Very cool. One thing I wish was better shown: space is close, it's just hard to go up. Our liveable breathable atmosphere is razor thin compared to the size of earth.
In most cases, 100km is less than the distance between sizeable metropolitan areas. It's a day long bike ride. Air runs out less than a bus ride across town. A 15k jog/hike would put you in the stratosphere. Those jet aircraft that seem so high are closer than that. Closer than your friends house or the local stadium probably.
Look at a map or globe with that in mind and everything feels so thin!
show comments
dpq
Amazing work! One minor correction:
> As particles from the sun hit the atmosphere, they excite the atoms in the air. These excited atoms start to glow, creating brilliant displays of light called auroras.
The process is a bit more nuanced than that. The modern mainstream understanding is that the growing pressure of the solar wind makes the tail of the magnetosphere "contract" (sort of pushing it inwards from the sides), which leads to reconnection of magnetic field lines. Once the reconnection occurs, the magnetic field lines that remain bound to the geomagnetic dipole accelerate the particles on them towards the Earth => they slam into the atmosphere, exciting the atoms and generating the aurora.
show comments
daniel_iversen
This was incredible! Couldn't stop scrolling and reading. For a kid of a certain age and curiosity it'll blow their mind! I'm so grateful the creator made this, shame that his "buy me a coffee" isn't a simple PayPal or Apple Pay but you have to put in credit card or bank details!!
show comments
tempestn
TIL it's estimated that over 48 tons of meteors hit the atmosphere every day.
Regarding actual space elevators though, while they're not sci-fi to the extent of something like FTL travel - ie. they're technically not physically impossible - they're still pretty firmly in the realm of sci-fi. We don't have anything close to a cable that could sustain its own weight, let alone that of whatever is being elevated. Plus, how do you stabilize the cable and lifter in the atmosphere?
A space elevator on the moon is much more feasible: less gravity, slow rotation, no atmosphere, less dangerous debris. But it's also much less useful.
show comments
araes
The biplane part (Caproni ca 161) right after the "you should put on a spacesuit" comment got my notice, so I checked. Actually vaguely fascinating that in 1938 the Italians had Mario Pezzi wear an electrically heated pressurized suit [1], an airtight helmet [2][3], and sit inside of a pressure cylinder [4] to fly at 17,083 m (56,047 ft) in a propeller-powered biplane. Seems to have barely been mentioned afterward though, as it's difficult to even find imagery.
Wow, super cool. When I finally scrolled through it and the buy me a coffee link showed, I simply thought “take my money!” :D
tomaskafka
I'm so glad there are still makers who know this is what the internet was made for! Be quirky at scale :).
timonoko
Giant Space Bola is much more attractive. It is a 10000 km string with capsules at both ends. It rotates in sync with earth so that the speed at meeting point is the same. You just hop in and end up in space without much effort. Because it is freely floating you can move it around to avoid meteor impacts and other such shit.
show comments
retube
Was hoping would go to geostationary orbit as an actual space elevator would :)
show comments
max23_
This is neat, a lot of TIL.
I liked how the images/sounds were lazy loaded as you were ascending.
If you like factory games and space elevators, then try Satisfactory!
show comments
simpaticoder
Given the title "Space Elevator" I was expecting some more information on a hypothetical space elevator cable. Assuming humans can manufacture defect-free nanotubes at any length and can combine them into thicker cables, you could specify at every height a) the cumulative mass of the cable, b) the thickness of the cable at that point, and c) the stress experienced by the cable at that point. You could further break c down into the gravitational vs centripetal forces on the cable at that point.
isgb
> Space elevators are actually a possible idea being considered by scientists.
> The hard part is making a strong enough cable. And finding enough elevator music...
- We don't have a good ascent mechanism other than rockets - and then we might just use rockets without building an elevator.
- We don't have a good (and safe) descent mechanism.
- Maintenance? Protection from space debris? Protection from oscillations? Ground-protection if the elevator collapses?
This is dyson-sphere level of fiction. We can do back-of-the-napkin calcualtions on how things would work, but the practicalities make it completely impossible or impractical.
show comments
kinduff
I always enjoy Neal's pages. I found planes at high altitude very interesting, didn't know we could fly that high!
show comments
melenaboija
Holy guacamole, common birds like cranes fly high.
I like how the height is measured in metric but the temp is measured in imperial.
show comments
kmacdough
Super fun!
I do always have to object to comments like "space elevators are possible," "scientists have studied" and "would save money".
It's a fun thought experiment, nothing more (for now). You can do some calculus to estimate the necessary strength-to-weight ratio based on centripetal and gravitational forces. Single carbon fibers seem to meet this optimistic criteria.
But there are many forces left out. Many practicalitites left unconsidered. Why? Because there is no scientific community that believes it's vaguely achievable with near-future technology. It's simply not worth investing the outrageous resources required to do a vaguely useful viability analysis.
rikschennink
So nice, it’s just unfortunate that even fun experiences like this first show you a cookie popup.
hermitcrab
>Above this altitude is known as the "death zone", because there isn't enough oxygen for human life.
Being pedantic, this should be "there isn't enough oxygen for sustained human life". An acclimatised climber can survive tens of hours.
show comments
moat
That was fantastic.
My biggest surprise (and confusion) was just how high butterflies and bumblebees go.
grishka
I get it that it requires yet-impossible materials to build a space elevator that goes all the way to space, but what if we instead build one that only extends high enough to clear the thickest layers of atmosphere, so rockets could be launched from there for massive fuel savings?
show comments
vardump
The rockets at higher altitudes were all in wrong orientation. In reality, they don't fly straight up.
ebbi
"Temperatures in the thermosphere can reach 2,500°C, but molecules are so far apart that you wouldn't even feel it."
I don't have a science background. But how does this work? If you can't feel it, how would you measure it?
Space boggles my mind I love it!
DavidPiper
I found this strangely emotionally affecting. Probably on account of the music, but I was really struck the vastness and loneliness as the elevator went higher and higher (and we're still nowhere close to the moon).
nunodonato
Wow, I'm really surprised to see some birds flying that high. Question: How the heck are they able to live normally at such extremely low temperatures?
chasingthewind
I find it curious that the Lockheed Vega is chosen as “Amelia Earhart’s plane” since most people would probably associate her with the Lockheed Electra, the plane she was flying when she disappeared.
It’s analogous to saying that Ernest Shackleton’s ship was the Nimrod…not wrong, just odd.
xrd
My 8 and 10 year old daughters love this site, often choosing it over Roblox during screen time.
This is stunning and perfect.
lolive
Why not scroll up to 36000 kms, so we can reach the end of the cable?
#iFeelCheated !
show comments
hermitcrab
This is a really nice piece of work.
Question: Why does the Douglas Skyrocket have its undercarriage down at 25km?
Unsolicited feedback: It would be nice to be able to click on an item and see some more information. Perhaps just a hyperlink to a wikipedia entry.
notepad0x90
Why isn't there an elevator to the highest altitude where an elevator could be built, and then spacecraft can propel from there. It should still reduce fuel costs and the cost to construct space craft?
Would powering the cable permanently, with a power station at the bottom and a constant feed of water for super-heated steam thrusters work? Just throwing scifi at it. I'm just curious why it has to be one component or why the weight can't be supported by propulsion. I'm guessing the TL;DR is the numbers just don't work out?
hshdhdhehd
Perfect. I think it just needs explanation of Karman line. Why is it 100km. What is the meaning?
show comments
cranx
This is cool, but the UX of the arrows should follow the scroll mode of the device. You drag down on an iPhone to scroll up. Following the arrow and dragging up causes nothing to happen
show comments
bentt
Seems like even before we do an elevator, we should get _something_ tethered to the ground to be in space. Like... anything! That'd be a huge accomplishment.
show comments
Zobat
Interesting how counter intuitive it felt to scroll up from the "landing spot". Even with the instructions right there on the screen I tried scrolling down at first.
honkostani
I missed that notice at where its says: Here be a near mars atmosphere in temperature, pressure (40 kms up) but not as hostile composition and with less radiation. Thats five Mt Everests high.
cheraderama
Doomscrolling isn't supposed to feel so right...
l5870uoo9y
It is appreciated that you can change the temperature unit by clicking on it, and how surprisingly cold and changeable the temperature is as you travel up through the atomic sphere (down to -84C, -119F).
Oreb
How do we know how high pterodactyls were flying?
show comments
ai-onehealth
Excellent! My wrist started to hurt 0.01% of the way to the moon.
slrainka
Wow, I just discovered Ruppell's Griffon Vultures from this. What a fascinating bird with high flying capabilities!
yreg
The sound mixing is so smooth. Is it a simple fade with the right choice of melodies or is there more to it?
adzm
It was enjoyable and informative.
Learned that sprites can be 50km long!!
show comments
dima55
I like looking at these, but does why does it have to redline my cpu?
avmich
Space elevator is not something which stands on the ground and grows up. It is something which lives on geostationary orbit and grows down from it to the Earth. If you cut the lower 1 meter of it, the rest will hang...
...that is, until a satellite will hit the cable above. Space elevator is built in the equatorial plane, all satellites cross it, so eventually every satellite is going to collide with the cable. For this reason the space elevator is incompatible with existing spaceflight, that's why even with nanotubes it's unlikely to be built.
pharmhax
Neat! It would be amazing to see how the pressure changes with altitude in addition to the temperature.
CaptainOfCoit
Oh no, I scrolled all that way and didn't even reach some destination! Where does this space elevator go? No one knows! Would have been bit more satisfying if it ended up at a space station or something, as I think that's the purpose of the space elevator idea in the first place :)
show comments
gherkinnn
Amazing work as always. Paired with Wikipedia it makes for a very productive day.
nodra
Just came to say that this is so cool. Great work.
g00k
This is so fun
petesergeant
Some huh! moments...
* Jeez, Everest is tall
* They got a plane to 17km in 1938!
* There was a paper airplane flight at 35km
whatsupdog
No, thank you. Don't want any existential crisis today!
xipho
Notes on mushroom clouds are sobering.
_def
The atmosphere of this reminded me of the game Outer Wilds
show comments
stared
How on Earth do we know the maximal altitude for a pterodactyl?
bilsbie
Why would cranes fly so high?
mikkupikku
> On June 21, 1972, Jean Boulet of France piloted an Aérospatiale SA 315B Lama helicopter to an absolute altitude record of 12.440 kilometres (40,814 ft).[68] At that extreme altitude, the engine flamed out and Boulet had to land the helicopter by breaking another record: the longest successful autorotation in history.[69]
I just had to look that up. Absolutely incredible.
14
Loved this site. Only thing I could think to add would be the ability to click each item and be taken to a wiki page or some further source of information about the object.
asimovDev
I didn't take a look cause I didn't see "reject all cookies" button in the cookie popup
show comments
pandemic_region
That space elevator music 100% made my day, thank you!
neuronic
Congrats, first time I noticeably hear my MBP M4 Pro fans and can feel the temperature through the keyboard.
Amazing work, as always. I love neal.fun
Edit: also good to know that paper airplanes have officially beat the SR-71, F-104 or X-43B with altitude record.
show comments
dzonga
does anyone have the link to the money one ? scale of a billion ?
mcv
I honestly expected to be scrolling for a couple of days to reach geostationary orbit.
shmerl
Cool, I had no idea bumblebees can fly that high.
FailMore
So great. Thank you Neal!
everyone
An actual space elevator would need to be over 357 times longer though right?
Awesome site!
waxsum8
Lovely, great transitions!
tstrimple
I loved the visuals but space elevators are far more science-fantasy than hard science-fiction. We should move on to sci-fi tech that has more realistic applications.
show comments
tetris11
> Temperatures can reach <something very high> but the molecules are spread sobfar apart you wouldn't feel it.
Conceptually I get, it's like being in a cold room that showers hot sparks on you from above occasionally...
...but I feel that the definition of temperature has been abused here slightly
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
Deep links would _kill_ on this. I'd love to be able to link someone to the Blackbird. (25,700 meters)
M95D
Incomplete. Where's the LEO, GEO, the counterweight?
show comments
jmyeet
Space elevators aren't going to happen. Not in Earth's gravity well anyway. Even if you can find a material strong enough (and that's a big "if"), you still have to traverse 50,000km to get from Earth's surface to geosynchronous orbit to get the benefit.
You know what does make way more sense and is way more achievable? Orbital rings [1].
Basically, put some copper wire in space, orbit it at ~8km/s, run a current through it and then you can reset structures on top of it (magnetically) and those structures are fixed to the Earth's surface. You can technically run a cable from 100-150km up to the surface and run a gondola into LEO. This would transform both Earth transport and interplanetary travel. You accelerate something on the inside (Earthside) of the ring at ~2G, like with a maglev train, and you have enough velocity to escape the Solar System.
This type of interactive learning experience reminds me of how fun it was to browse Encarta back in the day. It was full of interesting facts, presented in fun interactive ways. As much as I love that we have Wikipedia today, a static web page with text and limited multimedia is far less engaging and conducive to learning.
I think that Neal Agarwal and Bartosz Ciechanowski should be sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation to create similar experiences on Wikipedia. That would do so much to facilitate learning for students of all ages.
ta1243
What's really interesting is that a space elevator goes to Geostationary orbit by necessity. Getting to 100km vertically doesn't save as much as you might think when it comes to getting into orbit.
To get into a very low earth orbit from an equatorial launch pad at sea level you need about 9.2km/s of Delta-V
To get there from a 100km tall tower, you need about 8km/s of delta-V - about 85%.
Think about how much scrolling there was to get to 100km.
To get to the ISS you'd need to scroll 4 times further. Starlink and Hubble are another 100km beyond that.
You start having radiation problems if you spend too much time above 600km.
Aside from Apollo, the highest a human has been is about 1400km - 14 times more scrolling than this page.
To get to GEO would require scrolling over 25 times further than even that.
show comments
vpribish
the space elevator has to go a LOT higher than that. also, the landing gear is down on the reentering shuttle. The big thing people don't get is that orbit is about sideways speed not altitude and this does nothing to address it. I don't get the hype for this, it's cute but not much at all.
temperceve
This is just lovely. I, for one, have bought Neal a coffee!
amelius
Where is Elon Musk's Tesla?
show comments
tonyhart7
the website feels heavy, can we optimize this further?? (not a web dev)
Very cool. One thing I wish was better shown: space is close, it's just hard to go up. Our liveable breathable atmosphere is razor thin compared to the size of earth.
In most cases, 100km is less than the distance between sizeable metropolitan areas. It's a day long bike ride. Air runs out less than a bus ride across town. A 15k jog/hike would put you in the stratosphere. Those jet aircraft that seem so high are closer than that. Closer than your friends house or the local stadium probably.
Look at a map or globe with that in mind and everything feels so thin!
Amazing work! One minor correction:
> As particles from the sun hit the atmosphere, they excite the atoms in the air. These excited atoms start to glow, creating brilliant displays of light called auroras.
The process is a bit more nuanced than that. The modern mainstream understanding is that the growing pressure of the solar wind makes the tail of the magnetosphere "contract" (sort of pushing it inwards from the sides), which leads to reconnection of magnetic field lines. Once the reconnection occurs, the magnetic field lines that remain bound to the geomagnetic dipole accelerate the particles on them towards the Earth => they slam into the atmosphere, exciting the atoms and generating the aurora.
This was incredible! Couldn't stop scrolling and reading. For a kid of a certain age and curiosity it'll blow their mind! I'm so grateful the creator made this, shame that his "buy me a coffee" isn't a simple PayPal or Apple Pay but you have to put in credit card or bank details!!
TIL it's estimated that over 48 tons of meteors hit the atmosphere every day.
Regarding actual space elevators though, while they're not sci-fi to the extent of something like FTL travel - ie. they're technically not physically impossible - they're still pretty firmly in the realm of sci-fi. We don't have anything close to a cable that could sustain its own weight, let alone that of whatever is being elevated. Plus, how do you stabilize the cable and lifter in the atmosphere?
A space elevator on the moon is much more feasible: less gravity, slow rotation, no atmosphere, less dangerous debris. But it's also much less useful.
The biplane part (Caproni ca 161) right after the "you should put on a spacesuit" comment got my notice, so I checked. Actually vaguely fascinating that in 1938 the Italians had Mario Pezzi wear an electrically heated pressurized suit [1], an airtight helmet [2][3], and sit inside of a pressure cylinder [4] to fly at 17,083 m (56,047 ft) in a propeller-powered biplane. Seems to have barely been mentioned afterward though, as it's difficult to even find imagery.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Pezzi_(aviator)
[2] https://static.thisdayinaviation.com/wp-content/uploads/tdia...
[3] https://www.enricopezzi.it/fam_pezzi/mario_pezzi/images/MP_1...
[4] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F4...
I love this guy.
Re playing this gem https://neal.fun/stimulation-clicker/
I just clicked the temperature thingy in annoyance because I don't use Fahrenheit and to my delight, it just switched to Celcius
I love this page and I donated, but I was (naively) expecting it to get to geosynchronous altitude, which is the actual top of a space elevator.
Of course, that would require a page 420 times longer, and I don't know if a browser would even support it.
A beautifully executed project here, I bought Neal a coffee.
What evolutionary advantage, I wonder, is there to Ruppell's griffon vulture flying at 11400 meters?
edit: units
The other direction:
https://neal.fun/deep-sea/
Wow, super cool. When I finally scrolled through it and the buy me a coffee link showed, I simply thought “take my money!” :D
I'm so glad there are still makers who know this is what the internet was made for! Be quirky at scale :).
Giant Space Bola is much more attractive. It is a 10000 km string with capsules at both ends. It rotates in sync with earth so that the speed at meeting point is the same. You just hop in and end up in space without much effort. Because it is freely floating you can move it around to avoid meteor impacts and other such shit.
Was hoping would go to geostationary orbit as an actual space elevator would :)
This is neat, a lot of TIL.
I liked how the images/sounds were lazy loaded as you were ascending.
I watch AC's video on this, it was quite entertaining: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5aHMB4Tje4
If you like factory games and space elevators, then try Satisfactory!
Given the title "Space Elevator" I was expecting some more information on a hypothetical space elevator cable. Assuming humans can manufacture defect-free nanotubes at any length and can combine them into thicker cables, you could specify at every height a) the cumulative mass of the cable, b) the thickness of the cable at that point, and c) the stress experienced by the cable at that point. You could further break c down into the gravitational vs centripetal forces on the cable at that point.
> Space elevators are actually a possible idea being considered by scientists. > The hard part is making a strong enough cable. And finding enough elevator music...
Most engineers would bring up a lot more issues than just finding a strong cable. Also, most attempts with e.g. carbon nanotubes have been abandoned ages ago https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093356-carbon-nanotube....
- We don't have a good ascent mechanism other than rockets - and then we might just use rockets without building an elevator. - We don't have a good (and safe) descent mechanism. - Maintenance? Protection from space debris? Protection from oscillations? Ground-protection if the elevator collapses?
This is dyson-sphere level of fiction. We can do back-of-the-napkin calcualtions on how things would work, but the practicalities make it completely impossible or impractical.
I always enjoy Neal's pages. I found planes at high altitude very interesting, didn't know we could fly that high!
Holy guacamole, common birds like cranes fly high.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_height...
Previous discussion on 20-apr-2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35629972
I like how the height is measured in metric but the temp is measured in imperial.
Super fun!
I do always have to object to comments like "space elevators are possible," "scientists have studied" and "would save money".
It's a fun thought experiment, nothing more (for now). You can do some calculus to estimate the necessary strength-to-weight ratio based on centripetal and gravitational forces. Single carbon fibers seem to meet this optimistic criteria.
But there are many forces left out. Many practicalitites left unconsidered. Why? Because there is no scientific community that believes it's vaguely achievable with near-future technology. It's simply not worth investing the outrageous resources required to do a vaguely useful viability analysis.
So nice, it’s just unfortunate that even fun experiences like this first show you a cookie popup.
>Above this altitude is known as the "death zone", because there isn't enough oxygen for human life.
Being pedantic, this should be "there isn't enough oxygen for sustained human life". An acclimatised climber can survive tens of hours.
That was fantastic.
My biggest surprise (and confusion) was just how high butterflies and bumblebees go.
I get it that it requires yet-impossible materials to build a space elevator that goes all the way to space, but what if we instead build one that only extends high enough to clear the thickest layers of atmosphere, so rockets could be launched from there for massive fuel savings?
The rockets at higher altitudes were all in wrong orientation. In reality, they don't fly straight up.
"Temperatures in the thermosphere can reach 2,500°C, but molecules are so far apart that you wouldn't even feel it."
I don't have a science background. But how does this work? If you can't feel it, how would you measure it?
Space boggles my mind I love it!
I found this strangely emotionally affecting. Probably on account of the music, but I was really struck the vastness and loneliness as the elevator went higher and higher (and we're still nowhere close to the moon).
Wow, I'm really surprised to see some birds flying that high. Question: How the heck are they able to live normally at such extremely low temperatures?
I find it curious that the Lockheed Vega is chosen as “Amelia Earhart’s plane” since most people would probably associate her with the Lockheed Electra, the plane she was flying when she disappeared. It’s analogous to saying that Ernest Shackleton’s ship was the Nimrod…not wrong, just odd.
My 8 and 10 year old daughters love this site, often choosing it over Roblox during screen time.
This is stunning and perfect.
Why not scroll up to 36000 kms, so we can reach the end of the cable? #iFeelCheated !
This is a really nice piece of work.
Question: Why does the Douglas Skyrocket have its undercarriage down at 25km?
Unsolicited feedback: It would be nice to be able to click on an item and see some more information. Perhaps just a hyperlink to a wikipedia entry.
Why isn't there an elevator to the highest altitude where an elevator could be built, and then spacecraft can propel from there. It should still reduce fuel costs and the cost to construct space craft?
Would powering the cable permanently, with a power station at the bottom and a constant feed of water for super-heated steam thrusters work? Just throwing scifi at it. I'm just curious why it has to be one component or why the weight can't be supported by propulsion. I'm guessing the TL;DR is the numbers just don't work out?
Perfect. I think it just needs explanation of Karman line. Why is it 100km. What is the meaning?
This is cool, but the UX of the arrows should follow the scroll mode of the device. You drag down on an iPhone to scroll up. Following the arrow and dragging up causes nothing to happen
Seems like even before we do an elevator, we should get _something_ tethered to the ground to be in space. Like... anything! That'd be a huge accomplishment.
Interesting how counter intuitive it felt to scroll up from the "landing spot". Even with the instructions right there on the screen I tried scrolling down at first.
I missed that notice at where its says: Here be a near mars atmosphere in temperature, pressure (40 kms up) but not as hostile composition and with less radiation. Thats five Mt Everests high.
Doomscrolling isn't supposed to feel so right...
It is appreciated that you can change the temperature unit by clicking on it, and how surprisingly cold and changeable the temperature is as you travel up through the atomic sphere (down to -84C, -119F).
How do we know how high pterodactyls were flying?
Excellent! My wrist started to hurt 0.01% of the way to the moon.
Wow, I just discovered Ruppell's Griffon Vultures from this. What a fascinating bird with high flying capabilities!
The sound mixing is so smooth. Is it a simple fade with the right choice of melodies or is there more to it?
It was enjoyable and informative.
Learned that sprites can be 50km long!!
I like looking at these, but does why does it have to redline my cpu?
Space elevator is not something which stands on the ground and grows up. It is something which lives on geostationary orbit and grows down from it to the Earth. If you cut the lower 1 meter of it, the rest will hang...
...that is, until a satellite will hit the cable above. Space elevator is built in the equatorial plane, all satellites cross it, so eventually every satellite is going to collide with the cable. For this reason the space elevator is incompatible with existing spaceflight, that's why even with nanotubes it's unlikely to be built.
Neat! It would be amazing to see how the pressure changes with altitude in addition to the temperature.
Oh no, I scrolled all that way and didn't even reach some destination! Where does this space elevator go? No one knows! Would have been bit more satisfying if it ended up at a space station or something, as I think that's the purpose of the space elevator idea in the first place :)
Amazing work as always. Paired with Wikipedia it makes for a very productive day.
Just came to say that this is so cool. Great work.
This is so fun
Some huh! moments...
* Jeez, Everest is tall
* They got a plane to 17km in 1938!
* There was a paper airplane flight at 35km
No, thank you. Don't want any existential crisis today!
Notes on mushroom clouds are sobering.
The atmosphere of this reminded me of the game Outer Wilds
How on Earth do we know the maximal altitude for a pterodactyl?
Why would cranes fly so high?
> On June 21, 1972, Jean Boulet of France piloted an Aérospatiale SA 315B Lama helicopter to an absolute altitude record of 12.440 kilometres (40,814 ft).[68] At that extreme altitude, the engine flamed out and Boulet had to land the helicopter by breaking another record: the longest successful autorotation in history.[69]
I just had to look that up. Absolutely incredible.
Loved this site. Only thing I could think to add would be the ability to click each item and be taken to a wiki page or some further source of information about the object.
I didn't take a look cause I didn't see "reject all cookies" button in the cookie popup
That space elevator music 100% made my day, thank you!
Congrats, first time I noticeably hear my MBP M4 Pro fans and can feel the temperature through the keyboard.
Amazing work, as always. I love neal.fun
Edit: also good to know that paper airplanes have officially beat the SR-71, F-104 or X-43B with altitude record.
does anyone have the link to the money one ? scale of a billion ?
I honestly expected to be scrolling for a couple of days to reach geostationary orbit.
Cool, I had no idea bumblebees can fly that high.
So great. Thank you Neal!
An actual space elevator would need to be over 357 times longer though right?
Awesome site!
Lovely, great transitions!
I loved the visuals but space elevators are far more science-fantasy than hard science-fiction. We should move on to sci-fi tech that has more realistic applications.
> Temperatures can reach <something very high> but the molecules are spread sobfar apart you wouldn't feel it.
Conceptually I get, it's like being in a cold room that showers hot sparks on you from above occasionally...
...but I feel that the definition of temperature has been abused here slightly
Deep links would _kill_ on this. I'd love to be able to link someone to the Blackbird. (25,700 meters)
Incomplete. Where's the LEO, GEO, the counterweight?
Space elevators aren't going to happen. Not in Earth's gravity well anyway. Even if you can find a material strong enough (and that's a big "if"), you still have to traverse 50,000km to get from Earth's surface to geosynchronous orbit to get the benefit.
You know what does make way more sense and is way more achievable? Orbital rings [1].
Basically, put some copper wire in space, orbit it at ~8km/s, run a current through it and then you can reset structures on top of it (magnetically) and those structures are fixed to the Earth's surface. You can technically run a cable from 100-150km up to the surface and run a gondola into LEO. This would transform both Earth transport and interplanetary travel. You accelerate something on the inside (Earthside) of the ring at ~2G, like with a maglev train, and you have enough velocity to escape the Solar System.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E
I like the white text on white backgroud. Makes very easy to read
WARNING: This guy's site is a trap for people with ADHD/OCD -- the ease at which I was sucked into every link on his site made me nope the heck out.
Beautiful work though.
Lovely, as all neal.fun experiments. <3
My favorite is probably https://neal.fun/infinite-craft/
This type of interactive learning experience reminds me of how fun it was to browse Encarta back in the day. It was full of interesting facts, presented in fun interactive ways. As much as I love that we have Wikipedia today, a static web page with text and limited multimedia is far less engaging and conducive to learning.
I think that Neal Agarwal and Bartosz Ciechanowski should be sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation to create similar experiences on Wikipedia. That would do so much to facilitate learning for students of all ages.
What's really interesting is that a space elevator goes to Geostationary orbit by necessity. Getting to 100km vertically doesn't save as much as you might think when it comes to getting into orbit.
To get into a very low earth orbit from an equatorial launch pad at sea level you need about 9.2km/s of Delta-V
To get there from a 100km tall tower, you need about 8km/s of delta-V - about 85%.
Think about how much scrolling there was to get to 100km.
To get to the ISS you'd need to scroll 4 times further. Starlink and Hubble are another 100km beyond that.
You start having radiation problems if you spend too much time above 600km.
Aside from Apollo, the highest a human has been is about 1400km - 14 times more scrolling than this page.
To get to GEO would require scrolling over 25 times further than even that.
the space elevator has to go a LOT higher than that. also, the landing gear is down on the reentering shuttle. The big thing people don't get is that orbit is about sideways speed not altitude and this does nothing to address it. I don't get the hype for this, it's cute but not much at all.
This is just lovely. I, for one, have bought Neal a coffee!
Where is Elon Musk's Tesla?
the website feels heavy, can we optimize this further?? (not a web dev)