Description:
Railways and cables leading into space and connecting the space station with the earth send spaceships and tourists into space.
Date of publication:
Arthur clarke, a space science fiction writer, said, "Fifty years after everyone stopped laughing."
Edwards of the Institute of Science said, "20 19".
The research and development report of the ladder says: "As little as 15 years, as many as 50 years". (But only if the funds are available).
If you want to know the details, please read the following:
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In recent years, the idea of ladder put forward by scientists has attracted the whole space industry with its attractive prospect and practical feasibility. Because once the ladder is built, it can run 24 hours like a highway, sending spacecraft and tourists into space. Because the transportation cost of the ladder will be two orders of magnitude smaller than that of the rocket, mankind will enter the real "space age".
From fantasy to reality
This bold idea was first put forward by the famous Russian space scientist tsiolkovsky in 1895. He was excited about the Eiffel Tower in Paris and proposed to build a tower leading to space. He envisions placing a space castle at the end of a spindle-shaped cable, which rotates around the earth in the geostationary orbit.
1978, the famous space science fiction writer arthur clarke wrote the science fiction novel Spring in Heaven. He imagined a ladder extending downward from a geostationary orbit satellite above the equator of the earth. Because the geostationary orbit satellite does not move relative to the ground in the sky, human beings can take the elevator to visit near-earth space. At that time, someone asked Clark how long it would take to realize the dream of the ladder. He said, "50 years after everyone stopped laughing."
Twenty-five years later, there are not many people who laugh at Clark. A few years ago, NASA incorporated Clark's idea of ladders into the "Advanced Concept Research Project" and invested millions of dollars in the research. From 65438 to 0999, the Advanced Planning Office of the Marshall Center of NASA published "Ladder: Advanced Infrastructure of Earth Space in the New Century", which indicates that the ladder will move from fantasy to reality.
On June 30, 2004, the third international ladder conference was held in Washington, D.C. Experts attending the conference came from various fields, from materials science, bridge construction and space technology to legal, commercial and financial experts. At the meeting, the experts discussed the grand idea of the ladder. At present, Dr. Brad Edwards of the fairmont Institute of Science in West Virginia, the most famous research on ladders, wrote in his paper: "Ladders can make human history develop by leaps and bounds." Edwards believes that the first version of the ladder he conceived may come out in 15, which is one year ahead of Bush's plan to return to the moon in 2020. He estimated that the cost was about $7 billion to $654.38+0 billion, which was not big compared with other human space feats.
Edwards' ladder
Theoretically speaking, the ladder is not magical. A platform was built in the Pacific Ocean at the equator of the earth, and a cable with a length of 654.38+ 10,000 kilometers was lowered by the spacecraft and anchored on the platform. As the earth rotates together, the centrifugal force generated by the rotation just offsets the gravity of the earth, so the ladder will stand from the earth into space, just like you shake a rope with a ball tied at one end overhead. Then, a laser-driven climber moves up and down on a cable, which can transport spacecraft, building materials and even passengers.
Dr Edwards has been studying the "ladder project" for the past few years. He introduced that the first step is to launch a spacecraft carrying a semi-finished ladder to a satellite in geostationary orbit to make it fly synchronously with the earth; Step 2, put down the semi-finished ladder from the spaceship and land on the platform located on the equatorial sea, similar to the general platform for launching satellites at sea; Thirdly, anchoring the semi-finished ladder on the platform; Step 4, use a climber powered by a laser beam to move up and down on the semi-finished product of the ladder, and screw more carbon nano-synthetic fiber cables on the semi-finished product of the ladder to further complete the ladder. The whole manufacturing process takes about two and a half years. In addition, according to experts' imagination, ladders can also be driven by electromagnetic energy. Electromagnetic energy drive technology has been applied to high-speed trains in Japan and Europe. After completion, this climber can slowly transport materials and tons of satellites and even people along the ladder to the geostationary orbit about 36,000 kilometers above the ground, which takes about seven and a half days, and it takes about such a long time to come back.
Russia dropped ladders.
Ladders are not only gaudy, but also have broad market prospects. Therefore, not only American scientists are interested in the ladder, but also America's old rivals in the space field, Russia and the European Union, hope to take the lead in developing an economical and practical ladder and occupy this new bridge in the space field. The European Space Agency has commissioned Samara University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Russia to build an overhead ladder, which can send items back to Earth from the International Space Station.
The demonstration work of Samara scientists in Russia has now entered the final stage, which has aroused great interest from politicians and government officials. The main principle of this kind of ladder is actually not complicated: the ladder is actually a 30-kilometer-long rope, made of lightweight but load-bearing polymer materials, and each rope itself weighs only 6 kilograms. When in use, one end of the rope is tied to the cargo hold and falls from the space station to the earth. When the cargo hold reaches the dense atmosphere of the earth, the rope is burned by the strong friction of the atmosphere and separated from the cargo hold, and then the cargo hold realizes a soft landing on the surface of the earth with its own parachute.
The basic idea of the ladder concept of Russian researchers is the same as that of American researchers. The difference is that the first consideration of the ladder in Russia is how to transport materials from the space station to the earth, while the ladder proposed by American researchers focuses on transporting materials from the ground to space. Scientists in Samara, Russia, plan to complete the preliminary development work in June 5438 +2004 10. The first test is scheduled for the end of this year, and the ladder will be tested using Russian photonic satellites. Experts believe that if you can use this ladder, you can regularly drop some effective goods from the International Space Station to the earth, which not only saves time, but also saves money. Before the American space shuttle resumed its flight, some experimental data and equipment on the International Space Station could only be brought back to the ground by the Russian Soyuz manned spacecraft, and it would take half a year for each cargo to return.
Lack of funds is the bottleneck
For Edwards, the biggest technical challenge in building ladders is to find the materials for making cables. It must be very hard, very light and resistant to any corrosion. For decades, scientists have been waiting for this material that was once called "unavailable". 199 1 year, Japanese scientists invented carbon nanotubes, which are six times lighter than steel and hundreds of times tougher. But the production cost of this material is too high. Smith of Rice University in Houston and his colleagues are working on a patent-carbon nano-steel cable material. It is said that they can reduce the production cost of carbon nano-steel cable to below per gram 1 dollar.
It is also important to choose the location of offshore platforms, which should be as far away from aircraft flights and ship routes as possible, and should not be located in places where hurricanes and big waves often occur, so we must choose carefully. Of course, there are many disasters that the ladder has to resist, such as the impact of lightning, rain and snow, the test of crossing the ionosphere, the attack of asteroid comets and meteors, and the erosion of cables by atomic oxygen and sulfuric acid in the upper atmosphere. Of course, the biggest threat is the impact of satellites and space junk on the ladder.
There are many technical difficulties in building ladders, but the biggest bottleneck is the lack of funds. If enough funds are not raised, this ladder may remain in the minds of researchers forever. With the help of people from all walks of life, in 2002, Dr. Edwards founded a high ladder system company in Seattle and took the initiative to create ladders. The company will invest about130,000 USD to conduct research on related issues, focusing on the adaptability of graphite nanotubes to the space environment, especially the tolerance to space junk. But these investments are far from the funds needed to develop the ladder. Fortunately, more and more companies and private investors are interested in this project, and some people give generously. Gaoti Systems has raised tens of millions of dollars. In order to enhance Edwards' confidence, NASA has allocated 500,000 US dollars and Congress sponsored 2.5 million US dollars to provide moral support for Gaoti Systems' actions.
At present, the cost per kilogram of cargo transported by the space shuttle is $20,000, but once the ladder is built, the cost per kilogram of cargo can be reduced to $65,438+00. It is believed that due to the appearance of the ladder, the transportation cost between heaven and earth will be greatly reduced, and space exploration will become much simpler, thus making human exploration of space advance by leaps and bounds.
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Others,
Use thinking ability to operate a computer.
Control the robot with thinking ability.
These two technologies have been realized, but they are not mature at present and will be available in the near future.
Flexible and curled display.
Home automatic service robot.
In addition, there are many, many efforts, including you and anyone around you, to invent and explore, will appear. ...