Hah! I got it all figured out. Remember the X-Prize suborbital hop? Going fully orbital takes 40 times the energy, right? We could lift *huge* payloads if we didn't have to make orbit.
So drop a tether from geostationary orbit to 100 miles above the surface of the Earth. Then start shipping stuff up there. You'd think our lifting capacity would jump by a factor of 40, but it's actually much better than that because most of what we're lifting that high right now is fuel.
So, what? Maybe a hundred-fold decrease in Earth-to-LEO cost? Just hop in a suborbital ship that wanders up 100 miles, then hook onto the bottom of the ladder, and climb.
You avoid having to connect the beanstalk to the earth, you avoid weather, you make the whole thing a lot lighter (because a lot of the weight comes from having to support that bottom piece), and if you go high enough you can avoid space junk slicing the beanstalk to ribbons.
Yeah, the beanstalk will fall slowly... so mount an ion drive or hall thruster or solar sail on it so it can slowly boost itself higher and higher.
It's probably still unworkable without nanotubes, but hey! A hybrid approach? Someone should write a paper. *hint, hint* :)
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Date: 2007-09-15 04:44 am (UTC)So drop a tether from geostationary orbit to 100 miles above the surface of the Earth. Then start shipping stuff up there. You'd think our lifting capacity would jump by a factor of 40, but it's actually much better than that because most of what we're lifting that high right now is fuel.
So, what? Maybe a hundred-fold decrease in Earth-to-LEO cost? Just hop in a suborbital ship that wanders up 100 miles, then hook onto the bottom of the ladder, and climb.
You avoid having to connect the beanstalk to the earth, you avoid weather, you make the whole thing a lot lighter (because a lot of the weight comes from having to support that bottom piece), and if you go high enough you can avoid space junk slicing the beanstalk to ribbons.
Yeah, the beanstalk will fall slowly... so mount an ion drive or hall thruster or solar sail on it so it can slowly boost itself higher and higher.
It's probably still unworkable without nanotubes, but hey! A hybrid approach? Someone should write a paper. *hint, hint* :)