Quote:
Originally Posted by Quexos
How will they work out issues such as the weight ? The mass will have a weight (at least for the first 100 km of the shaft material) which will tug at the space station it will be connected to. The only way to counter that, is for the station to be circling around the earth but it will have no choice of speed since it must constantly stay at the vertical of wherever the elevator base is anchored to.
|
You have to balance the whole system such that the Center of Mass is at Geo-stationary orbit. The balancing mass is out FARTHER than geo-synch, and it balances the mass of the cable down to Earth. The cable gets lowered from orbit, takes a long time. If you can get enough output from the processes that make carbon nano-tube fibers, that is strong enough to do the job.
The benefit of the elevator is energy and cost, and not putting out some of the nasty chemicals used in lots of rocket fuels. And, if you take a week to get to orbit, then the stress on the passengers is much lower, allowing people in weaker health to make the journey.
And, there are orbital benefits to going further out along the elevator, which gets you orbital escape velocity to go elsewhere without using rocket fuel to get out of Earth orbit.