With the end of the shuttle program and an International Space Station still in need of supplies, the aerospace industry is working the kinks of out of a century-old idea to build a service elevator from Earth to outer space.
roy / collective / tags / engineering
Tagged with “engineering”
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Can we build an elevator to space?
Tagged with space elevator engineering space
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George Dyson | Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
In the 1940s and 1950s, a group of brilliant engineers led by John von Neumann gathered in Princeton, New Jersey with the joint goal of realizing Alan Turing’s theoretical universal machine-a thought experiment that scientists use to understand the limits of mechanical computation. As a result of their fervent work, the crucial advancements that dominated 20th century technology emerged. In Turing’s Cathedral, technology historian George Dyson recreates the scenes of focused experimentation, mathematical insight, and creative genius that broke the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things-giving us computers, digital television, modern genetics, and models of stellar evolution. Also a philosopher of science, Dyson’s previous books include Baidarka, Darwin Among the Machines, and Project Orion. (recorded 3/13/2012)
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Skylar Tibbits: Can we make things that make themselves?
MIT researcher Skylar Tibbits works on self-assembly — the idea that instead of building something (a chair, a skyscraper), we can create materials that build themselves, much the way a strand of DNA zips itself together. It’s a big concept at early stages; Tibbits shows us three in-the-lab projects that hint at what a self-assembling future might look like.
http://www.ted.com/talks/skylar_tibbits_can_we_make_things_that_make_themselves.html
Tagged with ted technology replication engineering
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Future Tense: The Space Elevator
The idea of the space elevator has been around for over a century. But in recent years teams of scientists and engineers have been actively working on the concept. So could the elevator become a reality? Or is it still a case of science-fiction?
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/futuretense/stories/2010/2977165.htm
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Movin’ on up — Space Elevators
Dr. Brendan Quine discusses his design for a novel kind of space elevator.
Tagged with space elevator science technology space nasa dr. brendan quine engineering