View allAll Photos Tagged tensegrity
Buckytubes are held together as much by symmetry as forces. Their regular structure gives them their unique properties.
Place an asteroid in geosynchronous orbit. It will hang over the same spot on the equator since it orbits at the same speed as the Earth is moving below. Lower a filament from it, while extending a counterweight outward. The centre of mass will remain in place. Continue until the lower end reaches the ground. Add an elevator. Now the road to space is open: without any need for costly reaction mass, without the cruel rocket equation forcing most of the vehicle to be fuel just to lift all that fuel, without the poisonous and risky chemicals that can blow us into orbit. Just a solar-powered elevator bringing us to orbit and launchers on the asteroid. A bifrost bridging Midgård with Valhalla.
All it takes is a material strong enough. It has to carry 35,000 kilometres of itself on Earth. Kevlar would be enough to do it on Mars. Earth needs something stronger, like buckytubes.
Buckminster Fuller envisioned tensegrity structures held up by the tensile strength of cables. A beanstalk would be the ultimate tensegrity, held up simply by the Earth’s rotation. With a minimum of waste space would open and spaceship Earth would have a landing pad.
Engineering ambitions. Transcending the limits of material and energy. Power. Matter as force.
Toby Olson's PEN/Faulkner winner Seaview follows a golf hustler across the American desert as he tries to return his dying wife to her childhood home on Cape Cod. The story also involves cocaine dealing, a Pima Indian activist named Bob White, and the abiding presence of Buckminster Fuller's Tensegrity sphere, ably illustrated for the cover by Mark Conahan.
Discovered tensegrity and knew I had to build something cool with it. First time getting back into LEGO building in four years, and first time trying out SNOT. Constructive criticism more than welcome!
A little sculpture I did in my sophomore year. Search tensegrity on Wikipedia and you'll learn all about it. Also be sure to check out some more information about this project here: sparkgrant.blogspot.com/2011/05/tensegrity-new-scale.html
Here is the 90% base of the Floating Platform display. Let me know what comments you have for this. I am modeling this in Stud.io, as usual, so I am interested to see what the heat map shows for gravity when I add the floating platform.
Kenneth Snelson (born June 29, 1927) is a contemporary sculptor and photographer. His sculptural works are composed of flexible and rigid components arranged according to the idea of 'tensegrity'. Snelson prefers the descriptive term floating compression.
Snelson asserts his former professor Buckminster Fuller took credit for Snelson's discovery of the concept that Fuller named tensegrity. Fuller gave the idea its name, combining 'tension' and 'structural integrity.' The height and strength of Snelson's sculptures, which are often delicate in appearance, depend on the tension between rigid pipes and flexible cables.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Snelson
[film neg damaged in flooded basement mishap]
Bamboo Tensegrity Wheel.
Designed and built by engineers from the Expedition design practice. Inspired by the waterwheel at Lode Mill the wheel rotates in the wind (or when somebody, i.e. me, gives it a push). A tensegrity structure is made of parts that do not touch each other but are held in place by a net of wires under tension.