Aerovator, Angel fleet, Polywell

[ciphergoth]

Ideas that are currently entertaining me:

• The Aerovator: a spinning wing 2,000km long whose tips rise 100km up and travel at 8 km/s which unlike the Space Elevator can be built (just) with today's materials.
• The Angel fleet: Counteracting global warming with a fleet of 16 trillon solar shades in space between the Earth and the Sun (we can use the Aerovator to put them up)
• Polywell fusion which if it turned out to be possible would save the world - plus we can power the Aerovator with it.

Comments

[martling.livejournal.com]

The high tension combined with the length does intuitively suggest a longer wavelength of oscillation, but I'm not sure if that means the forces involved will be any less severe.

One thing I do know is that subsonic, transonic and supersonic aerodynamics are three very different things, and that one of the big problems with designing supersonic aircraft is coming up with a shape that works for all three regimes. Whether you could accomplish all three with something that's basically just a ribbon, and be able to actually bootstrap the rotation, I have no idea, but it sounds tough.