{"id":1125,"date":"2008-12-01T02:24:48","date_gmt":"2008-12-01T08:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1125"},"modified":"2008-12-01T02:36:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-01T08:36:00","slug":"how-strong-does-the-space-elevator-tether-need-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1125","title":{"rendered":"How strong does the Space Elevator tether need to be?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/media\/Stone-Wales.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"180\" src=\"\/media\/tn_Stone-Wales.png\"  height=\"200\" style=\"width: 180px; height: 200px\" \/><\/a>How strong does a tether really have to be in order to make a working, useful Space Elevator?\u00a0\u00a0This is a question that Ben Shelef, CEO of the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceward.org\">Spaceward Foundation<\/a>, has been exploring in some detail.<\/p>\n<p>The answer to this question\u00a0relates to how strong the climber power system is.\u00a0 The stronger the power system is, the weaker the tether can be (and vice-versa).\u00a0 There is no absolute minimum number, but there is an equation which Ben has created, <em>The Space Elevator Feasibility Condition<\/em>, which answers this question.<\/p>\n<p>According to Ben\u2019s calculations, for example, a tether which has a tensile strength of 30 GPa-cc\/g would be strong enough to create a useful Space Elevator provided the Climber power system can generate at least 1.5 kWatt\/kg.\u00a0 If the\u00a0tensile strength of the tether\u00a0is only 25 GPa-cc\/g, the power system needs to generate at least 3.5 kWatt\/kg.<\/p>\n<p>How does climber power relate to tether strength?\u00a0 Ben documents all of this in a new paper; <em>The Space Elevator Feasibility Condition<\/em>, available (in <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceward.org\/elevator-feasibility\">html<\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceward.org\/documents\/papers\/The%20Space%20Elevator%20Feasibility%20Condition.pdf\">pdf<\/a> formats)\u00a0in the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceward.org\/elevator-library\">Library section<\/a> of the Spaceward website.<\/p>\n<p>Over the next few days, I\u2019m going to be looking at and writing about this paper in more detail.<\/p>\n<p>This paper is very important for all of us in the Space Elevator community to read and understand.\u00a0 We need to be able to pose realistic scenarios and give justifiable answers to questions when they are presented to us.\u00a0 The Space Elevator Feasibility Condition will help us do that.<\/p>\n<p><em>(Picture of\u00a0spontaneous formation of Stone-Wales Defect in a nanotube under tension from the Spaceward website &#8211; click on it for a slightly larger version)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How strong does a tether really have to be in order to make a working, useful Space Elevator?\u00a0\u00a0This is a question that Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation, has been exploring in some detail. The answer to this question\u00a0relates to how strong the climber power system is.\u00a0 The stronger the power system is, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-news-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}