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What Is A Space Elevator? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, did you ever think about being an astronaut?
0:10
Speaker 1: I always wanted to be an astronaut from some points
0:13
Speaker 1: of view, like I wanted to be out in space.
0:15
Speaker 1: I wanted to see the stars, I wanted to see
0:17
Speaker 1: the Earth under me. But I was also sort of
0:19
Speaker 1: terrified of getting up there. It's really extremely difficult. Like
0:23
Speaker 1: I talked to an astronaut at last year and he
0:26
Speaker 1: said it was like writing the tip of an explosion
0:28
Speaker 1: to be on a rocket, and that scares me. I mean,
0:30
Speaker 1: especially after the Challenger disaster. You know, that was very
0:33
Speaker 1: vivid in my mind when I was a kid. It
0:36
Speaker 1: seems terrifying and it seems dangerous, and it is. You know,
0:39
Speaker 1: you're you're it's just basically you strapped to a rocket,
0:42
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, it's you're literally writing an explosion. You're
0:46
Speaker 1: like surfing a fireball. But would you want to go
0:50
Speaker 1: to space if it was easier? Yeah? I think so.
0:53
Speaker 1: You know, if you could just like, um, you know,
0:55
Speaker 1: get in your car and say, take me to space
0:57
Speaker 1: or something like that series take me to Space, Google
1:03
Speaker 1: Directions to Space. Please. Well, what if it was just
1:05
Speaker 1: as easy as getting into an elevator and then pressing
1:09
Speaker 1: the space button. I think I would sign up for that. Yeah,
1:12
Speaker 1: que the elevator music. Hey guys, this is Jorge and
1:31
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel, and welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge
1:34
Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio, in
1:37
Speaker 1: which we take crazy stuff in the universe, including stuff
1:40
Speaker 1: people want to make, and explain it to you. Break
1:43
Speaker 1: it down, make sure you can understand the next time
1:46
Speaker 1: you're at a party and wanting to impress your friends
1:48
Speaker 1: with your cool science knowledge. That's right, all the crazy
1:51
Speaker 1: ideas out there in the universe and the cosmos, and
1:54
Speaker 1: all the crazy ideas in people's heads that may or
1:56
Speaker 1: may not be possible. That's right. I'm a particle physic
2:00
Speaker 1: this and I'm cartoonist. And together we wrote a book
2:03
Speaker 1: called We Have No Idea, which explores all the mysteries
2:06
Speaker 1: of the unknown and the things we don't know about
2:08
Speaker 1: the universe. And together, twice a week we try to
2:11
Speaker 1: take you up into space and out into the cosmos.
2:13
Speaker 1: And and today we're going to talk about a very
2:15
Speaker 1: interesting idea that's been out there floating in science and
2:19
Speaker 1: engineering circles and definitely on the internet, which is a
2:23
Speaker 1: pretty interesting and different way to get to space, yeah,
2:27
Speaker 1: which is really fascinating because it seems like we're sort
2:30
Speaker 1: of trapped on Earth. You know, gravity keeps us here.
2:33
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot about how gravity deforms space and
2:36
Speaker 1: makes it difficult to get off of Earth. And it's
2:38
Speaker 1: nice that gravity holds you down to Earth, but sometimes
2:40
Speaker 1: you want to get up to space. You know, if
2:42
Speaker 1: if humanity wants to explore the stars and build space
2:46
Speaker 1: technology and space industry and space habitats, then eventually we've
2:49
Speaker 1: got to get off of this planet. And so we've
2:51
Speaker 1: got to somehow counteract that gravity and climb up into space. Yeah,
2:56
Speaker 1: And the main way we've been doing that so far
2:58
Speaker 1: is by trapping ourselves into a giant too full of
3:03
Speaker 1: flammable gasoline or or hydracine or rocket feel and then
3:10
Speaker 1: lighting that up and hoping that the explosion kind of
3:13
Speaker 1: takes us up into space. It's basically the high tech
3:15
Speaker 1: equivalent of taping a bunch of fireworks to your nie,
3:18
Speaker 1: to your legs and setting them off, right, which we
3:22
Speaker 1: advise our listeners not to do, or sure writing writing
3:26
Speaker 1: the shock wave from a bomb on your surface or something, right,
3:30
Speaker 1: it sounds like a bad idea. Yeah, it's carefully channeled explosions.
3:34
Speaker 1: But there might be a different way to get to space.
3:36
Speaker 1: And this is a pretty interesting idea because I feel
3:38
Speaker 1: like it's the kind of idea a six year old
3:40
Speaker 1: would come up with, Like, if you have six year old, Hey,
3:43
Speaker 1: how do you get to space? This is what they
3:45
Speaker 1: might come up with. Oh my god. I totally should
3:47
Speaker 1: have done that. I should have gone to a kindergarten
3:49
Speaker 1: classroom and said what's the best way to get the space.
3:51
Speaker 1: I would have gotten some awesome ideas like the moon
3:55
Speaker 1: and climb up the rope or something like that. Yeah,
3:57
Speaker 1: probably you get a lot of just use the spaceship
4:00
Speaker 1: the jump really hard. Now, today's topic on the podcast
4:07
Speaker 1: is space elevators. Are they possible? How do they work?
4:16
Speaker 1: How would they work? Should you ride in one? What
4:19
Speaker 1: should you pack? What's the protocol for when you're standing
4:21
Speaker 1: in a space elevator? Do you make eye contact? Do
4:25
Speaker 1: you go to the furthest opposite corner of an elevator?
4:31
Speaker 1: Do you say, oh wait, I'll take the next one? Yeah?
4:35
Speaker 1: Do you not and do the what's up? Or have
4:38
Speaker 1: a good time? When they leave these say have a
4:39
Speaker 1: good day? What do you? What do you what's the protocol.
4:42
Speaker 1: I don't know, but you know, if we do develop
4:43
Speaker 1: space elevators would be a whole impact on culturing. That
4:46
Speaker 1: people will meet and fall in love on space elevators right,
4:48
Speaker 1: become um an element in fiction. You'll see them in
4:51
Speaker 1: movies and comic books. Yeah, it's a pretty fascinating idea
4:55
Speaker 1: and just the concept of elevators. Um, you have a
4:58
Speaker 1: favorite elevator, right, Daniel, I do have a favorite elevator.
5:01
Speaker 1: I love that in Europe when you get into an elevator,
5:04
Speaker 1: the ground floor is listed as zero for some reason
5:06
Speaker 1: that just like tickles the nerd in me. And at
5:09
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider, the experiments are deep, deep underground,
5:14
Speaker 1: rather like a hundred meters underground, so that the radiation
5:16
Speaker 1: produced in the collisions doesn't effect anybody above ground. And
5:20
Speaker 1: so they have this elevator you can take down into
5:23
Speaker 1: the tunnel where the accelerator is and that the collisions happen.
5:26
Speaker 1: And it just has two buttons. One of them says
5:28
Speaker 1: zero for the ground level and the other one says
5:30
Speaker 1: minus one, and so you press you go whooh down
5:34
Speaker 1: a hundred meters, which is you know, really far deep
5:37
Speaker 1: deep into the ground. Um. So that one's really fun.
5:40
Speaker 1: There are two options zero and minus one. Yeah, exactly. Um,
5:44
Speaker 1: there's a much there's a much more dramatic elevator and
5:46
Speaker 1: some other physics experiments like in the snow Lab in Canada.
5:50
Speaker 1: They go, I think miles underground because they have their
5:53
Speaker 1: their experiments underground in a mind like an old abandoned mine.
5:58
Speaker 1: Did I ever tell you I have written the sir
6:00
Speaker 1: and elevator down to the bottom? You have? Really? How
6:03
Speaker 1: did you did you sneak in? Did you pass the
6:05
Speaker 1: retin retinal scanner? Or did you go say I'm a
6:08
Speaker 1: physics ninja. I remember you're not the physics ninja was
6:12
Speaker 1: trying to take credit. Now, how did you get in?
6:15
Speaker 1: Did you know I got I was getting a tour
6:17
Speaker 1: and uh I went down there and it was super exciting,
6:20
Speaker 1: super fun. I didn't get to walk the tunnels, um,
6:23
Speaker 1: but I was. I was kind of disappointed to see
6:26
Speaker 1: that the one comic strip that was up on the
6:28
Speaker 1: walls there was an x k CD comic strip. Did
6:32
Speaker 1: you take it down and replace it with one of yours? No?
6:36
Speaker 1: It was a well earned it was a really funny
6:38
Speaker 1: comic muse. Well, so, yeah, so getting to space is
6:42
Speaker 1: really expensive, right, and so the idea that you might
6:46
Speaker 1: be able to take an elevator sounds pretty appealing. Yeah,
6:48
Speaker 1: it's really interesting how why getting the space is so expensive?
6:51
Speaker 1: You might think, like, what's the big deal? You just
6:52
Speaker 1: build a rocket and you shoot it up there? Right,
6:54
Speaker 1: how expensive could rocket fuel be? Ye? Right? But the
6:57
Speaker 1: problem is that you need a huge amount of fuel
7:00
Speaker 1: to get to space, and you can't refuel a rocket
7:03
Speaker 1: along the way, right. You have to lift all the
7:06
Speaker 1: fuel you're gonna need, um from the beginning. Yeah, yeah,
7:10
Speaker 1: I saw this presentation by an austronaut ones who said
7:13
Speaker 1: that basically ninety five of your rocket, like by weight,
7:17
Speaker 1: like the weight of your rocket is basically fuel. Yeah, exactly.
7:21
Speaker 1: Imagine if you were going to drive across the country,
7:23
Speaker 1: but there were no gas stations between here and there,
7:26
Speaker 1: and so you need to like pack all the fuel. Right,
7:28
Speaker 1: So you have a huge tanker and you fill it
7:31
Speaker 1: with fuel. So now you need extra fuel to bring
7:34
Speaker 1: that fuel, right, and so pretty soon you're carrying like
7:36
Speaker 1: a train of tankers with you. And so you're right,
7:39
Speaker 1: most of the fuels they're just to lift the other fuel. Yeah,
7:43
Speaker 1: so a lot of your your fuel just goes to
7:45
Speaker 1: lifting the fuel that you need to lift the other
7:48
Speaker 1: fuel to maybe a little bit use some of that
7:51
Speaker 1: to lift you up. Yeah, exactly, it's diminishing returns. Every
7:55
Speaker 1: pound of fuel you add, a very very small amount
7:58
Speaker 1: of it actually lifts you up. And so that's why
8:00
Speaker 1: rockets are pretty inefficient and super expensive. Yeah. So you
8:03
Speaker 1: mean when you see a rocket, just imagine ninety of
8:06
Speaker 1: that long tube is basically like an explosive, right, Yeah,
8:10
Speaker 1: it's not basically an explosive. It is an explosive. I
8:13
Speaker 1: mean you explode your way to space, right, like this
8:17
Speaker 1: is this is the plan, right, it is riding explosion
8:19
Speaker 1: to space. And so that's pretty expensive, right. I was
8:21
Speaker 1: looking it up. It turns out that if you want
8:23
Speaker 1: to send one kilogram that's like to something pounds of
8:27
Speaker 1: stuff into space, it costs like twenty thousand dollars. It
8:30
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what it is. Gold, mashed potatoes, hamsters, one
8:35
Speaker 1: ram or whatever cost about twenty thousand dollars to send
8:38
Speaker 1: a space So it's like ten thousand dollars a pound. Yeah, exactly.
8:43
Speaker 1: That's some premo caveat you know, um, and say you
8:46
Speaker 1: want to build something, right, you want to build um
8:49
Speaker 1: factory in space that can make spaceships, or that can
8:52
Speaker 1: make habitats or domes or space suits or whatever. Right,
8:55
Speaker 1: you have to send every piece of that stuff from
8:58
Speaker 1: Earth because we don't have any manufacturing space yet, right,
9:01
Speaker 1: and so you have to lift it all. It would
9:03
Speaker 1: cost so much money, um to make stuff on Earth
9:06
Speaker 1: and then lift it up into space. Yeah. Yeah, it
9:09
Speaker 1: would like all those space stations you see and science
9:12
Speaker 1: ficing movies. You've got to wonder how did they get
9:14
Speaker 1: all that metal and stuff up there? Yeah, which is
9:16
Speaker 1: exactly why I think with the future is to build
9:19
Speaker 1: a space based industry, right, build that stuff in space, right,
9:23
Speaker 1: building a factory in space to manufacture stuff so you
9:25
Speaker 1: don't have to lift it from the Earth. But then
9:27
Speaker 1: first you have to build that first factory, right, you
9:30
Speaker 1: have to get it started somehow. Well, you have to
9:32
Speaker 1: get up the raw materials too, right, Well, there's plenty
9:35
Speaker 1: of raw materials and asteroids. Right, There's lots of good
9:37
Speaker 1: metals and stuff in asteroids, so you can If you
9:40
Speaker 1: can build an asteroid mining factory in space, then you're
9:44
Speaker 1: you're set to go. But the first one you have
9:46
Speaker 1: to build on Earth and lift it right, Well, so
9:48
Speaker 1: rockets seem pretty a little bit inefficient and kind of dangerous,
9:52
Speaker 1: and so there's this this other idea to get things
9:55
Speaker 1: up into space called the space elevator. Yeah, exactly. And
9:59
Speaker 1: so we're gonna dig into how a space elevator works
10:01
Speaker 1: and what should you take one, and is it possible
10:04
Speaker 1: and is it feasible? But before we do, we thought
10:07
Speaker 1: we would ask folks around the U C Irvine campus
10:10
Speaker 1: if they had heard of a space elevator, if they
10:11
Speaker 1: thought it was reasonable, or if they thought it was
10:13
Speaker 1: just some crazy idea of fuzzy hair physicist was asking
10:16
Speaker 1: them about. So before you listen to these answers, think
10:19
Speaker 1: about it for a second. How much do you know
10:21
Speaker 1: about space elevators? Here's what people had to say. No,
10:26
Speaker 1: what would be your best guest or what a space
10:28
Speaker 1: elevator would be? Um? The one to Charlie and the
10:31
Speaker 1: chocolate factory? Perfect? M. No, what is your best guess?
10:38
Speaker 1: If you're a space elevator, can I get? What? Can
10:41
Speaker 1: I get? A hint elevator to space elevator to space?
10:45
Speaker 1: And no? Would? I don't think it's that all right,
10:49
Speaker 1: thanks very much? Any any best guess what that might be?
10:52
Speaker 1: An idea. Yes, do you think it's possible feasible? It
10:57
Speaker 1: seems possible. I don't know about feasible. Um, when do
11:00
Speaker 1: you think we might see one in action? I think
11:03
Speaker 1: that as I understand it, the limitations have to do
11:06
Speaker 1: with materials constraints right now and the strength of the materials.
11:10
Speaker 1: So last I heard they were working on like carbon
11:13
Speaker 1: fiber that could support its own weight up to the
11:15
Speaker 1: low Earth orbit. But I don't know how that's going.
11:19
Speaker 1: Is it like a thing used for like the spaceships
11:23
Speaker 1: to like launch you that I guess putting a similar
11:26
Speaker 1: to that an elevator in space, elevator in space or
11:31
Speaker 1: elevator to space two space? Sure? Space? You'd like to
11:35
Speaker 1: have a space elevator? No, I think I might die
11:37
Speaker 1: in it on a space station or something like. It
11:42
Speaker 1: takes you to the like from the bridge to engineering
11:45
Speaker 1: or something something like that. All right, maybe something that
11:48
Speaker 1: launches you into space. All right? So it sounds like
11:52
Speaker 1: a lot of people ever heard what space elevator is.
11:55
Speaker 1: Someone said that it was like the one Charlene the
11:58
Speaker 1: chocolate factory. That was a great answer. I love that. Um.
12:01
Speaker 1: I love seeing people think on their feet. They're like
12:04
Speaker 1: I haven't heard that. What could it be? They're like,
12:07
Speaker 1: I've heard these words before. Space and elevator. Is it
12:11
Speaker 1: an elevator that uses space, takes you to space, or
12:15
Speaker 1: an elevator in space? Right? That was one of my
12:17
Speaker 1: favorite ideas. It's sort of like a star trek when
12:19
Speaker 1: you go from like the bridge engineering that uses an elevator. Right,
12:23
Speaker 1: So very few people thought from first principles that it
12:26
Speaker 1: might be an elevator to space. One of the guys
12:29
Speaker 1: we interviewed happens to be a professor of Earth system science,
12:33
Speaker 1: and so he was very knowledgeable about the topic. As
12:35
Speaker 1: you can hear. Oh, I see, he was a ringer.
12:38
Speaker 1: He was definitely a ringer. Yeah, he really elevated the
12:42
Speaker 1: topic here. That's right, that's right before we dive in,
12:46
Speaker 1: let's take a short break. Right, Le's jumped into a Daniel.
13:01
Speaker 1: So what is a space elevator? The idea of a
13:04
Speaker 1: space elevator is to avoid having to do the rocket lift, right,
13:09
Speaker 1: and instead of having to push yourself up out of
13:12
Speaker 1: Earth gravity. And every time you're pushing yourself out of
13:14
Speaker 1: Earth gravity, you're doing two things. First, you're keeping yourself
13:18
Speaker 1: up and second you're lifting yourself up. So, for example,
13:21
Speaker 1: say you're like, you know, five feet above the earth
13:24
Speaker 1: and you just want to hover. You don't want to
13:26
Speaker 1: go anywhere any higher even that just that takes energy, right,
13:29
Speaker 1: you have to continually push yourself up. Yeah, so imaginative. Instead,
13:34
Speaker 1: you could just climb a ladder. Right, there's like a
13:37
Speaker 1: ladder to space. Then when you wanted to take a break,
13:40
Speaker 1: you could stop right and you could rest and the
13:42
Speaker 1: ladder would support you. The ladder would provide that essentially
13:45
Speaker 1: the counterbalancing force against gravity to keep you up while
13:49
Speaker 1: you rested, and then did the rest of your climb. Right,
13:52
Speaker 1: So you can literally just hang out exactly, hang out
13:55
Speaker 1: in space. Yeah. So if you can build a ladder
13:58
Speaker 1: to space, then that would save you a lot to
14:00
Speaker 1: that energy. Right. The other idea is avoid carrying all
14:05
Speaker 1: your energy with you, right the rocket. As we were
14:07
Speaker 1: saying earlier, the big problem with the rocket is you
14:09
Speaker 1: have to carry the fuel and then the fuel to
14:11
Speaker 1: care the fuel, and the fuel to care the fuel
14:13
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. Um. And so if you could somehow,
14:16
Speaker 1: you know, get the energy from the ground as you
14:19
Speaker 1: were climbing, you know, like people like throwing you, um,
14:22
Speaker 1: you know, candy bars as you're climbing of the ladder.
14:24
Speaker 1: Then you wouldn't have to carry all those candy bars
14:26
Speaker 1: with So the idea of a space elevator is build
14:30
Speaker 1: something you can climb and send the energy up to
14:35
Speaker 1: the car that climbs. The climbs the elevator while it's
14:39
Speaker 1: on the way, so it doesn't even have to carry
14:40
Speaker 1: it all like the like a real elevator in a building,
14:43
Speaker 1: like you get the power form it um. You don't
14:46
Speaker 1: carry all the gasoline to power the elevator. It just
14:49
Speaker 1: comes to you through the cables attached to the elevator, right,
14:53
Speaker 1: that's right. This would be a slightly different structure because
14:55
Speaker 1: an elevator and a building is usually like attached to
14:57
Speaker 1: the cable and then there's an engine at the top
14:59
Speaker 1: that pulled on the cable or something. So the basic
15:02
Speaker 1: idea here is you have a huge cable, you attach
15:05
Speaker 1: it to the ground on Earth, and then you lift
15:08
Speaker 1: the other end all the way up into space and
15:10
Speaker 1: attach it to something in space. So the idea I
15:13
Speaker 1: said earlier a six year old like lassoing the moon.
15:16
Speaker 1: That's basically the idea is like tie a string between
15:19
Speaker 1: the Earth and something in space. Wow, Okay, So I
15:23
Speaker 1: think the basic basic idea is to build something permanent,
15:27
Speaker 1: you know, not a rockety used once and then throw
15:29
Speaker 1: it away, but like build a structure, something like a
15:33
Speaker 1: link between Earth and space, and then just climb that
15:36
Speaker 1: every time you want to go into space exactly. Yeah,
15:38
Speaker 1: And so then it's reusable and you don't have to
15:40
Speaker 1: carry all the fuel with you. We'll talk in detail
15:43
Speaker 1: about how you can accomplish that, um and and you
15:47
Speaker 1: can take breaks, right, you don't have to provide the
15:49
Speaker 1: hovering lift as well as the climbing lift. So there's
15:52
Speaker 1: a lot of possible advantages if you can build that
15:55
Speaker 1: kind of structure. You can just hang on, yeah, exactly,
15:57
Speaker 1: you can just hang on. You can like clamp on
16:00
Speaker 1: of the rope or whatever, UM to prevent yourself from falling.
16:03
Speaker 1: A rocket can't do that, right, has nothing to hang onto.
16:05
Speaker 1: It's just as the air around it to push against. Um.
16:09
Speaker 1: And when I first heard about the concept of a
16:10
Speaker 1: space elevator, I thought, like, how is the rope going
16:12
Speaker 1: to stay up? Right? I mean, if you just if
16:15
Speaker 1: you take a long rope and just like throw the
16:17
Speaker 1: end into the sky, it falls down, right, There's no wait,
16:20
Speaker 1: like stays up in the sky. How does that even work? Right? Well,
16:24
Speaker 1: you're assuming that it looks like a rope, right, Like
16:27
Speaker 1: a like this elevator could take different forms, Like it
16:30
Speaker 1: could be just one rope that goes off into infinity
16:33
Speaker 1: like Jack and the bean stock, or it could be
16:35
Speaker 1: what if you just build a really really tall tower,
16:38
Speaker 1: like if you just you know, the berke Khalifa and
16:42
Speaker 1: and um Dubai. What if you just keep building that
16:45
Speaker 1: up up up into space. What would happen then, Well,
16:47
Speaker 1: the bottom of the tower, wh we get crushed? Right?
16:50
Speaker 1: The problem with building something up from the ground and
16:53
Speaker 1: not having it be pulled from outer space. So that's
16:56
Speaker 1: the key about the space elevators, that you build it
16:58
Speaker 1: so so long and so high lions and the rope
17:00
Speaker 1: goes so far that it's basically getting pulled from space.
17:04
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that in a moment. But the problem
17:06
Speaker 1: with building a tower, it's basically like a compression structure.
17:09
Speaker 1: Every layer sits on top of the previous layer, and
17:12
Speaker 1: then the next layer sits on top of that, and
17:14
Speaker 1: by the time you get to you know, really really tall,
17:16
Speaker 1: the bottom layer is supporting the entire structure. Right, And um,
17:21
Speaker 1: that has to be super strong or super wide or
17:24
Speaker 1: made out of crazy materials to go anywhere close to
17:27
Speaker 1: the distance of space. So you have to have this
17:30
Speaker 1: thing be really light so we can get height without
17:33
Speaker 1: having a lot of weight. But technically it's possible, is it.
17:36
Speaker 1: Is it possible to just build a giant pyramid that's
17:39
Speaker 1: really really tall? Is it possible? I mean, the Mount
17:41
Speaker 1: Everest is a giant pyramid that's pretty pretty tall, But
17:44
Speaker 1: I don't know if we could build it, you know,
17:46
Speaker 1: like it's, uh, these things have to go get pretty
17:49
Speaker 1: wide in order to support all that weight. Um. Eventually, yeah,
17:53
Speaker 1: maybe you could build the tower and babble into space.
17:55
Speaker 1: But I think it's as as difficult as space elevators are.
17:59
Speaker 1: A space tower be even more difficult. I see, all right, Yeah,
18:02
Speaker 1: the space elevator has the advantage that the top of it,
18:06
Speaker 1: the rope, is so far out into space that it um,
18:09
Speaker 1: it pulls on the rope. Okay, yeah, I just think
18:12
Speaker 1: maybe we're jumping ahead, right because maybe some people think
18:15
Speaker 1: it's an elevator, so it just it means that there's
18:18
Speaker 1: an elevator shaft that takes you all the way up.
18:20
Speaker 1: You're saying that the primary way that this might work
18:23
Speaker 1: is using a cable. Yes, yeah, exactly. It has to
18:25
Speaker 1: be a cable. You can't just build a building that
18:27
Speaker 1: goes all the way up into space. That has to
18:29
Speaker 1: have something at the top of it that's so far
18:31
Speaker 1: into space that it's basically escaped the Earth's gravity and
18:35
Speaker 1: it's pulling, pulling whatever it is up and so that's
18:38
Speaker 1: that's is that the prevailing idea that this this way
18:41
Speaker 1: it could work. Maybe, like the idea is that it
18:45
Speaker 1: it's it's not an elevator shaft or a tower. It's
18:48
Speaker 1: a it's like a string. Basically, you attach a string
18:50
Speaker 1: to Earth and you swing around something really heavy out
18:53
Speaker 1: into space that keeps the that rope that's string intention
18:56
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, and then maybe you can use that thing.
18:59
Speaker 1: Maybe you can climb tim that rope in tension that
19:02
Speaker 1: rope up into space. Yeah exactly. You attach a string
19:05
Speaker 1: from the ground to something up in space, and that
19:08
Speaker 1: thing up in space is pulling on the string, right,
19:11
Speaker 1: it's keeping it up um and then yeah, and then
19:13
Speaker 1: you just climb up that rope. And so it's more
19:17
Speaker 1: like a space ladder than a space elevator. If if
19:19
Speaker 1: you want to think about it that way, Yeah, like
19:22
Speaker 1: a space space cable, like a space fire pole. Right. Yeah,
19:28
Speaker 1: but then you would ride an elevator like you would
19:30
Speaker 1: be you would wait, you wouldn't climb it by hand.
19:33
Speaker 1: You would be inside of an elevator like structure that
19:36
Speaker 1: then climbs up the rope or the pole. Yeah, you'd
19:39
Speaker 1: have to be crazy strong to climb in by hand. Yeah.
19:42
Speaker 1: The basic components are you have stationed on the ground,
19:45
Speaker 1: the cable that goes up, some counterweight up in space
19:48
Speaker 1: to keep it up, and then you have something that
19:51
Speaker 1: climbs it, some like car or some device that basically
19:54
Speaker 1: crawls up the rope, the thing that climbs the ladder
19:57
Speaker 1: for you, and that slips its way up the rope.
20:00
Speaker 1: So those are the basic components. Yeah, it's hard to
20:06
Speaker 1: imagine how that rope stays up, Like what keeps that
20:09
Speaker 1: rope vertical? Yeah, exactly. That's the thing that puzzled me
20:11
Speaker 1: for a long time when I was thinking about the
20:13
Speaker 1: space elevator, because it's just counter to your intuition, right,
20:16
Speaker 1: you think the things that go up in the sky
20:18
Speaker 1: come down, right, But the truth is, if you throw
20:21
Speaker 1: things high enough up into the sky, they don't come down, right,
20:24
Speaker 1: they go into orbit, and so at some point the
20:27
Speaker 1: force of gravity weakens enough and the centrifugal force is
20:31
Speaker 1: strong enough that they stay up there. You know, imagine,
20:35
Speaker 1: for example, you are you have a bucket with a
20:38
Speaker 1: rope and you're swinging it around yourself. Right. Then you know, water,
20:42
Speaker 1: for example, can stay in the bucket even if the
20:44
Speaker 1: bucket goes upside down. Right. Is that it's because of
20:48
Speaker 1: this apparent force, the centrifugal force, and so that's pushing
20:52
Speaker 1: things away if you're spinning, right, the fact that the
20:54
Speaker 1: Earth is spinning provides this sort of outwards apparent centrivigal force.
21:00
Speaker 1: And so it would be like the Earth is rotating
21:02
Speaker 1: around and you tie string to it, and the swinging
21:05
Speaker 1: around of some big weight at the end of the
21:08
Speaker 1: rope is what keeps the rope vertical and intention and
21:11
Speaker 1: then and then you can climb that rope to get
21:13
Speaker 1: to space. Exactly, the center of mass of the whole
21:15
Speaker 1: structure is above the orbit level. Right at some point
21:19
Speaker 1: above the Earth, the force of gravity gets weaker and
21:22
Speaker 1: the centrifugal force actually gets stronger with distance, and so
21:26
Speaker 1: at some point above the Earth they're equal. That's what
21:28
Speaker 1: we call like where a geosynchronous orbit can happen um
21:31
Speaker 1: where it's in balance, it can just stay in orbit.
21:34
Speaker 1: And so the idea is to put something really heavy
21:36
Speaker 1: above that so that the average weight, like where's the
21:39
Speaker 1: average bit of mass of the space elevator is above
21:42
Speaker 1: that orbit level and so it's just like something in orbit.
21:46
Speaker 1: I mean, you can think of it like something in
21:48
Speaker 1: orbit with that with that dangles down really really low. Oh.
21:51
Speaker 1: I see, it doesn't have to be attached to Earth,
21:54
Speaker 1: is what you're saying. It doesn't have to be attached
21:56
Speaker 1: to Earth, but it's better if it is, right, you
21:58
Speaker 1: don't want to climb someone which is actually angling. But
22:00
Speaker 1: just in the point of view of the physics, like
22:02
Speaker 1: why does it stay up? It's uh, you know, the
22:04
Speaker 1: fact that it's attached to Earth is not what keeps
22:06
Speaker 1: it up, right, the thing that keeps it up, that's
22:08
Speaker 1: what he said. It's attached to the part in space. Right.
22:11
Speaker 1: That's interesting, Like people in the International Space Station could potentially,
22:15
Speaker 1: i mean physically just kind of let out a little
22:18
Speaker 1: bit of string down into Earth and at some point
22:20
Speaker 1: it might touch the Earth and it would just hang
22:23
Speaker 1: there between the station and Earth, right, And your intuition
22:26
Speaker 1: tells you that should work, right, and that's basically the
22:28
Speaker 1: same thing. Yeah, and then you just clip that rope
22:32
Speaker 1: tier a garage and you're done. Yeah. But the key
22:37
Speaker 1: is that the thing is in geosynchronous orbit, right, so
22:40
Speaker 1: it's always above the same part of the Earth. Because
22:43
Speaker 1: you don't want this robe like dragging across the surface
22:45
Speaker 1: of the Earth, right, that wouldn't be a lot of fun,
22:48
Speaker 1: like Bruce Willis movie, exactly exactly. So you want to
22:52
Speaker 1: have some like big station on the ground where this
22:54
Speaker 1: thing clips in. And so you have this like a
22:57
Speaker 1: spaceport on the ground and then a place you can
22:59
Speaker 1: arrive I have above the Earth. And so that's the
23:02
Speaker 1: basic physics of it. Well, this is pretty cool, you said, um,
23:04
Speaker 1: you you told me that basically the point at which
23:07
Speaker 1: you would reach this geo stationary or orbit is about
23:10
Speaker 1: thirty six thousand kilometers out into space. Yeah, exactly. So
23:15
Speaker 1: you need to have enough mass above that height so
23:18
Speaker 1: that on average, the mass of the whole thing is
23:21
Speaker 1: just above thirty six thousand kilometers above the Earth. And
23:26
Speaker 1: just for reference, like the Moon is about three eight
23:30
Speaker 1: thousand kilometers way, so it's like a tenth of the
23:32
Speaker 1: way to the moon, you could have this elevator, yeah exactly.
23:35
Speaker 1: So that makes it sound totally plausible. Right, you don't
23:37
Speaker 1: even need the last of the moon. You just have
23:39
Speaker 1: to last of the space station, right exactly. But that's
23:42
Speaker 1: a really long rope. Right, Well, let's see how long
23:44
Speaker 1: would it take you to get there, liked my kilometers away,
23:49
Speaker 1: and let's say that your elevator is going up at
23:50
Speaker 1: a two kilometers per hour, it would take you hold
23:55
Speaker 1: on how much of that? Well, that's you know, five
23:57
Speaker 1: hours to go a thousand kilometers, right, so hours or so,
24:02
Speaker 1: So that's a few days. You know, when you get
24:04
Speaker 1: in at the bottom, you're gonna look around because you're
24:06
Speaker 1: gonna be with those folks for a while, and then
24:09
Speaker 1: I hope nobody um passes some wind or exactly. Bring
24:18
Speaker 1: pay attention to what everybody's eating just before they get
24:20
Speaker 1: on the space elevator. You know, it's a lot like
24:23
Speaker 1: a super long airline flight, but days long, right, Wow,
24:27
Speaker 1: that'd be amazing. But then at the end of the
24:29
Speaker 1: two days, at the end of the what is it,
24:32
Speaker 1: ten days, you'd be in space. Yeah exactly, you'd be
24:34
Speaker 1: in space. And even that number, like two per hour.
24:38
Speaker 1: That's pretty fast. That's pretty fast for an elevator, right,
24:41
Speaker 1: So I don't know how plausible or how comfortable that
24:43
Speaker 1: would be. Um, it seems to be pretty sippy for
24:46
Speaker 1: an elevator. But if you get those speeds up, then
24:48
Speaker 1: you can get the time down. Um. And you know,
24:50
Speaker 1: ten days is a long time for a passenger. But
24:53
Speaker 1: I think in the beginning, the more important thing is
24:55
Speaker 1: lifting up cargo. Right. If you're gonna build industry in
24:57
Speaker 1: space so you can build spaceships and how the tats
25:00
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff, then you're gonna you're
25:02
Speaker 1: gonna lift stuff up into space. Okay, so that's the concept.
25:07
Speaker 1: As you do, you put a cable between the Earth,
25:09
Speaker 1: you can tie it down here, and you tie the
25:11
Speaker 1: other end to something heavy and swinging around the Earth
25:14
Speaker 1: in orbit geosynchronous orbit, and then you just pulled yourself
25:17
Speaker 1: up to cable to get to space. Sounds simple, just
25:19
Speaker 1: put yourself Yeah, let's do it. Well, I'm gonna I'm
25:22
Speaker 1: gonna take care of this. I can imagine you selling
25:24
Speaker 1: tickets at the bottom. You're like, it's a thousand dollars
25:26
Speaker 1: and just you know, pull yourself on up. Yeah. Well,
25:29
Speaker 1: let's get into why it's possible or maybe impossible. But
25:33
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. All right, So that's
25:48
Speaker 1: a space elevator. It's a giant rope tied to Earth
25:51
Speaker 1: and tied to on the other end to something floating
25:54
Speaker 1: out into space. And the idea is that we just
25:55
Speaker 1: get on an elevator elevator that climbs that rope. So
25:59
Speaker 1: so where's the what's the difficult part here? Why can't
26:01
Speaker 1: we just build one? Oh? I'm building one right now,
26:03
Speaker 1: should be done next week. You want to come down China.
26:06
Speaker 1: It's made out of paper clips. I can see it
26:08
Speaker 1: from here. Oh my gosh. Um, there's a lot of
26:13
Speaker 1: hard parts in this. First of all, you're talking about
26:15
Speaker 1: attaching a rope to something heavy out in space. What right,
26:19
Speaker 1: Like do you corral and asteroid? Do you collect a
26:23
Speaker 1: bunch of space junk and build a garbage mountain in space?
26:26
Speaker 1: Like you need something big and heavy that you can
26:29
Speaker 1: understand and snap a cable too? And wait, wait, why
26:32
Speaker 1: does it need to be? Like? How heavy does it
26:34
Speaker 1: need to be? Like does need to be uh, you know,
26:37
Speaker 1: like a the size of the moon or the size
26:39
Speaker 1: of a bus or or what it needs to be
26:41
Speaker 1: definitely thousands and thousands of kilos. Exact size depends on
26:45
Speaker 1: the distance. So the longer your rope, the further away
26:49
Speaker 1: this rock can be, and the lighter it can be.
26:51
Speaker 1: Right because this centrifugal force grows with radius, and so
26:55
Speaker 1: it doesn't need to be as heavy if as longer,
26:56
Speaker 1: but then you have to build a longer rope. If
26:58
Speaker 1: you want a shorter rope, then you need a larger
27:00
Speaker 1: mass um and so it's a bit of a balancing act.
27:03
Speaker 1: We just collect all those junk satellites and make a
27:06
Speaker 1: giant satellite ball and that's it. Yeah, yeah, Or maybe
27:10
Speaker 1: we could just like gather all the plastic from the
27:11
Speaker 1: ocean and use that, right, a huge um you know,
27:15
Speaker 1: plastic straw ball in space would be pretty cool. So
27:18
Speaker 1: that's problem number one. Yeah, that is the thing that's
27:21
Speaker 1: out there holding the elevator up. Yeah, but the bigger
27:24
Speaker 1: problem is connecting it right, Like, say you have a
27:27
Speaker 1: big asteroid in space. You're all set to bigger builter
27:29
Speaker 1: space elevator. How do you make such a rope? You know,
27:32
Speaker 1: this thing has to be like thousands of kilometers long,
27:36
Speaker 1: it has to be super strong, it has to never
27:38
Speaker 1: ever ever break right, And most importantly, it has to
27:43
Speaker 1: be strong enough to hold itself up. What do you
27:46
Speaker 1: mean strong enough to hold itself up? Didn't we say
27:48
Speaker 1: that the rope is pretty much kind of floating out
27:51
Speaker 1: into space. Yeah, well you can imagine this sort of
27:53
Speaker 1: two halves of it. Right, there's some average point where
27:56
Speaker 1: half the mass of the space elevators above it and
27:58
Speaker 1: half the masses below it. Everything above that point is
28:01
Speaker 1: getting pulled out into space. Cool everything below that point
28:05
Speaker 1: is getting pulled down towards the Earth. It still has weight, right,
28:08
Speaker 1: So even if the whole thing is being held up,
28:11
Speaker 1: then the those elements of the rope that are right
28:13
Speaker 1: there at that halfway point, they have to be strong
28:15
Speaker 1: enough to hold all that weight below them, even if
28:18
Speaker 1: there's a force on the other end pulling on the
28:20
Speaker 1: rope to provide it to keep it up. The rope
28:22
Speaker 1: has to be strong enough, right. But why does it
28:25
Speaker 1: need to be intention, I guess is my question, Because
28:27
Speaker 1: couldn't you just have something in geosynchronous orbit, Like something's
28:29
Speaker 1: in orbit, it's not there's nothing holding it, right, So
28:34
Speaker 1: couldn't you just have a slack line. Well, I think
28:36
Speaker 1: a slack line would make for a pretty wild ride,
28:39
Speaker 1: you know, are not a completely taught or like a
28:45
Speaker 1: barely taught. It's not about the tension, right, It's just
28:47
Speaker 1: about having having a really really long cable that's suspended
28:51
Speaker 1: by itself. Right. Even if you lower say you lowered
28:54
Speaker 1: that cable from the space station, right and you didn't
28:56
Speaker 1: even tie it to Earth, the part where it attaches
28:59
Speaker 1: to the space vision is going to be pulled down
29:01
Speaker 1: by the entire weight of the cable. Right. The cable
29:06
Speaker 1: itself just has to be strong enough to hold that weight.
29:09
Speaker 1: It's not about the strength of the pulling force. Like
29:11
Speaker 1: let's say Superman wants to pull on the Moon. Okay,
29:15
Speaker 1: so yeah, maybe he's strong enough. He ties a rope
29:17
Speaker 1: around the Moon, and he's strong enough to pull hard
29:20
Speaker 1: enough on the rope to move the to move the Moon.
29:22
Speaker 1: But is the rope strong enough. Probably not, Probably the
29:26
Speaker 1: rope would snap, right. So this is about making a
29:28
Speaker 1: rope that's strong enough to hold all that weight, hold
29:32
Speaker 1: all that that force that's keeping it in space. Oh
29:34
Speaker 1: I see, So that there doesn't need to be tension
29:38
Speaker 1: between the space object and the Earth. But the rope
29:41
Speaker 1: it self weighs a certain amount exactly, so it's um
29:45
Speaker 1: it's being pulled down by itself basically, Yeah, exactly, it's
29:48
Speaker 1: gonna be strong enough to hold itself up, So you
29:50
Speaker 1: need something which is really strong. He also wanted to
29:53
Speaker 1: be very light so that it doesn't have to be
29:54
Speaker 1: that strong. So it's this constant balance and people and
29:57
Speaker 1: materials are doing this kind of research all the time
29:59
Speaker 1: trying to make really strong, really light materials, not just
30:03
Speaker 1: for space elevators, you know, for like bulletproof vests and
30:06
Speaker 1: for buildings and for airplanes, and like, being both strong
30:09
Speaker 1: and light is like one of the hardest things in materials, right,
30:12
Speaker 1: you know that you're an engineer. Yeah, I thought we
30:14
Speaker 1: was gonna say. I thought you were going to say
30:16
Speaker 1: that I am strong and light, which is totally true.
30:19
Speaker 1: Thank you, Daniel. You're brilliant like light, and you're also
30:23
Speaker 1: very strong willed. So there you go of a strong
30:27
Speaker 1: personalities what you're saying exactly, And so it's difficult to
30:33
Speaker 1: find materials that are strong enough to fit the bill.
30:36
Speaker 1: I mean, this thing is crazy long, right, It's like,
30:39
Speaker 1: I mean, thirty six thousand kilometers is uh is It's
30:43
Speaker 1: just a huge number, right, And so we've never met
30:45
Speaker 1: anything that long. We don't have materials that can hold
30:48
Speaker 1: themselves up when they're that long. That that would be
30:50
Speaker 1: like a rope that goes around the earth basically, right,
30:52
Speaker 1: like you you start a rope here and you keep
30:55
Speaker 1: going until you come from back on the other end,
30:59
Speaker 1: from the other side. That would be how long the
31:00
Speaker 1: rope would need to be, right exactly. It's it's crazy.
31:03
Speaker 1: It's hard to even really imagine building something that big,
31:06
Speaker 1: literally planet sized. Wow. Okay, so um, and so what
31:10
Speaker 1: are the alternatives like titanium, What if you use titanium
31:13
Speaker 1: or at a mantium at amantium, you know, if you
31:17
Speaker 1: use marvel comixium, you know then and you can do anything.
31:21
Speaker 1: You know, the strongest metals we have, if you made
31:24
Speaker 1: a thin rope of them, they can hold themselves up
31:26
Speaker 1: if you make it like you know, twenty or even
31:29
Speaker 1: thirty kilometers long. But eventually, um, eventually they just fall apart.
31:34
Speaker 1: Right the weight at the bottom will be stronger than
31:36
Speaker 1: the than the internal strength of the material. It'll tear
31:39
Speaker 1: itself apart. And you can try lighter stuff like kevlar,
31:44
Speaker 1: carbon fiber. These are fancy materials people developed. They are
31:46
Speaker 1: pretty light, and those can maybe make like, you know,
31:49
Speaker 1: a hundred kilometers, a few hundred kilometers, but remember we're
31:52
Speaker 1: looking for something that's like tens of thousands of kilometers.
31:58
Speaker 1: And so recently people have in research and they've come
32:01
Speaker 1: up with even crazier materials, Like have you ever heard
32:03
Speaker 1: of carbon nanotubes? I have? Yeah? Is that like um? YouTube?
32:09
Speaker 1: Is that like um? Like bread? Is that the Yeah,
32:14
Speaker 1: it's the the super premium version of YouTube. Exactly. The
32:19
Speaker 1: carbon nanotubes are this really cool development. It's a totally
32:23
Speaker 1: different way to arrange carbon. Carbon is an amazing element.
32:26
Speaker 1: You know, it's the backbone of organic chemistry, right, every
32:29
Speaker 1: molecule in your body has carbon as its backbone. It's
32:31
Speaker 1: incredibly flexible. Also, it doesn't have a lot of protons
32:35
Speaker 1: in it because it's early in the periodic table, so
32:38
Speaker 1: you can make structures in it that don't have a
32:39
Speaker 1: lot of like dead weight. Like a lot of the
32:42
Speaker 1: materials we use, the protons and the neutrons, which provide
32:45
Speaker 1: most of the weight of the stuff, don't really contribute
32:47
Speaker 1: much to the strength of the object. But a carbon
32:51
Speaker 1: nanotube is like pure chemical bonds, right, yeah, exactly. Most
32:55
Speaker 1: of the strength comes from the chemical bonds, which really
32:57
Speaker 1: just come from the electrons, which are pretty light. So
32:59
Speaker 1: you want to find a material real which has a
33:00
Speaker 1: small number of protons and neutrons like carbon and can
33:04
Speaker 1: arrange itself in clever ways. And so people have figured
33:06
Speaker 1: out ways to make like these spherical shells of carbon.
33:09
Speaker 1: Those are called buckeye balls, or these tubes of carbon.
33:12
Speaker 1: It's really pretty incredible, and of course folks out there
33:14
Speaker 1: might know, like carbon can make graphline, it can make diamond, right.
33:17
Speaker 1: It's really it's like a you know, an engineer's dream
33:20
Speaker 1: when it comes to a basic building material. So this
33:23
Speaker 1: is almost kind of like a cable made out of diamonds, right,
33:27
Speaker 1: almost like it's it's a very specific carbon arrangement. Yeah,
33:31
Speaker 1: it's exactly. It's a very specific arrangement of carbon, and
33:35
Speaker 1: people have and they're incredibly strong, right, They're stronger than
33:37
Speaker 1: anything anybody has ever made. And the current calculations tell
33:41
Speaker 1: us that, like you could probably make a carbon nanotube
33:45
Speaker 1: that goes five maybe ten thousand kilometers and you could
33:49
Speaker 1: hold itself up um, which is pretty good. Right, that's
33:52
Speaker 1: getting in the range of what you need is still
33:54
Speaker 1: a little low um. But the problem is that we're
33:58
Speaker 1: not really that good making carbon in the tubes yet,
34:01
Speaker 1: Like the longest one we've ever made is like centimeters
34:04
Speaker 1: in length. Oh, so we're almost there. Well, I've heard
34:13
Speaker 1: this idea of using carbon nanotubes, which I know they
34:16
Speaker 1: are like single atom, single molecules strands, and I was thought,
34:20
Speaker 1: what You're gonna pull a whole elevator on a single
34:22
Speaker 1: strand of molecules. But I think the idea is not
34:25
Speaker 1: that there's a single strand up to space, but like
34:28
Speaker 1: a like a bundle of these fibers, right, yeah, I
34:31
Speaker 1: think you can weave them together to get additional strength
34:34
Speaker 1: and also redundancy. Right. Another problem with carbon nanotubes is
34:38
Speaker 1: that they're not very robust too. For example, lightning strikes, right,
34:43
Speaker 1: you strike it with lightning and basically evaporates. So that
34:46
Speaker 1: means that means you need to like always predict the
34:50
Speaker 1: weather exactly correctly or you're susceptible to these lightning strikes
34:55
Speaker 1: to you know, evaporate your your cable. That would be
34:58
Speaker 1: a long ride down if your space celebrator gets fried
35:02
Speaker 1: by lightning strike. I think it's faster on the way
35:05
Speaker 1: down there on the way up. If you if the
35:07
Speaker 1: cable snaps. Um. Yes, there's a lot of challenges there.
35:11
Speaker 1: We don't even have do We don't have the technology right.
35:13
Speaker 1: Carbon nanotubes aren't yet good enough, and we don't even
35:16
Speaker 1: know how to make carbon nano tubes that are long enough.
35:19
Speaker 1: But I mean physically carbon tubes could be could work
35:24
Speaker 1: or did they just even those are not physically able
35:27
Speaker 1: to get to thirty six kilometers. I think there's a
35:30
Speaker 1: lot of uncertainty still because a lot of ways you
35:31
Speaker 1: can make them, and so people think about weaving them
35:34
Speaker 1: together and to get them extra strong. So I think
35:36
Speaker 1: it's possible. Right nobody knows exactly how to do it,
35:40
Speaker 1: but I certainly wouldn't say it's ruled out. Um, it's
35:43
Speaker 1: definitely in the category of things that the people imagine.
35:46
Speaker 1: You just have to find a right solution, like the
35:48
Speaker 1: right engineering material solution. And one of the problems is
35:52
Speaker 1: that often you're surfing on the backs of other industries.
35:55
Speaker 1: Like there if there are other reasons why people are
35:58
Speaker 1: trying to push to make long carbon antitubes, then cool
36:01
Speaker 1: Space Elevator can wait until some other industry figures out
36:04
Speaker 1: the problem and then they can just order a big tube. Right.
36:07
Speaker 1: Problem is nobody else really needs carbon nantitubes thousands of
36:11
Speaker 1: miles long. Right, We need them for electroc electrical conductivity,
36:15
Speaker 1: and all sorts of other applications that are you know,
36:17
Speaker 1: millimeters or centimeters or spider Man. Spider Man needs them.
36:22
Speaker 1: He makes them himself though, and he's not shared the patent,
36:24
Speaker 1: so we're screwed from that point of view. Um, So
36:27
Speaker 1: you need a dedicated effort to develop these things to
36:30
Speaker 1: be long enough for space elevators. And that's expensive, right,
36:33
Speaker 1: That's a huge investment, And so you're saying it's like
36:36
Speaker 1: a nascent industry like, um, there's a lot of applications
36:39
Speaker 1: of them, um in in solid state physics, you know,
36:43
Speaker 1: and and in biophysics and using them for all sorts
36:45
Speaker 1: of stuff, But most of those applications they can be
36:47
Speaker 1: pretty short, right, he used They use them for connectivity,
36:50
Speaker 1: for circuits, for like filtering stuff, for picking stuff out
36:54
Speaker 1: of other kinds of Google. But nobody really else, nobody
36:57
Speaker 1: else other than space elevators needs them to be this long.
37:00
Speaker 1: So you need somebody to develop it. But you know
37:01
Speaker 1: there are people out there who are working on it,
37:03
Speaker 1: people who think this would be awesome, or people who
37:06
Speaker 1: correctly think it would be huge economic windfall the first
37:09
Speaker 1: person to build a space elevator, you know, and instead
37:12
Speaker 1: of charging dollars per kilo, could charge like their very
37:15
Speaker 1: reasonable price of five hundred dollars per kilo. We'll get
37:18
Speaker 1: a lot of business. Wow. But you're saying, um, this
37:22
Speaker 1: might be achievable with a few if we just invest
37:25
Speaker 1: enough money in it into it. Yeah, it might be right.
37:27
Speaker 1: Somebody needs to develop the technology to build these long
37:30
Speaker 1: cables and to make them robust um. And you know,
37:33
Speaker 1: people estimate how much this might cost. It's really just
37:36
Speaker 1: speculation because nobody really knows. It's research. Right. You could
37:39
Speaker 1: have a moment of inspiration and figure something out tomorrow,
37:42
Speaker 1: or you could sink billions of dollars in and get nowhere.
37:45
Speaker 1: But it's definitely in the billions or tens of billions
37:48
Speaker 1: of dollars category in terms of research projects. Just people saying, hey,
37:51
Speaker 1: if you can give me twenty billion dollars, I'll get
37:54
Speaker 1: you into space. Yeah. I wouldn't believe a firm price tag,
37:56
Speaker 1: but that's probably the right order of magnitude is you know,
37:59
Speaker 1: ten or twenty billion to develop and to build this thing.
38:02
Speaker 1: And you know, some people are talking about like trying
38:04
Speaker 1: it first on the Moon, because on the Moon to
38:05
Speaker 1: be much easier because the gravity is much lighter on
38:08
Speaker 1: the Moon. So the space elevator wouldn't need to be
38:10
Speaker 1: as high, wouldn't need to be as long, it's not
38:12
Speaker 1: as risky. You mean, like a space elevator from the
38:15
Speaker 1: Moon out into space to take off from the Moon, Yes, exactly,
38:20
Speaker 1: out into orbit around the Moon basically just as a
38:23
Speaker 1: sort of a warm up project. Because also, imagine you
38:26
Speaker 1: build a space elevator and it's working fine and then
38:29
Speaker 1: it breaks, right, that could be a big disaster. Like
38:33
Speaker 1: what if it breaks um where the cable snaps um
38:37
Speaker 1: at the top end? Right, Then this huge cable falls
38:41
Speaker 1: from the sky right, and it's as you said, it's
38:44
Speaker 1: as long as the circumference of the Earth. So like,
38:46
Speaker 1: where is this thing in a fall? It's gonna slice
38:48
Speaker 1: people in half? Like it seems crazy, it would keep
38:52
Speaker 1: falling for a long time. Yeah. Or if it snaps
38:55
Speaker 1: at the bottom right, and then you're dragging this like
38:58
Speaker 1: very sharp, hot, fast moving cable across the surface of
39:02
Speaker 1: the Earth, right, Wow, none of these pictures sound very rosy, no, exactly.
39:07
Speaker 1: And so if you're considering investing in the Space Elevator company.
39:10
Speaker 1: Think about the lead of liabilities right well, which is
39:14
Speaker 1: why I think we should just make it out of
39:15
Speaker 1: um spider webbing, which is um the spider Man answer
39:20
Speaker 1: your phone calls? These days? How do you tell how
39:24
Speaker 1: much is a Marble movie? Abo million dollars done? You know?
39:30
Speaker 1: One of my favorite science fiction stories is about a
39:33
Speaker 1: physicist who has an idea for some awesome technology and
39:37
Speaker 1: he can't get any funding agencies to fund it for him,
39:40
Speaker 1: so instead he pitches it to Hollywood as a movie
39:43
Speaker 1: and then make a movie, and he uses Hollywood's huge
39:46
Speaker 1: budget to build the quote unquote prop of his device
39:50
Speaker 1: and it actually works, and so he uses Hollywood as
39:53
Speaker 1: a as a way to fund his research. Should you
39:56
Speaker 1: should pitch it as a movie? A movie about a
40:00
Speaker 1: guy who talks on the podcast about a story about
40:03
Speaker 1: a physicist. It sounds like an awesome pitch so far.
40:07
Speaker 1: I can just imagine you're going to like a movie
40:09
Speaker 1: studio head of meaning, Kay, sir, can I give you
40:11
Speaker 1: my quick elevator pitch? That's right, we have we're taking
40:16
Speaker 1: the space elevator, so I have ten days to give
40:19
Speaker 1: you my pitch for this movie. Okay, great, So so
40:27
Speaker 1: that's the that's the the space elevator. It's it's um.
40:31
Speaker 1: It would sort of liberate us from this need for
40:33
Speaker 1: rocket fuels and rockets and which are explosive and expensive.
40:37
Speaker 1: That's right. And we didn't even get to touch on it,
40:39
Speaker 1: but very briefly, like you could avoid having to carry
40:42
Speaker 1: all the energy for the space elevator by like using
40:45
Speaker 1: laser beams. You could like shoot laser beams from the
40:48
Speaker 1: ground to send energy out there, or to use carbon nanotubes.
40:51
Speaker 1: You could they could be electrified, so they could like
40:54
Speaker 1: send the electricity along the wire like a like an
40:56
Speaker 1: electric bus or something. Stop stop right there and just
41:01
Speaker 1: call it a laser space elevator. I mean that just
41:04
Speaker 1: sells laservator, laser space evator. How are you gonna get
41:10
Speaker 1: to space? I'm gonna laservate mis way to space? Cool?
41:13
Speaker 1: Good luck with that. Where a helmet? Um? Yeah, But
41:16
Speaker 1: I think this stuff is important. I think it's interesting.
41:19
Speaker 1: I think if we're going to build a space industry,
41:21
Speaker 1: if we're gonna develop humanity into space and and you know,
41:25
Speaker 1: populate space and and all that kind of stuff, we
41:27
Speaker 1: gotta get started. We gotta get over this hump where
41:29
Speaker 1: it costs so much money to get something into space
41:33
Speaker 1: and it's so risk and it takes months of planning. Right,
41:35
Speaker 1: it has to be more routine, has to be cheaper. Yeah, yeah,
41:39
Speaker 1: avengers get on it. So or half to listen to
41:42
Speaker 1: all of that. If somebody builds the space elevator, would
41:45
Speaker 1: you pay to take a ride up into space? Let's
41:48
Speaker 1: do the calculation. Save costs two hundred dollars per kilo?
41:52
Speaker 1: Right then? How much? How much would your ride on
41:54
Speaker 1: the space elevator cost? How much would it for me? Really?
41:57
Speaker 1: Like that sounds like ten bucks or something? All right,
42:00
Speaker 1: So would you spend ten thousand bucks to get into space? Totally? Yeah?
42:04
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you? I mean if it was viny was safe. Yeah, well,
42:07
Speaker 1: I'll take your deposit right now. What was your credit
42:09
Speaker 1: card number? No, I probably would. I think getting to
42:16
Speaker 1: be up in space would be would be exhilarating. Um
42:19
Speaker 1: of course, have the price drops that low, then you
42:21
Speaker 1: know a lot of people will do it. Maybe won't
42:23
Speaker 1: feel as exciting anymore. I think it would also depend
42:25
Speaker 1: on who's going on an elevator with me. When you're
42:27
Speaker 1: on a transatlantic flight, do you like stare out the
42:29
Speaker 1: window agog at the technology anymore. No, you're probably just
42:33
Speaker 1: like watching movies. You lower the window, you ignore what's
42:35
Speaker 1: going on outside. Right, People adapt pretty quickly to this
42:38
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, like a real elevator. Right, Like if
42:41
Speaker 1: you showed a real elevator to someone ten years ago,
42:44
Speaker 1: to be like what, you can go up? You can
42:47
Speaker 1: go up a thousand feet up intil into the air,
42:50
Speaker 1: just by getting onto this box. Yeah, in these days,
42:53
Speaker 1: people just like impatiently mashing the buttons, cursing the thing
42:56
Speaker 1: for being so slow. Right, humans never satisfy. Somebody told
43:00
Speaker 1: me that New York is the only place where the
43:03
Speaker 1: closed door button actually works. What are you saying the
43:06
Speaker 1: closed door button doesn't usually work. I think that he's
43:10
Speaker 1: there for a psychological Oh my god, that blows my mind.
43:14
Speaker 1: Are you serious? Yeah? You have you ever been in
43:17
Speaker 1: one where that actually works? I don't know. I guess
43:19
Speaker 1: I had the impression that frantically mashing that button did something. Yeah. No,
43:24
Speaker 1: I'm gonna apply that. I'm gonna apply that technique to
43:26
Speaker 1: other places, you know, like, Um, I'm having a knob
43:28
Speaker 1: a button outside my office door that says complain to professor,
43:32
Speaker 1: and people come over and just mash the button and
43:34
Speaker 1: feel satisfied. Ring ring doorbell for physics answers, And it
43:39
Speaker 1: doesn't do anything, And it doesn't do it just pulls
43:44
Speaker 1: up a copy of our book. We have no idea.
43:48
Speaker 1: So there you go. There you go. Well, I hope
43:53
Speaker 1: the next time you get into an elevator, um you
43:55
Speaker 1: maybe imagine yourself getting onto the space elevator and imagine
44:00
Speaker 1: and when you get off that you'd be in a
44:01
Speaker 1: whole different world. Or I imagine that maybe one of
44:04
Speaker 1: our listeners has heard about space elevators for the first
44:07
Speaker 1: time it is so inspired that he or she will
44:10
Speaker 1: sink their fortune into investing in space elevators and make
44:13
Speaker 1: it real and actually go to space. So it's John
44:17
Speaker 1: let the carpet said, engage. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody,
44:22
Speaker 1: and if you have questions about what we said, send
44:24
Speaker 1: us some feedback at Questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com,
44:28
Speaker 1: or send us a suggestion for what topic you'd like
44:30
Speaker 1: to hear us talk about. Thanks for listening. If you
44:41
Speaker 1: still have a question after listening to all these explanations,
44:44
Speaker 1: please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
44:47
Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook Twitter and Instagram at
44:50
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge That's one word, or email us at
44:54
Speaker 1: Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening,
44:58
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge's in the Universe is
45:00
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from
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