tethered to
21:02
Speaker 1: a C platform, moved the C platform to dodge these things.
21:06
Speaker 1: But that would mean that there's like some guy whose
21:08
Speaker 1: job it is to like, yeah, joystick it. Yeah, that's crazy.
21:12
Speaker 1: It sounds very far fetched, but it's supposedly not super
21:16
Speaker 1: far fetched. I mean, this company Liftport, they're they're one
21:21
Speaker 1: of the private firms that are have been h I
21:24
Speaker 1: think they partnered with NASA for a while until NASA,
21:28
Speaker 1: you know, they're funding has dried up to a large degree,
21:31
Speaker 1: so they had to scrap things like partnering with Liftport,
21:34
Speaker 1: but um Liftport as of now, I think I read
21:38
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven they have sort of scrapped or
21:41
Speaker 1: not scrapped, but they put on the back burner the
21:44
Speaker 1: space to Earth version and they're working on a lunar version.
21:48
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so they want to put one of these
21:50
Speaker 1: on the Moon. Um, which can be done right now. Yeah,
21:54
Speaker 1: if they had the money, that makes sense to me.
21:57
Speaker 1: Um not as much gravity, so they don't need the
22:00
Speaker 1: are Bonano tubes. Yeah, they could use the stuff called zylon.
22:03
Speaker 1: It's a synthetic polymer. And apparently they could like do
22:07
Speaker 1: this within the decade. Like everything's in place, it's just
22:10
Speaker 1: a matter of doing it. So yeah, I thought about
22:13
Speaker 1: having one that goes from the Earth to the Moon,
22:16
Speaker 1: or one that goes from the Earth to Mars or
22:19
Speaker 1: you know, and you just well and then from the
22:20
Speaker 1: Moon tomorrow. You know, you could connect them like station
22:24
Speaker 1: one is here, then you have another one that goes there.
22:26
Speaker 1: And the ideas are going to build a bunch of these, right,
22:30
Speaker 1: that's the idea, because if one goes down because of
22:32
Speaker 1: some space to breathe, hey, no problem, We've got another
22:35
Speaker 1: one that we built. Even cheaper over here in this
22:39
Speaker 1: part of the ocean. So that's the idea. What's awesome
22:42
Speaker 1: is this is I mean, this is far reaching, it
22:45
Speaker 1: sounds futuristic, it's actually pretty smart. Simple idea like where
22:51
Speaker 1: it's gonna build an elevator that goes to space, and
22:54
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of an old idea. There was a
22:56
Speaker 1: Russian UH scientists named Constantine see Yokowski who proposed this
23:02
Speaker 1: in and then, um kind of what I think everybody
23:08
Speaker 1: thought he was a crackpot for a while. They thought
23:10
Speaker 1: da Vinci was too, though, yeah, actually did they No,
23:13
Speaker 1: not da Vinci. They think he was a genius back
23:15
Speaker 1: then too, probably except for his flying machine. I think
23:19
Speaker 1: that's incredibility. Um. But then Arthur Arthur C. Clark comes
23:23
Speaker 1: along and writes about this in UH Fountains of Paradise,
23:29
Speaker 1: and he was he very clearly saw like the big
23:32
Speaker 1: problem was the ribbon. If you could figure out the ribbon,
23:36
Speaker 1: everything else would be fine, which is still the problem.
23:38
Speaker 1: Arthur C. Clark way ahead of his time, man, So
23:42
Speaker 1: that's pretty much it. I mean, if they get this
23:43
Speaker 1: lunar and we're going there, they're talking about deep space
23:46
Speaker 1: exploration from a lunar based system, which you know, the
23:51
Speaker 1: benefit there is is it cost a lot of money
23:53
Speaker 1: to get from here to the moon. If you could
23:55
Speaker 1: shuttle a the components of a rocket up to the
23:59
Speaker 1: moon and just get it going up there and be
24:01
Speaker 1: a lot cheaper, right. We talked about that with asteroid
24:03
Speaker 1: minding that that was another idea is you could launch
24:06
Speaker 1: things from these asteroids or whatever because the a vast
24:11
Speaker 1: majority remember the weight of his space shuttles in the fuel,
24:16
Speaker 1: almost all of that is just used within the first
24:18
Speaker 1: like ten miles. Then after that you start to escape
24:22
Speaker 1: births orbit and exactly. So, um, yeah, if you could,
24:27
Speaker 1: if you could get rid of all that, like you
24:29
Speaker 1: just dropped the cost tremendously. Stuff base, I know. I mean,
24:34
Speaker 1: I'm curious to see within a decade if we're going
24:37
Speaker 1: to have a space elevator from the Moon to something else.
24:40
Speaker 1: We will be riding one, you think, so, yeah, well
24:44
Speaker 1: it all depends on funding. That's like, these ideas are
24:46
Speaker 1: all great in practice unless you have billions of dollars
24:50
Speaker 1: to get it. But think about Jeff Bezos has billions
24:53
Speaker 1: of dollars, um can mus Kirt Cameron. That's the James
24:58
Speaker 1: Cameron elon musk. These guys have cash too, and this
25:02
Speaker 1: is what they're putting their money into, this kind of thing.
25:05
Speaker 1: So I don't think it's gonna come down and NASA funding.
25:07
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna come down to the will of
25:09
Speaker 1: guys like Kirk Cameron. Well, Kirk Cameron does not have
25:13
Speaker 1: billions of dollars, but he does have a fine collection
25:16
Speaker 1: of faith based movies. Yeah, directive video anna that you
25:21
Speaker 1: can check out, but not the dirty kind of directive video. No, no, no, no,
25:26
Speaker 1: I guess it's about it, right, it's pretty much I'm
25:28
Speaker 1: looking forward to it. Yeah, private space exploration is definitely
25:33
Speaker 1: the way of the future. We should put in a
25:36
Speaker 1: request for this article to be updated, but I'm a
25:39
Speaker 1: free to think they'll be like, have at it. Yeah,
25:41
Speaker 1: I'm afraid to do that. Dude. Well, if you want
25:43
Speaker 1: to read a hilariously out of date article on how
25:46
Speaker 1: Stuff Works that still captures what's going on with the
25:49
Speaker 1: space elevator um and with some cool artists rendering of stuff,
25:53
Speaker 1: you can type in space elevator that's at the handy
25:56
Speaker 1: search bar and a great little website called how stuff
25:59
Speaker 1: Works dot com. And I said search bar, which means
26:01
Speaker 1: it's time now for a listener mail Josh, I'm gonna
26:07
Speaker 1: call this dead Sea follow up UM, and I should
26:10
Speaker 1: mention We got a lot of emails from Dead Sea
26:13
Speaker 1: visitors and tourists and a lot of photos and one
26:17
Speaker 1: thing we did not cover because I haven't been there
26:20
Speaker 1: and experience this, but we said, swim in the dead
26:22
Speaker 1: sea A lot. Ain't a lot of swimming going on
26:25
Speaker 1: in the dead Sea. There's floating. There's a lot of
26:28
Speaker 1: floating and flailing because they just say it's really disorienting
26:32
Speaker 1: because you're so used to the way you move in
26:35
Speaker 1: water and all of a sudden that's totally different. So
26:38
Speaker 1: people are like gasping and eventually they'll learn to trust
26:42
Speaker 1: and relax and float on their back. You don't want
26:44
Speaker 1: to go in your stomach, you don't want to try
26:46
Speaker 1: and swim um, and you don't want to get it
26:49
Speaker 1: in your face because it will really sting your eyes
26:53
Speaker 1: and it tastes really bad. And we had this one
26:56
Speaker 1: approach and whose husband was suffering, They advise you not
26:59
Speaker 1: to go on with huts are open source. Obviously her
27:02
Speaker 1: husband was suffering from a little UM. It's called many
27:06
Speaker 1: different things. When you walk a lot and you get
27:08
Speaker 1: shaped between their legs. It goes by many different crude names.
27:13
Speaker 1: But he had a bad case of this and uh
27:16
Speaker 1: didn't tell his family that he was traveling with his
27:18
Speaker 1: wife now and he went in the Dead Sea promptly
27:21
Speaker 1: got out, and the family was like, where did you
27:23
Speaker 1: know the sun in will go? And she was like,
27:26
Speaker 1: maybe he's just not into it all right. So this
27:30
Speaker 1: is from Daniel, but thanks to everyone else. He wrote
27:32
Speaker 1: in just finished the Dead Sea podcast had a couple
27:35
Speaker 1: of interesting tidbits. You briefly mentioned the Great Salt Lake
27:38
Speaker 1: when talking about the high salinity the Dead Sea. Uh.
27:42
Speaker 1: These two lakes actually have quite a bit in common.
27:44
Speaker 1: Both lakes are located in the desert region, although the
27:46
Speaker 1: elevation is drastically different. Like the Dead Sea, the Great
27:49
Speaker 1: Salt Lake here in Utah has a very high salt
27:52
Speaker 1: content about making it hard for anything but hello philic
27:57
Speaker 1: bacteria and some brine shrimp to grow. Uh. This guy's
28:01
Speaker 1: a graduate student. By the way to b y U.
28:03
Speaker 1: Both lakes are fed mainly by a smaller freshwater lake
28:07
Speaker 1: roughly fifty miles away, the Dead Sea being fed by
28:10
Speaker 1: the Uh Sea of Galilee to the north by way
28:13
Speaker 1: of the Jordan River. The Great Salt Lake is fed
28:15
Speaker 1: by Utah Lake to the south, also by the Jordan
28:19
Speaker 1: River coincidence, I'm not sure. In both cases, the water
28:24
Speaker 1: leaves the lake only through evaporation. Uh And, like the
28:27
Speaker 1: Dead Sea, there are many areas the Great Salt Lake
28:30
Speaker 1: that are quite stinky at times, mainly in the muddy
28:32
Speaker 1: waters where the level is low. The Great Salt Lake
28:36
Speaker 1: is also dense enough for you to float with little
28:38
Speaker 1: to no effort. Uh So, if you are not able
28:41
Speaker 1: to ever make it over to Europe to visit the
28:44
Speaker 1: Dead Sea, let's say the Middle East, wouldn't you Okay,
28:49
Speaker 1: you can head on over for a float. And it's
28:51
Speaker 1: little American cousin out here in Utah. Keep up the
28:54
Speaker 1: good work, guys. I really enjoy the wide variety of
28:57
Speaker 1: topics that it's from. Daniel. It was a grad student
29:02
Speaker 1: at b YU studying microbiology. So good for you, my friend,
29:06
Speaker 1: nice much smarter than I. Yeah, oh yeah, grad student,
29:11
Speaker 1: it's all I have to say, English undergrad microbiology grad
29:14
Speaker 1: as a well rounded human being with the greed. Um.
29:17
Speaker 1: Oh wait, you're the English undergrad. Yeah. I love to
29:21
Speaker 1: put the two of you together. You're a well grounded
29:23
Speaker 1: human exactly. UM. If you have some ideas of how
29:26
Speaker 1: to put me in chuck together to form another superhuman, UM,
29:30
Speaker 1: we want to hear him. Also, if you just want
29:33
Speaker 1: to say hi, or you have something cool or interesting
29:35
Speaker 1: to tell us a great fact we love those I
29:38
Speaker 1: love them that you'd like us to tweet or put
29:42
Speaker 1: on Facebook. You can send those two via Twitter s
29:45
Speaker 1: y SC podcast via Facebook at Facebook dot com slash
29:48
Speaker 1: stuff you Should Know, and you can send us an
29:52
Speaker 1: email ilextronicmail UM to stuff podcast at Discovery dot com.
29:59
Speaker 1: And for more on this and thousands of other topics,
30:06
Speaker 1: visit how Stuff Works dot com. M brought to you
30:15
Speaker 1: by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are
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Speaker 1: you