The space based coverage by Bloomberg Quicktake lately has been outstanding.

This is great. The next space-related video should be about potential ways to clean up space.

Brad Edwards seems to dismiss most of the very real problems with space elevators very quickly. We can only make Carbon Nanotubes in the lab, it isn't really a question of commercialisation. Commercialisation does not promise the price will go down; it might be an investment that makes slow or little returns. And rocketry is undergoing a revolution thanks to companies like SpaceX that are making space far cheaper and with far larger payloads. For comparison, Edwards said 100 T on a space Elevator would be great, but that's the minimum planned weight of the Starship launch system. His counter-arguments concerning debris don't seem persuasive. I think space elevators would be great and wonderful, but there are serious engineering problems to be faced to get there. It's not just about the money and will.

An elevator on Mars would be much easier to build and maintain......and make landing in such a thin atmosphere WAY safer. It's made possible by the 0.38g and brisk 24h.37m rotation.

The fact that the japanese professor spoke about how the elevator could cause wars might have been the reason why the writers of Ace Combat 7 wrote their game's story around this concept. Either way it would be dope if we one day build something like this!

Every time I see one of these things it's always one cable stretched directly to space. With some sort of climbing apparatus attached to it. The problem with this is how would you ever repair it if it got torn or hit or scratched. If you had a giant pulley system where on the ground you had a giant real or spool the cable would go up to the space counterweight through a pulley and back to the ground to another giant real or spool. Then instead of having a climber you could just attach whatever you was sending into space to the cable and reel it up or down like a fishing pole. Then if something had to be done to repair the cable. It could be it done on land instead of 200 miles off the ground.

I'm so glad there's people like this that are way smarter than me, that are able to execute on long-term projects and make humanity better.

getting stuck and waiting for the repair team to climb the 32324409883847232833882393921 ladder rungs..

4:00 "materials required to carry this much weight don't exist" -hence why its science fiction

He lost me when he said they didnt even have to think about collisions because there are companies tracking things.

This presentation was absolutely beautiful. I really hope that we pull together as a species and colonise the stars 👍

From a risk/reward perspective, all it takes is 1 big or small space debris and you can say sayonara to your Space Elevator

BBG Quicktake truly is a little gem amongst all the **** on youtube

Seriously! The only "Space Elevator" content I've enjoyed watching, I'm literally looking for more. Credit to the who ever put this together, editor, and writter.

I have to say, this video is exceptionally well produced.

A team within Google looked at this idea, and it was quickly dismissed after discussing the physics between the Earth's rotation and space, it would shatter before even being completed

It just looks like someone trying to sell Carbon nanotube technology.

im getting ready for gundam 00 live action

Arthur C, Clarke fired my imagination many decades ago with the mention of a space elevator, and set me thinking about the mechanical problems to be solved. The cable was my initial stumbling block, but that could now be well on the way to being solved. Unfortunately, there was no mention of how they propose to cope with the lateral forces created by the rotation of the Earth and the inertia of the "climber" and its load. At the Earth's surface, the equatorial peripheral speed is about 1000 mph, whilst at just the height for a stable orbit (escape velocity) it needs to be travelling at 17,500 mph. The higher it goes, the faster it needs to go. This could pull the cable seriously out of plumb and even cause "whiplash" effects and uncontrolled oscillations.

Thanks for this Bloomberg, I always wondered if an elevator to space was possible

From what I have seen elsewhere on YT here, the longest nanotube created so far is about a few centimeters. It is under 2 inches. 😨

Seems like somebody was watching Apples version of Asimov’s Foundation.

When I think about space elevators, I think about the potential for terrorist attacks.

I genuinely hope you find an investor or entrepreneur taking this on! Thank you Bloomberg for bringing attention to that and accelerating human progress!

Space elevator could be employed in precision sampling or mining from asteroids. Landing on asteroids is very challenging, due to its low mass.

After watching this video my first thought was, ‘Hasn’t it been dismissed because of the risk and costs?’ then I couldn’t stop thinking about getting to orbit; I mean who can, when they think it to be so easy that they could just hop an elevator to orbit??? My thoughts went to things that are actually likely to happen because the technology is more-sound than hanging a wire from orbit that is likely to snap sooner than later… If you have read my comments then you know the best and safest way to get to high altitudes is a blimp… I have written briefly about a high altitude blimp station made up of 8 blimps paired 200 meters side by side 100 meters between nose and rear. I would guess the blimps are 100 meters long that would hold a platform of 200 meters wide and 800 meters long, landing pad, floating at 40,000 feet or 12,000 meters. A passenger jet could land and refuel as the passengers load a Space Jet with vacuum engines to fly to LEO where Orbiting Stations are for Vacationing to or for testing at an Orbital Laboratory. I remember a Disney Balloon that would lift to orbit for vacations… Why not leave the balloon in orbit and drop a cord of carbine nanotubes, and use that to lift materials to orbit??? The cable could be wound up when not in use, and the balloon could fly around the world to lift stuff from Russia one week and the next week lift stuff from Huston, Texas… You might ask what about the birds that nibble at the wire as in when a mouse chewed on an electric line in that 911 show and was mistaken for a ghost, back to reality what if it were to snap??? In the video they say if the string of Nanotubes were to fall to Earth, it would be as if a string of feathers were to hit your head…that would take a minute to notice? No, they don’t say that but have you ever been whipped by nanotubes, no, you probably would have a hard time feeling that? ?think of threads?

You haven't proven that your technology is scalable. Your limit is the the defect rate in the tether, until you can reduce the defects you won't make a long enough rope.

thanks for your video and hard work

assuming your cable is strong enough to maintain tension without breaking you still have deal with adding the angular momentum to the stuff you’re lifting which will pull the cable sideways. You’re not just lifting, you’re accelerating laterality...sideways.

Everybody is a gangsta until it says 320 blocks limit

as of now almost imposible to make, from the material and many other thing

Every issue he mentioned is a legitimate problem that we have no solution to currently and then he proceeds to say its no problem. Firstly nanotubes have even made outside the lab and even inside teh max length we have gotten is 1/2 a meter. Then, tourists might face on a freaking minumum 10 day journey togo up a space elevator. Infact for personell the elevator doesn't even make sense it just takes way too long; the elevator could be useful to bring down raw materials from asteroids or producsts manafctured in space like ZBLAN or bioprinted organs. And then he says that any comerical enterpise could build it? 8bn is a crazy optimistic number. The amount of launches to build the counterwieght infratcutre and the rceeiving infratcutre would alreayd total more than that. Now this guy just easily dismissed debris as a problem saying that oh commeical ventures track it, hello do you realise taht almost all of the object smaller than 10 cm are too small to be tracked. This guy is starting to sound more like a lunatic then an optimist

The repercussions the Japanese professor said sounded like a plot from the Gundam series.

Really amazing ideas....🙏🤝🗺🌍👽👽👽

If it is built as a modular stage system, it eliminates most of the problems brought up in this video. With the added benefit of being deployed in smaller sections as opposed to one single ridiculously long tether. With multiple tethers at GEO where there is virtually zero weight penalty and fewer tethers as you move out from center, you also eliminate the need for tapering.

In the race for the tallest building, a building with also a space elevator would trump all other possible heights.

It was glossed over, but we still don't have the tech to build the cable for a practical orbital elevator. If we do ever get the tech to make cables for orbital elevators, we will see it coming decades in advance because the wonder material will already be revolutionizing industry.

I have been following this idea for over a decade. It is our future.

We will use our Carbon Nanotubes (*coming soon at scale... maybe) and move up to a 100 tons a day or couple days. SpaceX's Starship (if it works) would make any risk of building a space elevator not worth it anytime soon, but it would make it easier to build one.

this idea always had a lot of questions with it

We just got to push a little longer until we got the car banana tubes

I can vaguely remember a Science Fiction concept in a kids' comic in the 1940's called, "The Black Beam." Things placed into the beam could then leave earth and journey into space. Haven't a clue what the "Black Beam," was, but it was obviously an idea. It's from ideas that everything else comes.

If you approach problem to reverse pyramid, you can already build such cable using existing materials. Trick is that it would get thicker the higher you go. With regular carbon fiber or zylon you would achieve same effect much easier, thing is you need start building from top to bottom.

Excellent music ( background )

The year Kessler effect happened.. we will know if space elevator can be built.. lol

No way that Space Elevator would only cost 8 billion lol.... More like 800 billion. crazy idea.

Active-support space-towers? Yes, they're getting closer to reality. Mass-drivers to get a spaceship into orbit without using fuel? Yes, they're also getting closer to reality (especially to get cargo in orbit, since you need a much shorter track and can get a much higher acceleration than humans can survive, which makes it cheaper). And no, the space tower won't have a counterweight to keep it straight, it will be pushed up and into place using active support. Whether that active support is from lasers, or from something like water being circulated through the system, is irrelevant. The space-tower could even be telescopic, so you can retract it when the weather is bad, to minimize the possible damage, or when it's not in use for long periods of time, to do maintenance and reduce the cost of operation. It doesn't even need to get far enough into orbit for space junk to hit it, since most of that would burn in the atmosphere before reaching the top of the active-support space-tower. We could even have landing strips on which spaceships to land on the tower, or even entire cities, and get solar power by using power satellites which then beam the energy with infrared rays up to infrared antennas which to then deliver it back to earth and use some of it to keep the tower up, and it would also allow for spaceships to be built into reduced gravity, so people could carry more weight around. And that would be prime real estate for building rotating habitats like O'Neil cylinders, in which to have living people and even grow food. You can even make a launch-loop by having two or three active support space towers connected with eachother, or having different places connected to them. This could lead to going to the other side of the planet taking a mere 1 hour. And once the tech is advanced enough, people could finally start colonizing the space, starting with staying in space and orbiting Earth, then orbiting the moon, then orbiting other planets while scanning for the right places to colonize, then colonizing the planets themselves, then maybe even tethering a few hundreds to a few thousands of rotating habitats at 1g (the same acceleration as Earth's gravity) to the nearest star (Alpha Centauri) located at 4.37 lightyears would take around 4 years or less for the travelers and 6 or more years for those left on Earth. This means that they have to use very large antennas with laser-based communication back-and-forth to trade science done on board in exchange for new science from Earth, so the new colony doesn't get so outdated that the next wave of ships would completely dominate the first wave of ships sent. It also means that enough people have to be sent there to ensure humanity can spread even if something happens to Earth and even if the radiation from space were to make most people sterile, which will likely require using artificial wombs like scientists already used to birth animals without the need of parents, from frozen baby batter and eggs, but using the baby-batter and eggs the people on those ships collected before leaving the solar system (to minimize the risk of contagion). This would likely require entire websites (like youtube) to have almost-full physical backups on those space-ships, allowing people to consume content from them even when away from Earth. This would also require both digital and physical books being carried. And not only that, but the convoy will likely become legally it's own country, including having new people join the convoy using rotating habitats moving at 3g, which would only take 1.7 years for the travelers or 5 ears on Earth to get to the same star. In fact, with that kind of acceleration, the rotating habitats would likely not even rotate for humans, maybe only for growing plants and animals in higher gravity, if doing so is advantageous. Instead, the rotating habitats would only be rotating once coasting inside the solar system at the right distance from the star, while studying the planets to choose for resource-harvesting and later habitation. Mass-drivers would likely be pre-fabricated, for exchanging data caches with Earth at speeds much faster than humans can afford (like 20g, which would take a data cache to the star in 5.2 months for the data-cache, or 4.6 years for the people who are left on Earth). This What I mentioned is the perceived time for the travelers (how much time passes for them, and how much they age thanks to that), and the time perceived on Earth.

Build 3 elevators at one location. 2 of the 3 are for maintenance/repairs, emergencies, and can shield payloads with synchronous movements.

If this becomes a reality, I'll be very happy as not only it's better or cooler, but also because we won't be destroying the earth with all those gases

I can’t wait to see the first people break down on it

Perhaps you should ASK a scientist who knows what he's talking about. This report is SAD. This space elevator CANNOT be made today, and anyone who says it can is WRONG.

Unfortunately although nanotubes are incredibly strong, that strength does not carry as the fibres get longer, such as in strands needed to construct a space elevator, hopefully they find a way to overcome this....

Question, a wheel, big , going around earth, also spinning at or near orbit velocity?

This is the best space elevator content I have seen on KZfaq.

Bloomberg quicktake, you guys are putting one great video after another. Great job

The space elevator could double as a debris cleanup station if equipped sufficiently. Nets, chaff launcher, harpoons, magnets, etc.

Even if we're closer to WW3 than Moon base/city/whatnot or a class out war between poor and the ultra rich, Bloomberg Quicktake is going place with this type of video content.

I think everything that takes us to space will change how we interact with space

Going to take a lot of magic beans to grow a beanstalk to space

Force equals angler acceleration times mass. As the mass decrease in height it decreases in speed and the force applied on the "elevator." increases. F = α * m: Think it out, the forces and acceleration could be immense for just a little change in height. α = h2 * v2 - h1 * v1: You need thrusters working to counter the extrema forces caused from the mass. And, if you could get a 'cable' and end foundations that strong, a change in height of a ton of material could speed up and slow down the rotation of the earth. You would also get a whiplash effect with the cable as it tries to keep synchronized over the same spot on the earth. This is the same for 'up' only in the opposite direction.

we barely have a space station, it seems far.

That elevator will have the best security system ever

Very cool.

With basic force field technology(since we are already entertaining one science fiction concept), couldn't that help deflect most debris on the path to the elevator shaft/ribbon?

A space elevator of some sort is the ONLY way we are going to achieve space exploration and colonization of any significance scale. Rocketry is just to economically and operationally inefficient---not to mention dangerous.

It was fantastic idea

Any problem with this kind of space elevator where the tether is extremely lightweight, strong and thin is what happens when a micrometeorite hits it? The space station is able to detect and use its thrusters to avoid micrometeorites from hitting its systems, what kind of space elevator do to stop its tether from being ripped apart by a very quickly moving object? I'm sure there are ways that could be solved, but how practical are they and are those defensive methods feasible yet?

Interesting stuff, though I'd like to see an explanation of how the elevator cargo being lifted would accelerate from 1000mph West to East (with Earth's surface rotation) to the required 8000 mph or so West to East at 22,000 miles altitude. Also, the cable would (at 300 miles low earth orbit altitude) be going about 1000 mph W to E, while the orbiting space junk and satellites would be going by (W to E) at 17,000 mph. Sketchy. Also some discussion on Van Allen radiation affecting carbon tubes would be useful.

No one seems to discuss the effect of imparting angular momentum to the mass that is being raised. (if the elevetor already exists) Any load must accelerate from 0.46 km/s at ground (equator) to orbital velocity, ~7.4 km/s at low Earth orbit height, as it ascsends. The force needed to accelerate this ascending mass will pull on the cable sideways and tilt the counterwight off it's starting perpendicular angle in reference to Earth. To correct for this you would need to accelerate the counterweight back in the direction of Earth's rotation with rockets. This is *just one* of the reasons why the answer to the this video's title is a firm "No".

These projections of the extreme efficiency of a "space elevator" sound similar to the claims that were originally made for NASA's Space Shuttle program... and that program turned out to be an order of magnitude less efficient (i.e., more expensive) than assumed, and an order of magnitude more dangerous than had been assumed...

Betteridge's Law of Headlines strikes again.

If not Space Elevator I think still need a spaceport for arrival & departure passengers for space ships (if the don’t need to make repairs on earth) since it cost so much energy to takeoff from Earth 🌎. A small spaceship to take passengers, energy and other stuff to the spaceport is much lighter than the spaceship that needs to transport them long distances.

a tension based space elevator is impossible and cable strength isn’t the problem. Your big counterweight simply stores angular momentum needed for accelerating loads laterally as they climb. you’d need rockets to accelerate the counterweight laterally to set up the elevator in the first place and each load needs rockets to accelerate them laterally as well or your be taking angular momentum from the counterweight…ie crashing your pretty space elevator. You could only do this with a stiff elevator that takes angular momentum from the earth as loads are raised or build a stiff elevator at the poles which don’t add angular momentum.

What if space debris hits the cables is there way to withstand such impact?

I don't like it, whe the video doesn't answer it's own question. We still miss 2 parts: the cable and the climber. Other than that, it's great.

This will be the great thing to improve look of people to space that we closend people that they differently look at life that they deepend new horizon and phylosophy of life you must think that every child visit that station on space it will open the space interest for whole world that will inspired the world. Pozdrav iz Hrvatske🇪🇺🇭🇷

We do not have the materials or technology yet!!!!!

TRANTOR INCOMING!! PRAISE EMPIRE.

So cool

Has any allowance been made for the tidal effects of the Earth's gravity on the elevator? The strength of the force of gravity varies with inverse square of the of the distance from the Earth, in this case. This will causes a stretching effect on the ribbon, increasing over greater distances. This effect, I believe caused a moon of Saturn to be broken up to form Saturn's rings.

Use catgut string for the Tsiolkovsky space elevator.

Instead of building an elevator, is it possible to just lay an electric cable and let the satellites draw energy from it (like a train cable)? Basically, an electric satellite.

Seems not necessary if Spacex succeds with Starship imo

Equatorial orbit, zero inclination orbit, is not that interesting for many space applications.

Awesome

for sure Obital rings, which I argue we should build first.

Acutely the Japanese working on that cable climber has debunked space elevators a practical method to go into space. If they can’t make a mechanical climber that can go up an angled rope way up a cliff with no weight attached. Then it will not be possible to do it on a vertical cable. In fact it’s hard to make elevators that go all the way up really tall buildings. They usually stop part way.

I think he’s a little more optimistic than he should be, but I’m certainly optimistic. One thing critics like to point out is that the cable would need to be a perfect crystalline molecular structure of carbon nanotubes, but this is not true. You only need the molecules to be long enough to create enough friction between them (via Van der Waals forces) to match their tensile strength, which may only be a few meters. Space debris can be cleaned up, and so too can the Van Allen radiation belts, both for which there has been plans but no one has gotten around to actually doing it. The elevator would also make a lot of satellites obsolete, since we could bounce signals off of the elevator instead (at least, half the planet could). There is still inevitable damage caused by material fatigue, micrometeorites, or other natural sources, so I think the best solution is to have multiple cables which loop around a pulley at the counterweight. This allows us to replace damaged sections of the cable by reeling them down to earth, and also allows for flexibility in the length of the cable as it may be affected by the Moon or the Sun. Safety mechanisms like retrorockets on the counterweight or a severing device on Earth would be a given. And let’s remember the payoff: you will be able to get anywhere in the solar system just by letting go of the cable at a desired length; no rocket fuel required. And if you aim at Jupiter, you can even leave the solar system.

Great Idea. Send the Graphite weaver to Orbit and let it work. Zero-G should make the process more accurate. it breaks under gravity.

Last time when a Japanese person talks about Space Elevator and potential space war. A Gundam appears.

I wouldn't have thought a material strong enough for the cable was in reach ... whaddayaknow? :) Wonder how much tension the foundation have to deal with. Possible to keep the whole thing in a near balance? Or more tension the further down the cable?

As long as debris can hit the cable, it's a non-starter. In LEO vehicles often need to move to get out of the way. The problem here is that the elevator would be in a fixed location, so if the debris is junk (not a controlled vehicle) it would not steer around it. If anything cut the cable, the elevator would be a rock in a slingshot.

i read the AC Clarke book. basically predicting carbon nano tubes. in the book, they built the elevator in the tibetan himalayans because the high summits would reduce distance to space.

There is electrical energy in the atmosphere with a very high potential. connect the atmosphere above and the earth will cause a lightning bolt that melts the wires

I thought the holdup was having a material strong enough for the cable to keep it from ripping apart under the unbelievable stress it would be under.

8 billion dollars... is he shopping his space elevator at Walmart? That's ridiculous. Nobody mentioned how much the manufacturing robots would cost to build and program. I would like to talk with Brad, I have many questions

12:30 suprised he admitted that as a risk. If the cable broke, the top of the elevator could be fitted with control rockets.. it would just be repositioned in orbit as a space station.

I wonder if this would have any kind of impact on Earth's rotation/orbit?

I've seen quite a few articles on this. It's very interesting and has been used a some scifi books I've read. However, I never see anything on how to keep it safe from terrorists. Airplanes, explosives in cargo shipments, dissatisfied employees, ect. Carbon nanotube isn't invulnerable.

It will surely take decades but it can do this they just need to set it at the same speed as that of the earth and have a spring not to go down too many parameters to take into account, I believe that this is possible, the new quantum computers will be able to improve the data in order to have data on which we can actually work, in clear of the high aerobatic calculus