Respond to “Habré”A user of “Habr” published a translation of an article by Rhett Allen about the features of building a certain “elevator” into space and the dangers that people will face when it is destroyed. Discuss
First of all, for the manufacture of the elevator, you will have to use not steel, but some other material (due to weight). You will also need a lot of this material.
And the material is not the main problem yet. The fact is that for a simple stay in orbit, it is necessary to develop high speed. At an altitude of 400 kilometers, this is 7.7 km/s, or 27,720 km/h.
In addition, the farther a person is from the Earth, the lower the required orbital speed will be. For example, at an altitude of 800 kilometers, this is already 7.5 km/s, and not 7.7 km/s. But we must also remember that theoretically the height of the tower, from the roof of which it would be possible to enter orbit, should be equal to 36 thousand kilometers. That is, it will still be impossible to build an elevator in the form of a tower.
Another version of the elevator is a cable 36 thousand kilometers long. This cable can be hung from an object that is in orbit. However, to put such an idea into practice, it is necessary that something with a large mass be located in orbit. For example, a space station or an asteroid. Also, by itself, a cable of such a huge length, even from Kevlar material, will turn out to be too thick and heavy.
The only thing is that perhaps someday humanity will discover a light and durable material and be able to build an elevator out of it.
And what What will happen if, nevertheless, such a cable begins to collapse and fall to the Earth? It is assumed that in reality the cable would wrap completely around the planet and at some point would break. In this case, most likely, individual parts of the cable would not even have reached the Earth. In any case, the destruction due to such a fall would have been serious on the planet.
Source: Habr