Hello friends you might heard the story in MAHABARATHA, in which Arjuna was built a ladder to heaven through which Bheema was traveled.Yes its a story written by great "Vyasa maharshi". The same thing is going to be real now, you can travel to space and that too takes 5 hours journey, you can observe our Earth curvature and the sky turns to black color from blue. Which sounds like a Sci-fi movie story.
But this is not a story, this is real and this is really possible in our world, which is called SPACE ELEVATOR.
"Elevator to space". A space transportation system.Yuri Artsutanov first proposed the idea in 1960, and up until 15 years ago it was purely in the realm of science fiction. But Sumio Iijima's discovery of CARBON NANOTUBES (CNTs) in 1990 and Bradley Edward's engineering research in 2001 is clearing the road map to a space elevator's construction. Scientists today are conducting a lot of research in the field of nanotube tethers for commercial applications on Earth. Sooner than most people expect, I hope a space-elevator-capable CNT tether will become available and kick the space elevator's development into high gear.
A space elevator is essentially a long cable extending from our planet's surface into space with its center of mass at geostationary Earth orbit (GEO), 35,786 km in altitude. Electromagnetic vehicles traveling along the cable could serve as a mass transportation system for moving people, payloads, and power between Earth and space. Current plans call for a base tower approximately 50 km tall -- the cable would be tethered to the top. To keep the cable structure from tumbling to Earth, it would be attached to a large counterbalance mass beyond geostationary orbit, perhaps an asteroid moved into place for that purpose.
Carbon nanotube :
CNT is a new form of carbon, equivalent to a flat graphene sheet rolled into a tube. CNT exhibits extraordinary
mechanical properties: the Young's modulus is over 1 TeraPascal and the estimated tensile strength is 200 GigaPascals. Fiber materials such as graphite, alumina, and quartz have exhibited tensile strengths greater than 20 GPa during laboratory testing for cable tethers. The desired strength for the space elevator is about 62 GPa. Carbon nanotubes have exceeded all other materials and appear to have a theoretical strength far above the desired range for space elevator structures. "The development of carbon nanotubes shows real promise," said Smitherman. "They're lightweight materials that are 100 times stronger than steel."
And there are some more technologies to build such a elevator.but CNT is the present assumption.
In his last years, Sir Arthur C. Clarke predicted that the space elevator will be built "about 10 years after everyone stops laughing". I believe people will stop laughing once a proper tether is demonstrated, and we think that this will happen within 5 to 10 years. Hopefully that means about 15 to 20 years before the first launch.
Conceptual pictures:
Videos:
NOVA Science now video
But this is not a story, this is real and this is really possible in our world, which is called SPACE ELEVATOR.
A space elevator is essentially a long cable extending from our planet's surface into space with its center of mass at geostationary Earth orbit (GEO), 35,786 km in altitude. Electromagnetic vehicles traveling along the cable could serve as a mass transportation system for moving people, payloads, and power between Earth and space. Current plans call for a base tower approximately 50 km tall -- the cable would be tethered to the top. To keep the cable structure from tumbling to Earth, it would be attached to a large counterbalance mass beyond geostationary orbit, perhaps an asteroid moved into place for that purpose.
Carbon nanotube :
mechanical properties: the Young's modulus is over 1 TeraPascal and the estimated tensile strength is 200 GigaPascals. Fiber materials such as graphite, alumina, and quartz have exhibited tensile strengths greater than 20 GPa during laboratory testing for cable tethers. The desired strength for the space elevator is about 62 GPa. Carbon nanotubes have exceeded all other materials and appear to have a theoretical strength far above the desired range for space elevator structures. "The development of carbon nanotubes shows real promise," said Smitherman. "They're lightweight materials that are 100 times stronger than steel."
And there are some more technologies to build such a elevator.but CNT is the present assumption.
In his last years, Sir Arthur C. Clarke predicted that the space elevator will be built "about 10 years after everyone stops laughing". I believe people will stop laughing once a proper tether is demonstrated, and we think that this will happen within 5 to 10 years. Hopefully that means about 15 to 20 years before the first launch.
Conceptual pictures:
Videos:
NOVA Science now video
