Murphy’s Law – Next floor, Uranus
Joel Murphy |
Have you ever been afraid of being trapped inside an elevator?
It’s a fear we’ve seen played out in countless movies. The power goes out and suddenly the claustrophobic guy in the elevator begins hyperventilating. Or there’s a pregnant woman whose water breaks. Or the police shut it down thinking they’ve trapped Hannibal Lecter, only to discover that the body on top of the elevator is actually a dead cop whose face Lecter ripped off and wore to escape captivity.
Now imagine any one of those horrible scenarios playing out … in space.
That’s right, space – the final frontier. A mysterious black void filled with aliens, predators and Alfs.
If certain scientists have their way, you won’t need a rocket ship to explore the outer reaches of the universe, all you will have to do is climb in an elevator and wait for it to reach your space floor (while hoping that some jerk doesn’t come along and press all the other buttons). It may sound like a ridiculous idea, but it’s one that is actually being developed by top scientists, who envision a space elevator as a safer and more convenient alternative to spaceships.
“Space elevator-related research is valid, but there are hurdles to overcome,” said David Smitherman, a space architect at NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center.
I would imagine one of those hurdles is that in space, no one can hear you scream, which means when the elevator inevitably does break down and you are stuck inside it with a pregnant woman and a hyperventilating guy somewhere around Neptune, the technicians will have no idea that you are stranded up there.
But don’t worry; being trapped in space shouldn’t be your biggest concern. What you should really worry about is the cable that lifts you up into space snapping midway through the trip, since currently there is no material strong enough to support the weight of a heavy load of space travelers.
“Right now, if you use the strongest material in the world, the weight of the tether would be so much that it would actually snap,” said Ted Semon, spokesman for The Spaceward Foundation, which runs a competition offering $2 million to anyone who can create a viable space elevator prototype. Semon believes the material needed to make a 22,000 mile cable tethered to a satellite orbiting Earth would have to be 25 times stronger than anything currently commercially available.
Maintenance problems and cable snapping aside, there is still another major problem facing the proposed space elevator – namely, all of the meteorites and space junk currently floating around out there. So if you weren’t already panicked enough, you can have the added drama of watching your little elevator tube be pelted by meteorites and all of the shit we’ve left out in space during launches, like cast-off pieces of old spaceships and empty Tang containers.
Oh, and then there’s the small issue of the cost of building this space elevator, which some estimate could be as much as $20 billion. I have no doubt that the cost will be passed along to the consumer, meaning anyone actually foolish enough to pay for the “privilege” of traveling into space in the most horrifying and uncomfortable way possible will get charged a hefty sum to do so.
It really makes you wonder what the hell these people are thinking. These days, more than any other time in history, it seems like scientists are building things just because they sound cool. They read about space elevators or self-aware robots or particle colliders in science fiction stories growing up, so they’ve convinced themselves that we should have these things in real life. Yet I would think anyone with common sense would realize how incredibly ridiculous these idea actually sounds. There are large apartment buildings in major cities that can’t keep their elevators running consistently – why the hell would I believe a space elevator would be any more reliable?
And if you are going to just build shit from science fiction – why not begin work on flying cars or hoverboards? If you really think that working on these types of nerdy projects are more important than curing cancer or solving world hunger, at least build me a fucking lightsaber. Sure, the lightsaber will probably kill me just as quickly as the space elevator, but at least getting impaled by one of them will be a much cooler story to tell in the afterlife than “my space elevator was hit by a big rock.”
Besides, you are trying to fix something that isn’t broken. We already have a way to go into space – spaceships. If you think they aren’t reliable enough or burn too much fuel or whatever, then work on building better spaceships. Actually, you know what? You don’t need to – Sir Richard Branson, the coolest billionaire on the planet, already beat you to it.
Today, Branson’s Virgin Galactic will unveil their new privately-funded spacecraft, which has been secretly under construction for five years. SpaceShipTwo has been developed as a commercial spaceship capable of taking regular people (with large disposable incomes) on a fantastic voyage into space.
Given the choice between cramming in a tiny little space elevator with the unwashed masses and visiting Pluto inside a luxury spacecraft that allows me to sip champagne and watch movies in first class sitting next to Mariah Carey, I think I’ll choose the latter. At least when those empty Tang containers collide with the ship and kill us all, we’ll die in style.
Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He loves pugs, hates Jimmy Fallon and has an irrational fear of robots. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.
Unless this article is completely tongue in cheek (often a possibility with you), you might want to research space elevators and what they really would be used for. $20 billion for one would actually be a savings compared to how we put things in space now.
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I’m glad this is what scientists are focusing on. For a minute I thought they might be taking this whole ‘rapid climate change’ thing for real, investing their energy and innovative ideas in how to maintain a habitable equilibrium on Earth, but alas, you have eased my worried mind.
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Bill – From what I’ve read (and yes, I actually do research these columns), what they really would be used for is to send people into space so they can eat in space restaurants and look down at the Earth from above.
Yes, I know that there is a possibility that they will be able to use these elevators to launch shuttles from outer space, which would be beneficial since getting the spacecrafts out of Earth’s atmosphere is the hard (and expensive) part. But that doesn’t change the fact that all of the dangers I listed in the column are real, the cable snapping and the space debris ones coming directly from people who are developing these elevators.
So yes, tongue-in-cheek as always, but it doesn’t make the concept of a space elevator any less dumb.
Amanda – Who needs to fix Earth when you can simply take the elevator up to the space cafe? We’ll build a new Earth … and if we screw that one up, we’ll just build an elevator to an even better Earth.
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People using space elevators to eat in space restaurants is as likely as all of us having flying cars. That was promised to us as well and still comes up now and then. Space elevators, if even workable, would be used exclusively to transport items such as satellites and supplies. The idea of it being used for people is about as possible as the creation of Star Trek style transporters. It’s a fun idea for people to dream about, but that’s about all it is. Are there possible dangers? Of course, but now list the names of the dead from our current methods of putting objects into space and tell me the dangers involved in that. Putting the cable in an area such as the ocean or a remote desert facility would greatly reduce the danger possibility to civilians, much more than launching rockets and shuttles in densely populated Florida is right now.
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http://xkcd.com/536/
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yes, it is my goal to find a relevant xkcd comic to link to each week.
You’re welcome.
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There’s always someone who farts in the elevator, bad enough when you’re only going to the 15th floor. And what about those jerks that will jump in and select the 15th floor? Use the F***king stairs man!
The problem as I see it: the earth ROTATES. Do we really want an earth with a hard-on banging into every non-geostationary satellite and playing baseball with comets?
This is just scientists who have maternal issues displayed as phallic obsession. What would Freud make of our modern society?
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All I can say is….I want a hoverboard for Christmas.
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Rachel: I could probably knit you one. (hovering not guaranteed)
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Thor:
I think Freud would stick with his orginal assumptions: We love penes (plural of penis – penes?) and we want to have sex with our mothers. But, to be fair to Americans I think it appropriate to say that we love super-sized penes (still doesn’t seem right in plural form) and mothers who go on talk-shows to determine their baby daddy.
Maybe on that really long elevator ride, aside from knitting hoverboards and shoving corks up peoples asses, we should re-invent the rules of pluralization for the word penis. I vote Penez, myself.
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commentjacking
nerdvoice
Amanda: a very quick and dirty search shows that while penes is correct according to pluralization rules, in usage either penises or penes is correct.
/nerdvoice
/commentjacking
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Penez sounds like a really immature derogatory nickname for Perez Hilton.
And Thor, your comment kills me. “The problem as I see it: the earth ROTATES. Do we really want an earth with a hard-on banging into every non-geostationary satellite and playing baseball with comets?” Brilliant.
Bill, the articles I read all suggested the possibility of using them to transport people into space. The space restaurants thing really was brought up too.
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Carrying on the commentjack.
I propose that the plural of penis is changed to pennies. This is based on the need to further immaturity and add confusion.
“I got a pocketful of pennies and one of them is for you, diggidy, diggidy, dig.”
Or “check out the hippopotamusesesesesi with their pennies hanging in the breeze”.
Ahhh, the evolution (read: bastardisation) of language it’s not just for rappers anymore!
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Also, I think Penez would be a great name for a penis-shaped Pez dispenser.
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I find this concept very hard to believe. Afterlife? Are you kidding? Next, you’re going to tell me they’re trying to build a fucking elevator to space.
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IMHO, the space elevator is mankind’s umbilical cord to our species future existence. A cursory glance at the geological record of this planet will affirm that our species’ survival down here in the Earth’s gravity well does not look too good in the long run.
$20 billion? It’s going to cost more than that, but what price do you put on species insurance?
I realize it’s a personal question, and that in a world of cynics and sapien bashers. But for me, it ain’t rocket science 🙂
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