Space Elevator?

[loughery111]

You've missed the point. The point is that a rogue or collapsed state, can sell nuclear weapons, without the international community being able to retaliate. For instance, if a terrorist group from Venezuela purchases from Belarus a "loose nuke" nuclear weapon through South African dissdents, are any of the 3 nations going to be attacked? Nope!! Also, you seem to forget that the section in question that collapses is at least c. 5-10 miles in length. In a major metropolitan area, you have killed c. 750,000 or more people. It certainly isn't an extinction event, but you certainly don't want to be anywhere near collapse...

You forget that any demolition expert or trained terrorist can dismatle the anchor, again causing massive amounts of destruction. As for the precious carbon fibers, since they were designed to withstand the friction of orbital re-entry, consider that hundreds of miles worth of falling carbon cable will certainly kill thousands of people on the ground...



Verrazano Straits Bridge Disaster...




Two very good examples of people taking their time for what authorities consider a "terrorist act":

The Great Escape or The Bridge ont he River Kwai

If the weapon could be traced to Belarus, the Belorussian government would almost certainly be held responsible by whoever was responsible for the construction and maintenance of the elevator. Thus their government has every incentive NOT to hand over a nuclear weapon, nor to allow one to be handed over. The same incentives that operate today in not allowing someone who will attack the US to get one of your loose warheads will apply here.

Only an unforgivably idiotic jackass of an engineer would even consider putting this thing in a major metropolitan area. If fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a primary factor in its location was that there is nothing for 30 or 40 kilometers of cable to hit if it were to fall. Obviously anymore than that would be difficult, but if it gets severed at the base it will do comparatively little damage.

Ahh yes, the "I say someone can do it, therefore they can" argument. What makes you think this anchor point is going to be unhardened? It is quite literally the most valuable target on earth; I would expect it to be designed to survive anything but a point-blank high-yield nuclear detonation. Consider, for instance, the possibility of anchoring the cable by branching it out at the ground terminus and tying each of several thousand strands of carbon directly into bedrock, then building a hardened facility around it to serve all logistical functions and as additional armor. Bit of a tough target, especially if it is placed in a no-fly zone, given heavy point-defense systems, and all inbound cargo is scanned (given that most bulk cargoes would be coming down as raw materials, this is less of a problem than one might think.)

For the last time, this thing is being constructed in orbit. Likely in GEOSTATIONARY orbit over the South Pacific... thus it will be extremely difficult to propel a piece of severed cable towards earth, and then to have it hit something crucial. There are a lot of physics working against you. Combine that with the fact that the construction effort will, of necessity, have ships on hand capable of handling those lengths of cables, and therefore might be able to retrieve it, and the probability of mass casualties is close to nil.

I assume this is referring to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, as to my knowledge the Verrazano Narrows Bridge is still standing... Anyway, because engineers have, at some point in the past, screwed up one mid-level project, they're somehow going to screw up everything about the largest engineering project the world has ever even contemplated? Especially when the physics of orbital mechanics are so well-known that even a 10 year old child with a calculator and a textbook could position the elevator in orbit properly? Unlike the physics of wind dynamics, which were very ill-understood at the time of the Tacoma Narrows construction project, there are no major physical fields that we don't have a firm grasp of here except for some of the materials, which is less physics and more chemistry. Additionally, if a third-year civil engineering student can anticipate the problem you're suggesting and propose a means of solving it, it will definitely be dealt with in the final project.

And, finally, neither of those examples of "terrorist acts" left the technological equivalent of "HELP spelled in fire on the beach" for all to see. LONG, long before any nano-machines would even begin to slightly degrade the cable's structural integrity, there would be telltale signs of their presence lighting up every sensor and monitoring system this project has. Your analogies are both flawed because the evidence of those action's planning and early execution was much more easily concealed. A better analogy would be as if the Allied POW's in the Great Escape were digging their hole in broad daylight in full view of the German guards with a teaspoon. That should give you some idea of just how utterly visible the effects of any nanotechnology-based attack on the cable will be.

Just as they would be shot for even trying to do something that stupid, the nanites would be detected the second particulate matter from the outer sheathing of the cable started spalling into local space. That, of course, would be months before they actually caused any meaningful damage, and their threat would take, at most, days to completely eradicate. They, therefore, are NOT A THREAT AT ALL.

The threat to this structure from some rogue state or terrorist cell, assuming anyone involved in its construction and administration has three whole brain cells to rub together, is so close to nil that we can disregard it entirely. It will be, literally, the most heavily defended piece of real estate on earth and in orbit. There is quite literally nothing short of a major fleet action, contact nuclear detonation, or ramming it in space with a bulk cargo freighter that will damage it, and precautions will surely be taken for all three, which are in any case out of the resource base of a terrorist group.

 

[loughery111]

Oh and I just realized you're citing WWII movies as evidence for the success of slow-acting terrorist weapons; that the examples are entirely flawed and irrelevant to the purpose at hand is just an afterthought by comparison.

 

[Mr Qwerty]

You forget that any demolition expert or trained terrorist can dismatle the anchor, again causing massive amounts of destruction. As for the precious carbon fibers, since they were designed to withstand the friction of orbital re-entry, consider that hundreds of miles worth of falling carbon cable will certainly kill thousands of people on the ground...

Why would they be designed to withstand orbital reentry? I think they'd be designed to safely break up and burn (sounds like you've read Red Mars, too-remember that the Mars Elevator encountered a lot less atmospheric friction).

Oh, a terrorist act is still possible... some kind of inside job, in space...
Doesn't have to be big Bring the Whole Thing Down event.

 

[grdja83]

Oh for fucks sake people!

If we are talking about Red Mars style elevators and terrorists being able to attack a fortified asteroid at GEO...

First its far future, second, there are quite enough other very bad things terrorists can do in 2090es or early 2100es.

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

If the weapon could be traced to Belarus, the Belorussian government would almost certainly be held responsible by whoever was responsible for the construction and maintenance of the elevator. Thus their government has every incentive NOT to hand over a nuclear weapon, nor to allow one to be handed over. The same incentives that operate today in not allowing someone who will attack the US to get one of your loose warheads will apply here.

You are assuming that the government in question is stable, its military under the control of its civilian government, a stable economy, its civil service and government are not corrupt, and that members of the military won't simply say that the weapons in question was "stolen" or "fell off the truck".

Only an unforgivably idiotic jackass of an engineer would even consider putting this thing in a major metropolitan area. If fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a primary factor in its location was that there is nothing for 30 or 40 kilometers of cable to hit if it were to fall. Obviously anymore than that would be difficult, but if it gets severed at the base it will do comparatively little damage.

So where do you plan to house, feed, and aid the thousands of construction workers, IT people, their families, the contractors, and service employees involved in the project? To escape the gravity well of Earth's gravity, the space elevator will have to be at least c. 300 km. The figure of 30-40km is the usual size of most metropolitan cities.

Ahh yes, the "I say someone can do it, therefore they can" argument. What makes you think this anchor point is going to be unhardened? It is quite literally the most valuable target on earth; I would expect it to be designed to survive anything but a point-blank high-yield nuclear detonation. Consider, for instance, the possibility of anchoring the cable by branching it out at the ground terminus and tying each of several thousand strands of carbon directly into bedrock, then building a hardened facility around it to serve all logistical functions and as additional armor. Bit of a tough target, especially if it is placed in a no-fly zone, given heavy point-defense systems, and all inbound cargo is scanned (given that most bulk cargoes would be coming down as raw materials, this is less of a problem than one might think.)

Isn't that the same argument that was used just before the BP Deepwater Horizon exploded on 4/20/2010? You assume that everything is going to go well. I am not so optimistic, and will point to how easily corporate malfeasance, incompetence, and laziness by contractors can cause safety measures to be ignored and/or forgotten...

For the last time, this thing is being constructed in orbit. Likely in GEOSTATIONARY orbit over the South Pacific...

Actually, knowing the actual history of the South Pacific, you would have the Chinese, the Japanese, the Russians, the Australians, the Indonesians, the United States, the French, the British, immediately sending warships in an effort to "secure the area". Even then, you would still have a hard time preventing a political conflict in the region.

thus it will be extremely difficult to propel a piece of severed cable towards earth, and then to have it hit something crucial. There are a lot of physics working against you. Combine that with the fact that the construction effort will, of necessity, have ships on hand capable of handling those lengths of cables, and therefore might be able to retrieve it, and the probability of mass casualties is close to nil.

Actually, those same ships are perfect for sabotage. Again, just consider the 9/11 model. A coordinated set of explosions, just as it can be used to cause minimal damage, can be used to maximize the amount of damage on the ground.

The threat to this structure from some rogue state or terrorist cell, assuming anyone involved in its construction and administration has three whole brain cells to rub together, is so close to nil that we can disregard it entirely. It will be, literally, the most heavily defended piece of real estate on earth and in orbit. There is quite literally nothing short of a major fleet action, contact nuclear detonation, or ramming it in space with a bulk cargo freighter that will damage it, and precautions will surely be taken for all three, which are in any case out of the resource base of a terrorist group.

Well, isn't that what they say about the "Green Zone" in Bagdad and Kabul. Last time I checked, even with the full force of the U.S. military and private mercenary contractors, those sites are completely unsafe. As for the other items, you just need nano-technology to destabilize the molecular structure of the base.

 

[Stephen]

If your a terorist you dont want to attack the base that will just catapult it into the solar system, instead you want to attack where it ataches to the counterweight so it falls to the ground.

 

[loughery111]

You are assuming that the government in question is stable, its military under the control of its civilian government, a stable economy, its civil service and government are not corrupt, and that members of the military won't simply say that the weapons in question was "stolen" or "fell off the truck".

So where do you plan to house, feed, and aid the thousands of construction workers, IT people, their families, the contractors, and service employees involved in the project? To escape the gravity well of Earth's gravity, the space elevator will have to be at least c. 300 km. The figure of 30-40km is the usual size of most metropolitan cities.



Isn't that the same argument that was used just before the BP Deepwater Horizon exploded on 4/20/2010? You assume that everything is going to go well. I am not so optimistic, and will point to how easily corporate malfeasance, incompetence, and laziness by contractors can cause safety measures to be ignored and/or forgotten...


Actually, knowing the actual history of the South Pacific, you would have the Chinese, the Japanese, the Russians, the Australians, the Indonesians, the United States, the French, the British, immediately sending warships in an effort to "secure the area". Even then, you would still have a hard time preventing a political conflict in the region.



Actually, those same ships are perfect for sabotage. Again, just consider the 9/11 model. A coordinated set of explosions, just as it can be used to cause minimal damage, can be used to maximize the amount of damage on the ground.


Well, isn't that what they say about the "Green Zone" in Bagdad and Kabul. Last time I checked, even with the full force of the U.S. military and private mercenary contractors, those sites are completely unsafe. As for the other items, you just need nano-technology to destabilize the molecular structure of the base.

Ok, they'll still be held accountable and they know it. If that weapon can be shown to come from a given nation, it will likely be treated as if they fired it themselves regardless of what happened. That's pretty much current government policy, it encourages people to track their damn nukes. Alright, so they get their hands on a nuclear weapon anyway, despite the fact that it's been their wet dream for decades and they've thus far failed. Now what? Missile delivery? Don't have one. Truck/Ship? Checkpoints/naval cordon 30 kilometers away from the base to search incoming cargo and transfer it to high-speed rail or elevator-administered freighters for final shifting to the elevator. Plane? 2-300 kilometer radius no-fly zone around the thing, enforced by tactical nuclear-tipped SAM's in multiple layers. Space? That's a hell of a lot of technical and ballistics know-how, and given that ballistics and directed-energy weapons work better there, I think you can expect some defensive provisions along the length of the cable and the asteroidal anchor to be a fortress.

I don't understand the relevance of the "feeding and housing" workers comment, at all... they can be placed somewhere ELSE, and materials and products shipped there. In fact, that's the usual procedure for large, potentially dangerous engineering projects; what you're proposing is the rough equivalent of building workers' housing in the shadow of the unfinished Hoover Dam, downriver. As for the 30-40 km comment, I wasn't saying you can have the entire thing fall without a problem; I was saying that if someone managed to fly a nuclear kamikaze spaceplane into it at 30 km up, it would cause minimal damage. If it gets clipped at the top, it sits there awaiting reattachment, especially given that wonderful over-engineering that saw fit to give both the cable and the asteroid some independent station-keeping and maneuvering ability.

As for the corporate corruption drivel; This project will never be undertaken by something smaller than a government; which will in turn ensure a level of safety and quality similar to that seen on major construction projects in the past. You don't exactly see privately constructed skyscrapers falling over because people want them to continue to stand lest they be sued out of existence. Not only will that hold, but the entity doing the suing will be the government, which will also be monitoring every step of the construction and planning.

The South Pacific comment is entirely irrelevant, insofar as I can tell. What are you responding to? I was suggesting that it would be damned difficult to kill people with a cable fragment, and you respond with something about geopolitics?

I'm not sure about those ships being so well-suited for sabotage; they'd be designed to move cable, not cut it. And the same arguments that suggest that no other ship will be allowed to ram the cable also apply here; just because they're authorized doesn't mean a high-boost ramming run won't be noticed and the ship vaporized before it can impact.

The next time you even TRY to talk about nanotechnology weaponry, I'm just going to refer you to my already-posted arguments, which I will note you have completely failed to respond to because you either know you're wrong or are sulking. As for the Green Zone comment, again, just because something has happened in the past, in the middle of a densely populated urban area, does not mean that people will be able to do it again in the future, in geostationary orbit around the earth. Most of the Green Zone attacks were no more than superficial, and moving people clandestinely in a city is easy. In space, it is not.

 

[Coalition]

Oh for fucks sake people!

If we are talking about Red Mars style elevators and terrorists being able to attack a fortified asteroid at GEO...

First its far future, second, there are quite enough other very bad things terrorists can do in 2090es or early 2100es.

I'd worry about terrorists doing either or both of the following:

1) Buy nails, sugar, and a small, tough plastic bag from a store. They take a couple pounds of explosives and place them in the bag. The nails are placed around the explosives, and sugar and water are poured in and around the nails to form a growth medium. The terrorist then does #2 on the sugar/nails, and waits a day for the E. Coli bacteria to grow all over the mixture. He then drops the package off in a crowded area and sets it off.

Presto, flying nails, with E. Coli bacteria on them. Instant biological weapon. Anyone injured by the nails has to be monitored for bacterial infection in their bloodstream. The nails and fecal mixture has to be cleaned up by a biohazard team.

The only way to stop this would be to keep track of people who buy nails and sugar. And since it could be two different people who buy the materials, this turns every person who buys nails into a potential terrorist.

2) Even easier. Take the explosives, and drive around town. Spot the local water purification plant relative to the town. Watch the weather channel to see when the wind will be blowing from the water treatment towards the town. Set off the explosives under the chlorine tanks (chlorine is used to purify water), and let a massive cloud of poison gas drift downwind and kill/main thousands. The way to stop this would be to outlaw cars and/or the weather channel.


Terrorists can do a lot more damage, with much less effort, than attacking the tower directly. Doing these attacks against the nations funding the effort would be a much higher payoff.