BeanStalk Conduction limits

Dear Earl Colby Pottinger:

Such behaviour has been noted in carbon nanotubes, yes. So it was proposed that the lower section be made of kevlar, with some environmental coating.

It is possible, but not likely. It depends on your choices of materials, and their extent. Induced current flow in a conductor, and a material that seems to "concentrate" light to the point of vaporization, seems like a model or two could be constructed, a couple of km high, just to see what happens.

Perhaps you have seen the fused sand sculptures created by lightning strikes along a beach? Plasma will wreak havoc with the tether's long range order. It might be economically survivable, if every tether is not lost in a single storm.

David A. Smith

That way you might get issues with the cables tangling.

Which would be bad, though admittedly not as bad as a severing.

The lighting turns the air to plasma in the center of the stroke. If the center of the stroke includes the bean stalk it is toast. Regardless of the insulating qualities of the beanstalk it will be impossible to keep it from having a different electrical charge from the air around it. Just as it is impossible for the air to have a uniform charge over a large area. Lighting will follow this different charge on the bean stalk when it resents the least resistance.

We don't know how high lighting reaches. But it can be seen from space in the form of sprites and other phenomena. I have seen thunderstorm clouds build into the stratosphere.

The bean stalk if an insulator will charge itself in use like a Van de Graph Generator making its own lightning unless measures are taken to prevent it. The corona discharge associated with this will erode the bean stalk and equipment on it. The only way to prevent the bean stalk from making electricity are to make it a conductor or make it dissipate the electricity some way both will draw lighting.

You have no idea of the scale and size of the device you are talking about when you discuss the bean stalk and you sure have no idea the energy of a thunder storm or lighting. They make atomic bombs look small in terms of energy. You also have the terminus of the bean stalk in the wrong place. It must be beyond the equilibrium point or hosting up a load would pull the satellite into a lower orbit and the whole mess fall to earth after a few loads were hauled up. The bean stalk has to be in tension not equilibrium.

Gordon

The total energy of a thunderstorm is enormous, and can be measured in terms of many nuclear weapons. The energy of even the largest lightning bolts is quite modest in comparison.