/sci/ - Science & Math

Orbital ring edition
previous >>15278499

>>15069980
just until we build an orbital ring using moon factories

If you had an orbital ring held up with active suspension, would it have to be avn uninterrupted tube all around the planet where some matter could be sent or could it be separated into sections?

>>14852561
Atmospheric miners suspended from orbital rings. We should probably start draining those radiation belts.

Can we harness energy from the motion of orbiting bodies

Let's say we build a ring/cable orbiting the Earth at super-orbital speed at 250 km altitude. Due to this, the ring is under tension.
The ring weighs 50000 tonnes.
We put a current through the ring and now we can have magnets levitating above/below/around it.
From such a magnet we descend a wire down to earth and hook it up to the ground.
The wire weighs quite a bit plus we prefer to put it under tension as well.
The total force by which our wire pulls on the magnet and thus orbital ring is 1000 kN.

Question: Does our ring sag and how does it sag?
Can you draw the force diagram? Or how do you even approach this?

>>10469552
sadly that will not stop him posting it...

>>10400691
>better benefits same amount of effort
nigga what ?
Price per mass on orbital ring in the cents vs a space station?????????

Fuck I just want to launch tons and tons of steel cables for my orbital ring.....

>>10262519
Lol. Even unobtainium tier carbon nanotubes isn’t strong enough to build a space elevator that is as long as the height of objects in GEO. Space elevators was never going to make Space accessible for the average person nor is it possible to build with even materials verging on having magical properties. Orbital rings are one of the few meme space megastructures that is realistic to build with technologies being developed in the next 20 years and that will require cheap super heavy reusable rockets to set up. Musk and Bezos both know that the end game is setting up a space megastructure like an orbital ring that’ll cut the cost of access to space by another order of magnitude and which will make space mining and space industry viable. Who ever build some it first will own space, just like whoever built the railways during the western expansion of the US pretty much owned the small towns and industrial centres which relied on its tracks. It’s why I think Bezos is okay with Musk monopolising the global constellation satellite market because he has his eye on building on what is the equivalent of the railway to space. I’m willing to bet that in the 2020s, Blue Origin and Space will start patenting the complex mechanism in space megastructures like orbital rings. Rockets are just the beginning. Bezos has always said he wants to industrialise space and you can’t industrialise space with rockets.

>>10009672
Why not both?
But yeah that would be fucking awesome

>>10017098
Space elevators are a meme. Even Carbon nano tubes arent strong enough for space elevators. Orbital rings made out of readily available modern materials that connects to elevators are the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E

>>10012031
>2001 space station
You don't know what an orbital ring is either
I'm talking about this

Stephen Hawking has said it is theoretically possible to build a particle accelerator large enough to create a bubble of true vacuum that would expand at the speed of light in all directions ultimately unmaking the entire universe, but that such a device would have to be larger than the Earth.

I read another physicist saying that the same device could be used to create a new universe, likely in place of this one. Maybe it would even be possible to "jump" in as our original universe is being swallowed up. I have a feeling that this is what our civilization is building up to, that this is its purpose. And that even if it's ultimately impossible, we're still here to try to find out.

Will I see a fully constructed orbital ring in my lifetime?