If a Space Elevator became a reality, wouldn't the cable act as a kind of wick for all of the unfiltered radiation from outside our atmosphere?

Submitted ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨58008@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

As I understand it (see: not at all), if you leave a spaceship with no suit on, you’d get baked like Marie Curie’s ovaries from the radiation. It’s mainly our atmosphere that protects us from most of the nastiest stuff. Would a giant cable reaching from Earth all the way to a platform outside the atmosphere become dangerously-radioactive over time? And if so, would that eventually cause the entire planet to get radioactive over hundreds of years? Kinda like if the hole in the Ozone layer were replaced with a Mario pipe.

And if that is the case, maybe we could forget the elevator aspect of it and just aim for a free eternal source of radioactive energy, like a really shitty Dyson sphere 👀

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Pat_Riot@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
That’s the least of the worries facing the construction of a skyhook. I don’t think Heinlein’s Kenya Beanstalk is possible. It would have to stretch out so far to defeat gravity that it would hit so many satellites. That’s the first issue that pops to mind.

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Ziggurat@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Its not really how radiation work, radiation don’t move trough a tube and material don’t necessarily get radioactive from being irradiated, actually the cable would contribute stopping radiation, and radiation resistance is definitely something you need to consider in a space elevator material.

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ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Induced radioactivity is mostly the result of contamination from radioactive materials. Whilst it’s possible to induce radioactivity from gamma rays directly, you’re talking “background noise” levels of radiation. Which is to say, the cable isn’t going to become notably radioactive, and even then, the part that does, will be the part that isn’t protected by the atmosphere. And for people to navigate those areas of space safely, we already need shielding, so it wouldn’t be any different on the space elevator.

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heyWhatsay@slrpnk.net ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Compare that possibility to the radiation from sunlight. I wouldn’t worry about radiation, I would be more concerned about altering earths rotation, or damage caused if the space elevator were to collapse.

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- anomnom@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yeah the dearth of destruction left by it falling would be insane. I assume it would have to be built along mainly west coasts to mitigate risks.
  
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  - I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Dearth means “a striking lack of,” as in “dearth of evidence.” (No evidence)
    
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  - SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    By the necessities of its design a space elevator has to reach geostationary orbit, which would make it tall enough to wrap around the planet twice if it fell. Wouldn’t really matter if you built it on a west coast or not.
    
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Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

you’d get baked like Marie Curie’s ovaries

It wasn’t just the ovaries, it was the whole Marie.

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mech@feddit.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
We have a free eternal source of energy.
It’s called solar.

If a space elevator became a reality, the real problem would be that it can get destroyed easily by terrorists or even just a defective satellite in low earth orbit crashing into it.
And then you have a 20000 mile long cable crashing down on earth at supersonic speeds.

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- black_flag@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Oops we accidentally cut earth like a big wheel of cheese
  
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  - SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yum!
    
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- TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  If a space elevator happened, I would certainly make sure I don’t live in its flattening path around the equator
  
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- funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  wouldn’t it be a 125–250 mile cable tops?
  
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  - mech@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    No, the other end needs to be in geostationary orbit. Otherwise the wrapping of the cable around the equator will start a lot sooner.
    
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Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Ada answered the question, but consider your question.

You said “leaving a spaceship with no suit”. If your idea is that something left in space becomes dangerously radioactive then any space station or space ship would itself become dangerously radioactive.

So the answer is, no, things in space don’t become dangerously radioactive. Also things in contact with radioactive substances don’t themselves become radioactive except under extremely specific circumstances. Your house didn’t become dangerously radioactive because of the radioactive americium-241 in the smoke detectors.

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EtherWhack@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I think I read somewhere that we do have the technology to create a Dyson sphere but it would be too much of a massive undertaking time and labor-wise at our current level.

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- MotoAsh@piefed.social ⁨55⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  Not Dyson sphere (also a sphere is literally impossible), though maybe space elevator. If we weren’t already so close to Kessler Syndrome, anyways…
  
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- CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  We do not. We can’t even move solar energy from earth orbit down to earth at any scale that would be economically viable or really even useful.
  
  We lack the material science to build something that large but still light enough to be physically stable AND somehow collect and transmit energy.
  
  We also lack the technology to stop it from being destroyed by space debris even if we could somehow build it.
  
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SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Any time you talk radiation, you need to be specific about what kind of particles, how much energy they have, and how much of it there is.

Most of the stuff in orbit is charged particles (electrons and small atoms) and low energy photons. Those get stopped by relatively thin layers of shielding, but if you’re not careful you’ll get cooked from raw heat.

Ionizing radiation like neutrons or x- and gamma-range photons can radioactivate materials, and take more shielding – think feet of water or a couple inches of lead. Nuclear reactors have that, but spaceships don’t. Fortunately unless you bring a reactor with you they’re rare enough that it’s not really necessary.

Substances become radioactive when they get hit by some kind of ionizing radiation and change into an isotope that itself emits radiation. Conducting radiation like a wick isn’t really a thing.

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- MotoAsh@piefed.social ⁨59⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  Electrons and small atoms are kinds of ionizing radiation. Also, it’s not the photonic type that makes something else radioactive (mostly). It’s the particles. Look up what neutrons are doing in nuclear reactors. They “contaminate” things that aren’t normally radioactive because neutrons ‘stick’ to their atoms and make the atom unstable because now it’s a different, most likely less stable isotope.
  
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- fullsquare@awful.systems ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  you need really spicy photons for activation to happen
  
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AudaciousArmadillo@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
A recent Scott Manly video about radiation in space https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DJcbevbBzsc.

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