SpaceElevator

Phase 2

Our Basic Premises

1. A wiki cataloging a critical mass of models, spreadsheets, simulations, and documentation will attract people to help find and solve problems.
2. No toys. Anything can be modeled in software so we will increasingly aim to simulate the real thing. We must do this in crawl, walk, run, but we must keep the goal in mind. Let's build a space elevator simulator if it serves as a mechanism to model and solve problems, not because it would create a good movie. The first would make the second automatically.
3. What would we want from NASA and Intel?

Next Steps

SpaceElevatorNextSteps

Book Revision work

SpaceElevatorBookRevision

Art

I think that you should hire someone to create some 3-d models, in a free format, for others to check out. Do you know someone you could supervise? I'll pay for it by the hour.

http://sketchup.google.com/

This supports an open format known as collada, which means you can build something and use it in other places. You could build this using other software as well...

We will be using a video game engine that supports that format. I could get one of my programmers to throw that model into a world and have it move around.

You could build all the basic parts as a 3-d model, then get people improving on all of them in parallel. What really does a climber need to look like?

If you create a starting point, and list the next set of problems, people will jump in and help out. Your goal is to give a good starting point, and a good problem, to college kids.

And that is just one problem to attack. I haven't heard from you about the particle simulation but that is a whole nother way to go to attack certain problems. And I have other ideas as well...

Software gives you a concrete virtual world to work in :-) The simulation is as good as you want it to be.

Software

http://keithcu.com/wiki/index.php/Codebase_Analysis#Physics_Engines

Imagine you built a simulator so that when you added weight to the climber, the ribbon dimensions got bigger. I will figure out how to build that in a video game. If you create a spreadsheet which has the calculations, which boiled down to some simple formula, I could put that formula in. If someone improves the spreadsheet, they can put in a new formula.

Your math shouldn't just go into your book, it should go into spreadsheets you post on your wiki.

We will soon have running physics engines, graphics engines, etc. We could set you up with somethings you could play with, or supervise others on. If you can specify things, I can get them implemented.

P.S. Here is a list of people who will build models for sketchup. http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=c9bd5e6d5b511d0e6c58fbbbefee0599

P.P.S. I just found a few space elevator models: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=space+elevator&btnG=Search&styp=m&reps=1