Beanstalks
- Thread starter Andrew Boulton
- Start date
One thing I always wondered (especially with the hurricane devestation this year) is what would happen if a Beanstalk was hit by a tornado or hurricane?
Dameon
Dameon
Well, locations for beanstalks are generally chosen in areas that don't suffer from such weather, but there's a decent chance that the beanstalk would be damaged or even break near the base (at which point, unless you reattach it really quickly, the rest drifts up into orbit and turns into a navigation hazard).
RainOfSteel
SOC-14 1K
Remarkably enough, probably nothing at all.
A beanstalk is going to have to be so incredibly strong just to do its basic job in the first place, that standing up to a 200 mph Pacific Basin Typhoon would be a cake walk.
The worst a hurricane would do to a bean stalk would be setting up a sympathetic vibration in the beanstalk similar to struming a violin with a bow. Once the energy of a hurricane set up a vibration wave in the strand, it would be very difficult to eliminate. That would be something the engineers would have to factor in during design.
Hmmm, interesting. I never thought about the beanstalk just vibrating - I pictured it breaking. Neat - I wonder then if you could play a song with the planet Earth.
If you have four beanstalks at equidistant locations along the equator (as in Arthur C. Clarke's 3001) you could play the planet like a bass guitar!
But anyways, so if we can make a beanstalk that can withstand a hurricane, then we should have the technology to build a house that can, too. Also, doesn't putting a beanstalk up slow down the planet's rotation slightly?
Dameon
Dameon
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
Why? Would it be the drag?
Or the conservation of angular momentum?
