"Space ladder", cheap landing in space is about to be realized? Along the road of mankind's ancient dream

Arthur C. Clarke, a famous British science fiction writer, introduced the concept of "space ladder" to the mainstream scientific community and the public for the first time in his novel Spring in Heaven.

The main structure of the "space ladder" is a cable, one end of which is connected to the earth, and the other end is connected to the counterweight running in geosynchronous orbit.

It sends people and goods into space, consuming much less energy than transporting them by rocket.

Compared with pushing goods off the ground by burning expensive fuel, the "space ladder" can send goods into space in a cheaper way.

The idea of "space ladder" is very charming, attracting many scientists and people interested in science. But why is there no "space ladder" in practice? It's not that people don't work hard in this direction.

How difficult is it to build a space ladder? Lack of high strength rope

The idea of "space ladder" is very attractive. Why did it not appear in practice? The difficulty lies in the lack of materials with sufficient strength.

Arthur C. Clarke, a famous British science fiction writer, introduced the concept of "space ladder" to the mainstream scientific community and the public for the first time in his novel Spring in Heaven.

The main structure of the "space ladder" is a cable, one end of which is connected to the earth, and the other end is connected to the counterweight running in geosynchronous orbit. Sending people and goods into space consumes much less energy than transporting them by rocket. Compared with pushing goods off the ground by burning expensive fuel, the "space ladder" can send goods into space in a cheaper way.

The idea of "space ladder" is very charming, attracting many scientists and people interested in science. But why is there no "space ladder" in practice? It's not that people don't work hard in this direction. The difficulty in building a "space ladder" lies in the lack of materials with sufficient strength.

At present, people can produce nanomaterials hundreds of times tougher than steel, but the weight is only a fraction of that of steel.

But the problem is that once the nano-materials reach the micron scale, the strength and toughness begin to decline. Therefore, before building the "space ladder", how to maintain the properties of materials on the macro scale and on the nano scale is the first problem to be solved.

Although there are still many problems puzzling scientists, Arthur C. Clarke always thinks that the appearance of the "space ladder" is only a matter of time.

Construction scheme of space ladder

Russia

Tsiolkovsky, a famous Russian scholar, first put forward the idea of space ladder. He proposed to build a space castle in geostationary orbit and connect it with the ground by cable, which became a new shortcut to send people and things to space by air.

The so-called geostationary orbit is called geostationary orbit because the spacecraft in this orbit orbits the earth at an angular velocity of 7.27× 10-5 radians per second, which is exactly the same as the angular velocity of the earth's rotation, so it looks like it is fixed in space from the ground, so it is called geostationary orbit. It is precisely because of this special function of the geostationary orbit that tsiolkovsky proposed to build a space castle on it and hang a cable anchored at the equator of the earth, which can become a ladder to space. This ladder can go straight to the geostationary orbit and will not bend when there is no external influence, so it can be a transportation line to space.

According to the Russian Pravda, the world's unique creative "space elevator" will make a breakthrough in recent years. Entrusted by the European Space Agency, scientists from Samara University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Russia have been studying and building this device, which can send many items from the International Space Station to the Earth.

It is reported that scientists in Samara, Russia, have carried out the research work of "space elevator" to the final working stage. The main working principle of this "space elevator" is actually not complicated. The space capsule loaded with goods was sent back to earth through a 30-kilometer-long particularly strong cable. Although the cable is very long, its weight will not exceed 6 kg, and it needs to be made of special materials. When it enters the atmosphere, the cable will burn and the goods will continue to fall slowly to the earth with the help of balloons.

United States of America

1970, American scientist Rome Pearson further perfected the concept of space ladder. 1999, the senior office of the Marshall Center of NASA published the article "Ladder: Advanced Infrastructure in Space", which indicates that the ladder will move from fantasy to reality.

On June 30, 2004, at the Third International Ladder Conference held in Washington, D.C., experts discussed the grand idea of ladders. Only nine months later, on March 23, 2005, NASA officially announced that the space ladder had become the first choice for the challenge of the century. Dr. Brad Edwards of the fairmont Institute of Science in West Virginia, who is famous for his research on ladders, wrote in his paper: "Ladders can make human history develop by leaps and bounds." He thinks that the first version of the ladder he conceived may come out in 20 19, and its cost is about $7 billion to10 billion, which is not too big compared with other large-scale human space projects.

Once the space ladder is built, it can be transported around the clock, sending tourists and goods into space, greatly reducing the transportation cost. Nowadays, launching a rocket or a space shuttle costs about $20,000 per kilogram of payload, while transporting a space ladder costs only $65,438+00 per kilogram of cargo, which can promote the leap-forward development of space technology.

The "space elevator" may be dead, but it is being reborn in another way.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a rocket expert and pioneer of space flight, put forward an important concept-space elevator, which has been realized in science fiction novels such as The Fountain of Heaven, Three-body and countless science fiction games.

But it is still a fable in the page, which also exposes the disadvantages of this project.

Ladder, can it really never be realized?

In contemporary sci-fi cultural works, ladders frequently appear and become an indispensable "standard configuration" in the near future. Also known as space ladder, space elevator, track elevator and other names.

The difficulty in building a' space ladder' lies in the lack of materials with sufficient strength.

People can produce nanomaterials hundreds of times harder than steel, but the weight is only a fraction of that of steel.

But the problem is that once the nano-materials reach the micron scale, the strength and toughness begin to decline. Therefore, before building the "space ladder", how to maintain the properties of materials on the macro scale and on the nano scale is the first problem to be solved.

Although there are still many problems puzzling scientists, Arthur C. Clarke always thinks that the appearance of the "space ladder" is only a matter of time.

The ladder is an ancient dream of human beings.

Greek mythology once mentioned a ladder of dreams-Jacob ladder, which opened the road from the ground to the sky. It is said that Jacob got a "flame" along this ladder in his dream.

There is a myth about "Kunlun ladder" in ancient China: It is said that there is a big tree named Jianmu on the top of the towering Kunlun Mountain.

The purple-brown trunk of this tree goes straight into the blue sky, and countless branches protrude from the top of the tree and extend around. It has evergreen green leaves, flowers that never fade for thousands of years, and golden fruits that never fade. Whoever can climb to the top along this big tree will enter heaven and become immortal.

20 15' s popular science fiction novel "three-body" also mentioned "space elevator" many times.

Mankind's yearning for outer space has been "obsessed" since ancient times, and all the possibilities of building a "ladder" have been envisaged. But after hundreds of years of development and research, this dream has not yet come true.

But in recent years, with the development of new materials science, the "ladder" has finally begun to step into reality.