When will the space elevator be built? What is it like?

The Earth Space Station is mainly composed of space elevator, city A, city B, city C, city D and city E, etc.

City C, also known as the space factory, is located in the middle of the space elevator, 35,780 kilometers from the ground. The connection between city C and the space elevator is soft. There are space processing factory, space bearing factory, solar power station, spacecraft assembly center, space telescope and artificial moon, which are connected with each other to form a giant spherical surface centered on the center of the earth. Within 20 years after the completion of the first space elevator, the space factory will reach an area of 200 square kilometers and weigh 2.5 million tons, delivering 70 GW (70 million kilowatts) of electricity to the earth; It will also complete the manufacture of the first 6.5438+10,000 square meters space city; Two other space elevators will be built (in order to further improve transportation capacity and risk resistance) and a lunar space station will be built.

City A: Located on the ground near the equator, the main differences from ordinary cities are: air defense center, lightning protection system, pallet marshalling station and ladder command center. City A can also be a mobile offshore platform.

Space elevator: It consists of hanging ladder and throwing ladder. Below the space factory is the "hanging ladder", and above it is called "throwing ladder".

Ladder: It consists of guide rail, transfer station, tray and drive system. Among them, the successful research and development of guide rail materials makes the whole earth space station possible. The whole ladder is 35,780 kilometers high, with one end connected to City A (ground) and the other end connected to City C. There are 35 transfer stations on the guide rail. The main function of the ladder is to send the materials and personnel on the ground to city C, which is two-way. The main function of the ladder is to make the loading tray form a closed loop and use it repeatedly. At the same time, it also returns some people and "space garbage", which is the transportation hub of C city's "development and growth". Some transfer stations far from the ground can also be used to launch satellites with different altitude requirements. The pallet runs on the ladder by superconducting magnetic levitation, with a running speed of 1000kg/h and a maximum load of 240 t/d.

Ladder: It is also composed of guide rail and transfer station. His main function is to "support" the antenna end of the ladder. Its length is 74,000 kilometers, one end is connected with the hanging ladder of C city, and the other end is connected with E city. It is also two-way, but its traffic volume is very small. Each of its transfer stations can be used to launch satellites, one of which is called "Moon Station", and the others are "Saturn Station ……" Mars Station and so on. At the same time, these relay stations can also be used to recover space satellites.

Lunar station: The satellite launched by the lunar station can directly reach the gravitational range of the moon, and it does not need other power rockets to accelerate or lift off, but only needs orbit adjustment. Coincidentally, the satellite returning from the moon can land at the lunar station. Compared with the current rocket mode, the cost of a launch is less than a fraction. In addition, there are opportunities to launch or receive spacecraft every day, which is hardly affected by the ground weather.

The guide rail is made of carbon fiber and covered with electromagnetic materials for driving and fixing, with a total weight of 2.5× 108kg (the material cost is about 2 billion US dollars). The shape and size of the cross section are shown in the figure. Because different heights on the guide rail bear different tensile forces, different thicknesses are used at different heights (it is very important to design the guide rail with equal strength here, otherwise high-quality carbon fiber will not be able to bear the heavy responsibility of the guide rail material): the ladder hanging guide rail is 7 1000 tons, made of high-quality carbon fiber, and its working tensile stress is 1.5 GPA, the thickness of the ground position is 0.08mm, and it bears tensile force of 65438+. C city thickness 1.80mm, bearing tension of 4100t; The guide rail of the ladder is made of ordinary carbon fiber (which mainly requires high and low temperature performance), the working tensile stress is 7.5GPa, the thickness of C city is 3.65mm, and it bears a tensile force of 4 100 tons. E city is located at 0.06mm and bears 68 tons of tension;

City B and City D are located at 34000km and 37700km from the ground respectively, and their gravitational acceleration is 0.3m/s2, which is 1/33 of the earth. When you stand on the space station and look up at the sky, you can see another space city through the space factory. The difference is that one of them can see a huge planet in the sky, which is … (nonsense). These two cities integrate living area, working area and farm.

E city is located at the top of the space elevator, with a distance of 1 10000 kilometers and a mass of 1 150 tons. It is the smallest city in the whole earth space station, with a gravity acceleration of 0.59m/s2, which is117 on the earth's surface. The speed of the satellite launched here can reach 8.4km/s (the second speed of the universe is much higher than 2.6, and it can reach kilometers outside the sun). In the future, with the improvement of communication and control technology, it will be much easier to build a 30km/s spacecraft by using E-city and elevators to send multi-pole combined rockets together.

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Space station construction: At the beginning, it was the construction of space elevators, and it was much more convenient for other parts to have space elevators.

Construction of space elevator: The guide rail of the space elevator and its processing and installation equipment and other corresponding components are 65,438+0.3× 65,438+008 kg in total. It is necessary to transport all required materials to the synchronous track 35,780 780km above the ground, and build the guide rail from the space track installation center up and down.

Obviously, it is not easy to transport so much material into space, and it is not cost-effective to use the existing spacecraft. It is very realistic to install a small space elevator before installing a space elevator to transport the future space elevator. Similarly, before installing a small space elevator, there should be a small space elevator. The guide rail material used in the small space elevator is not cheap carbon fiber, but expensive carbon nanotubes (but you said there is no such thing as carbon nanotubes)

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The Earth Space Station is a beautiful landscape. C city in the air makes 40% of the places on the earth "opaque at night" a thing of the past. Even in the daytime, it is possible to find her. At night, it is the second brightest "star" after the moon.

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The route to the moon is: take the space elevator from City A, pass through City B, City C and City D, arrive at the Moon Station two days later, transfer to the Earth-Moon spacecraft at the Moon Station, fly to the "Earth Station" of the Moon Space Station, and then take the space elevator on the Moon Space Station to reach the surface of the moon. Do you need me to tell you the way back? Round-trip fare: 150000 USD.

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Lunar Space Station: The space elevator space station of the moon is the most distinctive, which extends to the end of space and points to the earth forever. However, although the gravity of the moon is small, the actual cost of building a space elevator on it is several times higher than that on the earth (of the same scale). The main reason is that the distance to the moon is far from us, and another important reason is that the rotation speed of the moon is very small. Therefore, building a space elevator on the moon in 140 is far less cost-effective than using rockets directly on the moon. In fact, when there is a space elevator on the earth and the gravity of the moon is small, the transportation cost of rockets on the moon will be so small that we feel very relaxed.

Space processing factory: It mainly processes and assembles the raw materials (or finished products and semi-finished products) sent by the elevator, mainly the equipment needed by the space factory. Such as space bearing factory, solar power station, spacecraft assembly center, space telescope and artificial moon, equipment needed by space processing factory itself and space highway system.

Aerospace bearing factory: manufacturing steel balls of high-precision, high-speed and heavy-duty bearings needed by human beings.

Solar power station: Solar photovoltaic power generation in space factories can generate five times as much electricity as the earth in the same area, and there are a lot of cheap "land" in space, which can greatly reduce the material consumption under weightlessness, and can also reduce the cost of photovoltaic panels and improve their efficiency when used in large quantities. In addition to self-use, the power station will also be sent to the ground by microwave for human use.

Spacecraft assembly center;

Space Telescope: The capacity of each space telescope here is more than 10 times that of Hubble, but the cost is twice as low as that of Hubble.

Artificial Moon: Every residential area with a population of more than 654.38+10,000 people on the earth will have its own "artificial moon", and its brightness is the brightness of the "full moon". In some needed areas (such as disaster areas), dozens (or 100) artificial moons can make it as bright as or even brighter than street lamps. Because it uses sunlight, metal materials are not easy to corrode and fatigue in space, and it is convenient and labor-saving to adjust the angle in synchronous orbit, so it is basically a matter once and for all.

Material and shape of guide rail: The material of guide rail is the key of space ladder. In addition to performance, the cost mainly considers two factors: one is the launch cost, and the other is the cost of the material itself. Currently:

1. The cost of sending a rocket into synchronous orbit is 7 ~ 65438+ 10,000 USD/kg;

2. The transportation cost of the above space elevator is only 15 USD/kg;

3. The tensile strength of carbon nanotubes is 2×101pa, and the density is 1200 kg/m3. At present, the required shape has not been successfully made, and it is only a matter of time before it needs to be developed. At present, the cost is 30 thousand US dollars/kg (due to the huge demand of this project, it is expected to break through.

4. Tensile strength of carbon fiber1.5× 10/0pa, density 1000 kg/m3, current cost10 USD /kg, and cross-sectional tensile cost 6.7×10-.

It can be seen that the transportation cost of space elevator is only 1/5000 of that of rocket, and the material cost of carbon fiber is only1100 of that of carbon nanotube. Therefore, when building the first space elevator, the guide rail materials used must be sent into synchronous orbit by rockets. At this time, carbon nanotubes are the best choice, and the scale should not be too large. In the future, because the previous space elevator can be used for transportation, the transportation cost is greatly reduced, and cheap carbon fiber can be used as the guide rail. The scale can be bigger and bigger, the quantity is more and more, but the cost is lower and lower.

It can be likened to this image: the earth rocket went crazy at the end of its life! )

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