We may currently have no technology that would make a space elevator on earth profitable. However, this does not mean that they would not work on other bodies around the solar system. One of the most interesting places to work is Ceres, the queen of the asteroid belt and possibly one of the largest sources for resources for expanding humanity to space. A new paper from researchers from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and Industrial CNT, a manufacturer of carbon nanor tubes (a potential material for space elevator), describes how useful such an elevator could be.
One of the most interesting facts about Ceres is that according to data collected by the Dawn spaceship, around 25% water consists of around 25%. Water is not only useful for the fact that it is necessary for life as we know it, but also because it can be used as a fuel for drive systems. Some test satellites use water themselves as the sole drive, while others use the recovered components that are divided by hydrolysis – oxygen and hydrogen.
But in order to gain access to this assets of this particularly valuable material, the engineers would first have to get it out of Ceres (admittedly tiny) gravity. Here a space elevator comes into play. A space elevator can serve two purposes – get the materials from the surface and use the leverage to spin it much faster on a trajectory than would start from the surface itself. The design discussed in paper uses both functions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGTQB5KMS1I
Fraser discusses what a space elevator is and why it is so useful.
It describes a 30,000 km long room elevator (SE), which extends more than 30 times further into the solar system than the diameter of Ceres itself. This SE can, if they consist of currently manufacturable carbon nanor tubes, transfers from approx. 6534 kg to the station at the top of the elevator. From there you can be thrown into space using the space granted by the station, which revolves around every nine hours in accordance with CREES rotation. At this speed, it would reduce the amount of energy supply required to regain a payload on earth by approx. 60%and fuel savings of 15%.
Part of this fuel could come from Ceres himself. The paper also describes a decision -making matrix of several water -based drive solutions and found that the microwave -election heritals (METS) provide the greatest value with a specific impulse of almost 800 seconds. Another contender was the drive of water electrolysis, which separates the components of the water and then combined them in a combustion chamber.
However, the system would need electricity to do this chemical division, and this is one of the most important potential obstacles for this infrastructure structure. Ceres is in the asteroid belt, and the sunlight that would have to be collected to supply this type of effort with electricity would be significant. The potential solutions include sterling engines or radioisotope heating generators, but many of them would be necessary to achieve the project's scale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQoytbzako0
Isaac Arthur Dicusses, as we could possibly colonize the “Queen of the Asteroid belt”
Credit – Isaac Arthur YouTube channel
Another potential swallow would be the communication delay. Since the asteroid belt is in front of Mars, there is an average communication delay of 25 minutes in every direction, which makes manual control from earth and its surrounding environment extremely boring. Therefore, every major construction project on Ceres, such as a space elevator, would require a significant improvement in automation before being put into operation.
These improvements would also be useful in other areas and are undoubtedly on the way. Experts in space development are dizzy on the potential applications of available resources such as Ceres. As such, it is undoubtedly dismantled at some point – and if and if this is the case, future mission planners will like this paper and others to understand whether humanity should tackle one of the greatest technical challenges that it has ever done and whether it is worth it.
L George et al. – se integration on ceres: a technical framework for scalable resource acquisition and transportation
Ut – use a space elevator to maintain resources from the queen of the asteroid belt
Ut – a habitat in Ceres could be the gateway to the outer solar system
UT – what is a space elevator?
