Chapter Twenty-Four: The Space Ladder

Lucy walked into Ling Xiao's office at a quarter past eight on Sunday morning, and it stands to reason that there are no classes at the university on Sundays, but Ling Xiao had to work overtime on his day off in order to prepare for that meeting. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 info Lucy made an appointment with him to go to the New Sensation Art Center today, but when Lucy arrived at Ling Xiao's house, she found that he had already gone to the School of Aerospace Engineering, so she rushed over again.

Ling Xiao and Mary were former top students in the School of Space Engineering and had worked together for many years. At present, Mary is a well-known scientist at the University of California in the United States. As the Oriental saying goes: "Marry a chicken with a chicken, marry a dog with a dog." "Dr. Mary has been close to Mike, the mermaid. Unexpectedly, she was kidnapped by aliens during a scientific expedition on a mysterious island in Central America and became pregnant unexpectedly。。。。。。

Time is like an arrow: Eighteen years later, her daughter Lucy has grown into a slim girl, and is a graduate student under Ling Xiao, although she has not been assigned to Ling Xiao's laboratory for a long time, but she is smart and studious has left a good impression on all colleagues, and Ling Xiao also values her very much, and deliberately left her in the laboratory in his university in order to guide her more.

At the same time, Lucy also admires Ling Xiao's personality very much. In her eyes, Ling Xiao is a knowledgeable and ambitious person, his every word and deed, every move, all involve Lucy's mind, so that she can't give up, she suspects that she is really beginning to fall in love with this university professor from the East who is 17 years older than her.

In the laboratory, Lucy was the only one who could pull Ling Xiao away from his busy work, so when Ling Xiao was particularly tired, his colleagues asked Lucy to ask him out easily, and Lucy was able to complete this difficult task every time.

Lucy changed into a particularly beautiful dress today, the hem of the skirt was very short, revealing her long white thighs, which surprised everyone inside and outside the house when she stepped on a pair of pink patent leather heeled sandals and walked into the door of Ling Xiao's office.

Professor Ling, you let me find it, you forgot what we said was good? Lucy stared straight at Ling Xiao and asked, the aroma on her body was as aggressive as the words. No, I didn't forget. Ling Xiao showed a very humble look.

If you haven't forgotten, let's go now. As soon as Lucy turned her head, her curly blonde hair spread out like a waterfall, and when the fan closed on the other side of her shoulder, the white girl had already reached the door.

The New Sensation Art Center is in the satellite city. There's a space ladder to get there. "If a space ladder were built to connect the Earth's surface with the relatively stationary satellite cities, we would be able to visit the satellites without rockets, and it would be very convenient to repair artificial satellites or conduct space tourism," Ling Xiao said. As early as the 50s of the 20th century, the Soviet engineer Yuri/Artutanov took the lead in proposing the idea of a space ladder, so future scientists finally invented a high-speed motor car family driven by intelligent robots - space ladder according to this idea.

Theoretically, a space ladder is not magical: simply build a platform on the surface of the sea near the Earth's equator, drop a 100,000-kilometer-long cable from an artificial geosynchronous satellite about 36,000 kilometers above the equator, and fix it on the platform; As the earth rotates, the centrifugal force generated just counteracts the gravitational pull of the earth, and the carbon steel cable gains an outward tension and stands upright, just like you throw a rope with a ball tied to one end above your head; Then, have a lifter powered by a laser or magnetic field move up and down the cable to transport passengers or cargo – this is the blueprint for the space ladder.

The other end of the space ladder was chosen on the satellite, with the aim of staying in sync with the Earth. That is, the entire operating system is monitored through satellite ground stations。。。。。。

But strictly speaking, the Earth is not a standard sphere, but a slightly bulging pear-shaped shape in the Southern Hemisphere. Therefore, even if the motion of the satellite is synchronized with the rotation of the Earth, the satellite is not stationary when viewed from the Earth. In fact, if you cut the Earth from the equator, you can see that the cross-section is not a standard circle, so the gravity on the surface of the Earth and above the Earth varies.

Almost stable gravity points, confined to the Morgib and Galapagos Islands. Outside of these two points, if the satellite is to remain in a stationary position, it must be repositioned by frequent jets. Therefore, the space ladder can only start with a geostationary satellite above these two points, and there is no other choice.

In order to maintain the balance of gravity, the space ladder should be composed of two parts: tens of thousands of meters of cableways or pipes that stretch out from the center of gravity to the upper and lower directions, which are respectively called "hanging ladders" and "throwing ladders", and vehicles similar to subway trains travel along these two ladders. Because it is vertical, there should be some kind of fixture between the car and the track. One relatively simple and hypothetical idea is to set up a levitation body similar to a superconducting maglev train around the pipeline. As for the power of the train to go up and down, it can be provided by a hanging traction device similar to an elevator, or directly use the electromagnetic force generated by the change in the magnetic field.

As with public transport on Earth, the Space Ladder's trains will also be set up in both directions, with "platforms" installed at the appropriate heights for passengers and goods to get on and off. These platforms are actually space stations fixed to space ladders.

Considering factors such as their own weight and the load of the train, the platform is positioned appropriately because it is related to the balance of the space ladder. If the balance is lost, the huge pulling force is difficult to counteract by the strength of the space ladder itself.

In fact, even in perfect equilibrium, according to calculations, there is no material that can meet the tensile strength of the space ladder, which is also a major technical problem for the space ladder concept. Theoretically, among the existing materials, the only material with tensile strength to meet the needs of space ladders is carbon nanotubes, which were invented at the end of the 20th century, which are many times harder than steel.

The construction of space ladders at only these two points over the Morgib Islands or the Caragos Islands is obviously geographically limited. To this end, the former Soviet Union's G/Belyakov put forward the idea of a "space collar": satellites in geostationary orbit beyond these two points are connected with cables and enclosed in a circle, so that space ladders beyond these two points do not need to spend great effort to control orbits. This is a proposal worth considering for the future world to build a space ladder。。。。。。