SPACE ELEVATOR

KRISHNA KISHORE

S7 ME B

ROLL NO . 16
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction

1.1 what is Space Elevator

1.2 History

2. Physics

2.1 Tension structure

2.2 Required tension of standing tower

3. Elements

3.1 Base station

3.2 Tether

3.3

3.4 Climbers and electromagnetic propulsion methods

3.5 Counter mass

4. Material

4.1 What is carbon nanotubes

4.2 Why it is used

 4.3 Other material

5. Advantages and Disadvantages

6. Challenges

7. Conclusion
 INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS SPACE ELEVATOR ?

A space elevator is a physical connection from the surface of the Earth to a geostationary
Earth orbit (GEO) above the Earth ≈35,786 km in altitude. Its center of mass is at the geostationary point
such that it has a 24-hr orbit and stays over the same point above the equator as the Earth rotates on its
axis. The vision is that a space elevator would be utilized as a transportation and utility system for moving
people, payloads, power, and gases between the surface of the Earth and space. It makes the physical
connection from Earth to space in the same way a bridge connects two cities across a body of water. It has
the potential to provide mass transportation to space in the same way highways, railroads, power lines, and
pipelines provide mass transportation across the Earth’s surface. The low energy requirements for moving
payloads up and down the elevator could make it possible to achieve cost to orbit .
 HISTORY

Before discussing the physics of the space elevator, we recall some of the more interesting facts of its history. The earliest
mention of anything like the elevator seems to have been in the book of Genesis, which talks of an attempt by an ancient
civilization to build a tower to heaven the “Tower of Babel” that came to naught because of a breakdown of communication
between the participants. In more recent times the concept of the space elevator was first proposed by the Russian physicist
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1895 and then again by the Leningrad engineer, Yuri Artsutanov, in 1960.3 The concept was
rediscovered by the American engineer, Jerome Pearson,4 in 1975. In 1978 Arthur Clarke brought the idea to the attention of
the general public through his novel Fountains of Paradise5 and at about the same time Charles Sheffield, a physicist, wrote a
novel6 centered on the same concept. Despite this publicity, the idea of the elevator did not really catch on among scientists
because an analysis of its structure showed that no known material was strong enough to build it. This pessimism was largely
neutralized by the discovery of carbon nanotubes in 1991.7 Carbon nanotubes, which are essentially rolled up sheets of
graphite, have a tensile strength greatly exceeding that of any other known material. Their high tensile strength, combined with
their relatively low density, makes nanotubes an excellent construction material for a space elevator and led to a resurgence of
interest in the concept.
 PHYSICS
TENSION STRUCTURE    [free standing tower]
A free standing tower is one whose weight is counterbalanced by the outward centrifugal force on it, so that
it exerts no force on the ground beneath it. A free standing tower is in tension along its entire length, with
the tension adjusting itself so that each element of the tower is in equilibrium under the action of the
gravitational, centrifugal, and tension forces acting on it. This point can be understood by looking at Fig. 1b,
which shows the four forces acting on a small element of the tower: an upward force FU due to the portion
of tower above the element, a downward force FD due to the portion of tower below the element, a
downward force W due to the weight of the element, and a fictitious upward centrifugal force FC on the
element due to its presence on the rotating Earth. The vector sum of these four forces must vanish if the
element is in equilibrium. For an element at geostationary height that is, at a distance from the Earth’s center
equal to the radius of geostationary orbit the weight and centrifugal forces are equal W=FC, and therefore
the tension forces at the two ends must also be equal FU =FD for equilibrium. For an element below
geostationary height, the weight force W exceeds the centrifugal force FC and one must have FU FD for
equilibrium.
These two preceding statements imply that the tension in the tower increases with height from ground level to
geostationary height. In contrast, for an element above the geostationary height, the centrifugal force FC
exceeds the weight W and hence FU FD for equilibrium, implying that the tension in the tower decreases as a
function of height past the geostationary height. A free standing tower is one for which the tension drops to
zero at both ends, requiring no restraint at either end to keep the tower in place. The overall picture of a free
standing tower is thus of a structure in which the tension rises from zero at ground level to a maximum value
at geostationary height, and then decreases to zero again at the upper end. With this qualitative picture in
mind, we proceed to work out the quantitative variation of the tension in the tower with height.
 REQUIRED TORSION FOR THE STANDING TOWER

Let M, R, and denote the mass, radius, and rotational angular velocity of the Earth. The radius of
geostationary orbit is , where G is Newton’s constant of gravitation. Analysing forces in a free
standing tower of constant mass density p and uniform cross sectional area A. Consider a small element of
length dr whose lower end is a distance r from the Earth’s center. The equilibrium of this element requires that
the vector sum of the forces acting on it vanish or that FU +FC −FD −W=0 .We write FU −FD as AdT, where
T is the tensile stress force per unit area in the tower. We also use the explicit expressions for W and FC to
rewrite the equilibrium condition as,

Divide both sides by Adr,

Integrating from r=R to r=Rg gives the tensile stress at geostationary height Rg as

Let H denote the distance of the top of the tower from the Earth’s center. We can determine H by integrating from r=Rg to
r=H . In this way we find that

Equate both equations

By solving we get

The height of the top of the tower above the Earth’s surface is therefore H−R=144 000 km. The maximum
tensile stress in the tower occurs at geostationary height and can be calculated from Eq. 3. If we take the tower
to be made of steel for which =7900 kg/m3 , we find that the maximum stress is 382 GPa 1 GPa =10^9 N/m2 ,
which is over 60 times the tensile strength of steel, showing that a steel tower is impossible.