00:00Traveling to space costs a fortune, but there's a way to make it affordable.
00:04You step into an elevator, push the button, and voila, you're flying to the stars, all
00:09thanks to nanotubes.
00:11But then something hits the elevator on the way, you're stuck inside, and now you're
00:16doomed to float in space forever.
00:19Now if you want to travel in space, get ready to shell out around 55 million bucks.
00:25But in the near future, you'll probably be able to travel to space with just the push
00:30of a button without breaking the bank.
00:32Because space elevators might come into play.
00:35While the idea of galactic lifts seems like something out of a sci-fi movie, it is a real
00:40possibility that could revolutionize space travel.
00:44With an estimated cost of $8 billion, space elevators could be a one-time investment that
00:50would last us forever.
00:54NASA alone spends around $2.7 million on rocket fuel per minute.
01:00To launch a rocket, they need to pay up to $178 million.
01:05These costs could be significantly reduced with the use of elevators.
01:10Most super-tall buildings on Earth have a massive foundation to help with their balance
01:14and weight.
01:15As you look up, they get thinner and thinner.
01:18Even the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, is massive at the bottom and
01:23narrow at the top.
01:24If we wanted to construct something like a gigantic lift, we would need an enormous amount
01:29of concrete to build a foundation for it, which goes against the point of saving some
01:33cash.
01:34Now, get a string, tie a ball at the end of it, and start spinning it.
01:39The string in your hand will stay in one place, and the ball will revolve around your hand.
01:45This is called centrifugal force, and the elevator will work in the same way.
01:49The ball will be the base in space, and the rope will hang toward Earth.
01:56The station from where we would enter the elevator would be in the middle of the Atlantic
02:00Ocean, and the line would extend from there.
02:03For this to be possible, the line must be perfectly synchronized with Earth's rotation.
02:08Otherwise, it would simply break or wrap around the Earth like a scarf.
02:13Also, the orbit the line would be following should be a perfect circle, because the line
02:18wouldn't be able to get shorter or extend.
02:21A bunch of research has been done using algebra to find the ideal solution.
02:26Wait a second, there's a use for algebra?
02:28Never mind.
02:29Meanwhile, I won't bore you with the math.
02:31We'll go straight to the point where the precise distance from the station in the Atlantic
02:36to the one in space must be 22,236 miles above the Earth, where the geosynchronous orbit
02:43starts.
02:44From there, the four outward forces are much stronger than the downward force.
02:48That's why the station would stay in one place.
02:51When you construct a house or a building, you start from the bottom going up.
02:55But to create this engineering wonder, we would need to do everything in reverse and
03:00start at the top.
03:01The main problem here would be the weight.
03:03If the line was too heavy, it would disrupt the orbit, and the conveyor dumbwaiter host
03:08would not work.
03:09So we'd need to balance the station in space to ensure it worked flawlessly.
03:16Steel is one of the most robust materials on Earth.
03:19The cable in every lift is made from steel.
03:22But when you need a 22,236-mile-long cable, things can get tricky.
03:28Steel is hard to break, but it's cumbersome, and when you have to use a lot of it, problems
03:33start to arise.
03:35We use heavy steel a lot in construction, but we have lighter materials that might put
03:39less stress on the station and eliminate this problem.
03:42Also, the line would have to be tapered because, at the end point, there would be close to
03:47zero stress.
03:49But it would still have to be thicker than really needed due to a bunch of safety factors.
03:54At the start, the rope would be around 0.5 inches.
03:58After using some complicated math, we can figure out the thickness at the end, which
04:02is a number so long I am unable to pronounce it.
04:06But believe me, it's a big one.
04:09So steel is off the list.
04:11Another candidate is Kevlar, which is 5 times stronger than steel.
04:15And if we added such materials as carbon and titanium into the mix, the strength would
04:20increase tenfold.
04:22The line would have a diameter of around 262 to 557 feet.
04:28This is drastically smaller than the diameter of the steel cable could be.
04:33The bad news is that doing this is too pricey.
04:36So if we don't find the ideal medium to build a cable, the idea of the space elevator
04:41will just be a massive waste of time.
04:46If only we had some magically light material with a power of 60 gigapascals, which would
04:52have a taper ratio of 1.6.
04:54Oh wait, we actually do have this unique material.
04:58It's called carbon nanotube.
05:00It has a strength of 130 gigapascals, which is much more than we need.
05:06Nanotubes are made out of carbon and are 100,000 times thinner than a human hair.
05:11This material is solid and has good conductive power, which is possible thanks to its unique
05:16atomic structure.
05:17We use this product in many things, from batteries to optics.
05:22And it can be modified entirely and adapted for more uses.
05:26Bradley Edwards is the guy responsible for this crazy idea.
05:30NASA was looking for new innovations, and they said, don't do anything too crazy and
05:35start building a space hoist.
05:37I guess Bradley took this as a challenge and started working on the elevator.
05:41Edwards wrote a paper about a galactic conveyor.
05:45When he published it, he expected many people to find flaws in his work.
05:49But surprisingly, nobody did.
05:51His work was spot on.
05:53He came up with the idea of strapping a nanotube line to a rocket and launching it into space.
05:59The other end of the rope would fall onto Earth, and robots would use this rope to climb
06:03up and make it longer, so we could start building an elevator space station.
06:08After this, the elevator could start transporting everything, from solar panels to tourists.
06:15In the future, space tourism could be totally possible.
06:17Who knows, we might even go on vacations in space.
06:22Hey, looking for some atmosphere for your getaway?
06:25Well, don't come here, we don't have any.
06:28Oops, probably not a good advertising slogan, huh?
06:31Meanwhile, a couple of years ago, we could only create microscopic carbon nanotubes.
06:37But as time went on, much more research was done to make them bigger.
06:42Now they reach up to a few inches.
06:44In 20 years, they could be miles long.
06:47Carbon costs $28 per ounce.
06:49If we do the math, we would see that we would need around $1 billion to build the lift.
06:54Yeah, it sounds expensive, but it's a long-term solution to space travel, and it can actually
07:00save us a lot of money in the long run.
07:02Now everything looks perfect on paper.
07:05But NASA's main reason why they chose not to go along with this project is that right
07:10now there are probably more than 128 million objects floating in orbit, and they might
07:16pose a real threat to the elevator.
07:18The lift could be made to withstand a few hits now and then, but getting hammered non-stop
07:23is not part of the plan.
07:25So Bradley argues that tons of monitoring devices track space debris.
07:30Thus, the elevator could avoid them all.
07:36Now if something hit the elevator or the line somehow broke, the consequences would not
07:40be too bad.
07:42If there were no passengers on board, of course.
07:45If the line got cut, the elevator would simply float away into space, posing no threat to
07:50people on Earth.
07:51In Japan, engineers are trying to build a space elevator.
07:55The lift could be used for space mining, too.
07:58We could easily cover the cost of the entire elevator by collecting asteroids, because
08:03some of them are made of expensive metals.
08:05We could mine them and quickly bring them back to Earth.
08:08That's it for today, so hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like
08:13and share it with your friends!
08:15Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!
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