Space elevator possible?

[impending_zombie_apocalypse]

So about 2-ish months ago i built a tower from the ground level of the planet up about 20km into the sky with a system of conveyors all the way up and a manufacturing facility at the bottom for the sake of lofting planetary resources into space without having to deal with getting a ship to escape the 1g gravity well.

However by the time i got the full 20km with the top of it able to recieve resources i was running about 1-2 fps if i was lucky the longer it went on to the point where the game just started freezing and i couldn't actually play the map anymore, because i doubt the game is optimized enough to the point that structures as massive as that are a regular occurance, or even supposed to exist.

I was wondering though if anyone has any idea if the game will ever be able to support something like this at a normal running 60fps or higher, or if it's just outside the realm of the actual game engine and that i was lucky to even have something that massive running at 1-2fps or what?

[Dr. Distortion]

I have built a fully functioning Space Elevator! It can be built in survival. Best part is, it has little to no performance effect, unless it's crashing to the ground. In which case it it'll lag down to .2 sim speed. So just don't break it and it's awesome! Ok so the Space Tether (Elevator) itself is very streamlined. The Tether Car can be upgraded. My Car can hual 4x its wight (~4million Kg) and has a pressurized cabin to fit over 20 people. The Tether itself is a straight line of Heavy Armor Blocks separated into segments using Merge Blocks (to surpass the "highth limit" issue). I love my Space Tether. I've been working on the technology for it for the better part of 1.5 years!

[Dr. Distortion]

BTW, Conveyers use a s**t ton of system resources. A tower of Conveyers will surly kill performance.

[impending_zombie_apocalypse]

Originally posted by ACG-_-R4G3:

I have built a fully functioning Space Elevator! It can be built in survival. Best part is, it has little to no performance effect, unless it's crashing to the ground. In which case it it'll lag down to .2 sim speed. So just don't break it and it's awesome! Ok so the Space Tether (Elevator) itself is very streamlined. The Tether Car can be upgraded. My Car can hual 4x its wight (~4million Kg) and has a pressurized cabin to fit over 20 people. The Tether itself is a straight line of Heavy Armor Blocks separated into segments using Merge Blocks (to surpass the "highth limit" issue). I love my Space Tether. I've been working on the technology for it for the better part of 1.5 years!

How do you move the tether car up and down? i've tried it and i can never get the thing to stick to the straight line of blocks which is why i basically built the massive tower of babel conveyor equivalent, do you have a link to it? Does it work in survival?

[Dr. Distortion]

Here's a vid of it in action. Hopefully you can reverse engineer how it works as its too much for me to describe in writing. And yes, it can be built and operated in survival! http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Dr%20Distortion/video/39442891

[impending_zombie_apocalypse]

Huh ok it's bigger than i thought, i was expecting some teensy thing lol.

For the most part it looks mostly like a ship going up and down following the line as a guidewire moreso than an actual elevator that would be crawling the wire which is what i was trying to do.

You've got like 0 lag there though so i'll probably try this or a variant of it, it has given me a new idea of a different theoretical way to get into space via a method called a skyhook which would utilize portions of your idea.

Thanks man :D

[impending_zombie_apocalypse]

Basically rather than stringing the wire up from the surface i'm thinking of building a station and hanging it downward to a landing platform in the atmosphere then that the ships can dock with and 'then' having the cart from that point upward into space so that the cart uses less energy than it would have to getting from ground level, or something like that.

[impending_zombie_apocalypse]

although i guess that would actually defeat the purpose of using the elevator/skyhood if im still using atmospheric ships though lol, so i'll probably use more of your idea than i thought, if the new physics allows it i might be able to make the cart dis-connectable from the rail and then the cart itself could roll around on the surface as a mobile mining platform, and once it's full it returns to the rail and goes to space.

[impending_zombie_apocalypse]

(Sorry for quadruple post)

I haven't been able to play yet but if the physics updates are all they're cracked up to be, those wheels you seem to be using as guides, i should be able to connect them to pistons to retract them, and design the entire cart with a bit of a retractable "C" shape to allow it to disconnect from the rail, if the pistons are as good as the videos make them look now then it should actually be no problem, and then i can just have tons of batteries or solar panels, although it would be nice if there was a mod somewhere that has an 'electrode' armor block capable of transferring power to the cart similar to trolleys in real life to allow the cart to be lighter without having to carry all the extra battery mass then.

[Ame]

Originally posted by impending_zombie_apocalypse:

(Sorry for quadruple post)

I haven't been able to play yet but if the physics updates are all they're cracked up to be, those wheels you seem to be using as guides, i should be able to connect them to pistons to retract them, and design the entire cart with a bit of a retractable "C" shape to allow it to disconnect from the rail, if the pistons are as good as the videos make them look now then it should actually be no problem, and then i can just have tons of batteries or solar panels, although it would be nice if there was a mod somewhere that has an 'electrode' armor block capable of transferring power to the cart similar to trolleys in real life to allow the cart to be lighter without having to carry all the extra battery mass then.

Pretty sure I've seen a mod that allows you to transfer power between non-connected grids; maybe you could use that.

[impending_zombie_apocalypse]

Originally posted by Ame:

Pretty sure I've seen a mod that allows you to transfer power between non-connected grids; maybe you could use that.

Yes my mistake i didn't realize i'm actually already subscribed to a wireless energy mod lol, yes this should be pretty good then.

[Dr. Distortion]

Wow haha you've been putting some thought into this. So yeah my Space Tether Car is more or less a ship guided by the tether. But this is because I've tried and failed multiple times at using wheels for the propulsion. My tether car only uses electricity to move up and down. And at the top of my Space Tether is the station witch has a solar array to charge the car. So, it's better then just a ship hauling resorses up. Oh annd it's autopiloted!

[Dr. Distortion]

Maybe the new physics update made it more possible to use wheels for propulsion though. I'd have to do some testing. But the main problem is that if you have wheel suspensions on a sub grid it can't be controlled by the main grid. Thus using ion/atoms thrusters is still key.

[Cakeeater]

Originally posted by impending_zombie_apocalypse:

(Sorry for quadruple post)

I haven't been able to play yet but if the physics updates are all they're cracked up to be, those wheels you seem to be using as guides, i should be able to connect them to pistons to retract them, and design the entire cart with a bit of a retractable "C" shape to allow it to disconnect from the rail, if the pistons are as good as the videos make them look now then it should actually be no problem, and then i can just have tons of batteries or solar panels, although it would be nice if there was a mod somewhere that has an 'electrode' armor block capable of transferring power to the cart similar to trolleys in real life to allow the cart to be lighter without having to carry all the extra battery mass then.

instead of a C shape have a O shape and pistons underneath to lift it upwards and have the rail stop slightly higher then the cart so a wheel guiding system would be easier to implement.

[impending_zombie_apocalypse]

Originally posted by AUS Cakeeater34:

Originally posted by impending_zombie_apocalypse:

(Sorry for quadruple post)

I haven't been able to play yet but if the physics updates are all they're cracked up to be, those wheels you seem to be using as guides, i should be able to connect them to pistons to retract them, and design the entire cart with a bit of a retractable "C" shape to allow it to disconnect from the rail, if the pistons are as good as the videos make them look now then it should actually be no problem, and then i can just have tons of batteries or solar panels, although it would be nice if there was a mod somewhere that has an 'electrode' armor block capable of transferring power to the cart similar to trolleys in real life to allow the cart to be lighter without having to carry all the extra battery mass then.

instead of a C shape have a O shape and pistons underneath to lift it upwards and have the rail stop slightly higher then the cart so a wheel guiding system would be easier to implement.

You mean like hang the rail all the way down from space except for a few meters away from the ground and have the pistons for the O-cart lift up to the rail that way yes?

[impending_zombie_apocalypse]

That would work great for having the entire thing solar powered though tbh, have an entire bank of solar cells up in orbit and wire power all the way down to the surface via the wireless transmission in addition to the vehicle, and then i could fly all my atmospheric craft and ground vehicles without needing them to have batteries.