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Need opinions and guidance building a space elevator.

#521
bluesblaster said:
Has anyone actually tried to drive an F1 car on a upside down surface for any distance or is it just speculation ?
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Unlike aerobatic aircraft with inverted-capable fuel and oil systems, F1 cars are not designed for indefinite inverted operation.

The downforce will suck the vehicle to the (inverted) roadway, but the fuel and oil still obey the law of gravity and flow to the top of the tank, where the pickups aren't.

With no fuel and no oil pressure, it won't run for long...
 
#522
bluesblaster said:
Has anyone actually tried to drive an F1 car on a upside down surface for any distance or is it just speculation ? I dont doubt it could be done just wondering how far they would get before.......... well, you know. It never ended well when the coyote would try something like this chasing that darn woodpecker... er, roadrunner
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Its not speculation so much as just science. At speed they produce about 3.5g of downforce which is more than enough to overcome the force of gravity and pulling the car "off" the roof and to keep the car stuck to the roof. HOwever, as the other poster pointed out, they are not designed to be driven upside down. I'd imagine it would be pretty uncomofrtable for the driver as well as his legs and body would still be affected by gravity.
 
#525
Marlat said:
Its not speculation so much as just science. At speed they produce about 3.5g of downforce which is more than enough to overcome the force of gravity and pulling the car "off" the roof and to keep the car stuck to the roof. HOwever, as the other poster pointed out, they are not designed to be driven upside down. I'd imagine it would be pretty uncomofrtable for the driver as well as his legs and body would still be affected by gravity.
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Need to give those MythBuster guys a call, this has to be tried. A car able to sucker itself to an upside down road simply by driving at speed is counter-intuitive. Even so, my money's on it falling off :-/
 
#527
ArtechnikA said:
Unlike aerobatic aircraft with inverted-capable fuel and oil systems, F1 cars are not designed for indefinite inverted operation.

The downforce will suck the vehicle to the (inverted) roadway, but the fuel and oil still obey the law of gravity and flow to the top of the tank, where the pickups aren't.

With no fuel and no oil pressure, it won't run for long...
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The oil is dry sump, so no problem, and if the fuel is not low there will be enough at the pickup. Add a vertical trap and it's even easier.

It would stick if moving quickly enough.
 
#530
Read out to my wife some io the thread titles in Off Topic to try and explain (maybe also justify)to her why I enjoy it so much and spend so much time around here. When I got to this thread and read out the OP's starting post because it was just so unusual, she immediately says "sounds like one those Nigerian scam letters"! She just ain't gettin it.

Also saw my own post about the upside down F1 car upforcing itself to the ceiling and realised I'd thought I was posting to a completely different thread about fast cars or whatever! Anything but the famous Space Elevator thread ;-)

But as I'm here now, just have to say this idea won't fly for a number if reasons:

* ROI is the worst
* travel too slow
* one accident and its all over
* too many things can go wrong

The flying analogy is a misleading one IMO as people through the centuries already tried and failed, because the barrier to entry was low. Its also natural. Birds fly, bats fly, there are even flying squirrels but no animal builds a scaled down version of a space elevator, unless its a bridge within limits (check out the Millau in France).

Interesting concept fun to discuss, but it plays better in films like the early colour film A Matter of Life and Death, rather than something to sink serious amounts of time into.
 
#531
Simo98 said:
Reaching the couple of hundred kilometers per hour needed to generate that sort of downforce however, would be rather difficult when you're upsidedown :D
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Not really, those cars create absurd amounts of aerodynamic down force at relatively low speeds. I'd imagine with the right tweaks to the air frame of the car and the right changes to the engine it would be possible. In fact, I heard a while ago that Lotus had developed a version of their F1 car that could drive up side down, but haven't found a facility to test it at yet, which I think is the biggest thing keeping this from happening.
 
#534
Marlat said:
It will be interesting to see if the money get used as stated on the Kickstarter and whether the thousands of backers actually receive the items promised to them.
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Something made me think of this thread today, so I took a quick look at the Liftport website, and -- surprise -- it looks like as of mid-July, they still hadn't provided those items to many of their backers: [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

The "Downloads" section of the website still has zero documents in its business and finance section.

One has to wonder what happened to the $100,000+ they raised.
 
#536
Febs said:
Something made me think of this thread today, so I took a quick look at the Liftport website, and -- surprise -- it looks like as of mid-July, they still hadn't provided those items to many of their backers: [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

The "Downloads" section of the website still has zero documents in its business and finance section.

One has to wonder what happened to the $100,000+ they raised.
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It was probably put into developing an experiment to determine the effects of massive amounts of cocaine on the thought processes of scientists. A second test is probably in the proof of concept phase to see whether being in close vicinity to hot tubs and hookers has any effect as well.

These are, of course, the uneducated guesses of an uneducated skeptic.
 
#537
Hi.

Febs said:
it looks like as of mid-July, they still hadn't provided those items to many of their backers: [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

The "Downloads" section of the website still has zero documents in its business and finance section.
Click to expand...

:eek: what a SHOCKER!!!

Febs said:
One has to wonder what happened to the $100,000+ they raised.
Click to expand...

That has to be one of those rethorical questions, right?

Fortunately we have other DIY space adventurers who actually show progress...

http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/

Regards
Sam
 
#538
The Space Elevator is a valid concept and people have been working on it for decades. 10 years ago it was only a couple years away from reality supposedly and the time keeps getting pushed out. There are a lot of problems using this from the Earth, most notably the fact that there is no known material strong enough that people have been able to scale up to the sizes needed.

However, using this concept on the moon makes sense and we have the materials and technology available today to do it. Of course we'd need a reason for it to be useful, like mining on the moon.
 

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