Partial Space Elevator

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Don't tether the Earth-facing end of space elevator: let it hang in the atmosphere, and arrive to it with less fuel.

YAML 想法

The idea of space elevator is not new at all, but the consideration of not tethering one of its ends to Earth has not been widely discussed.

It's not new though: a paper of 2014 from Acta Astronautica has analyzed the idea of a space elevator with both of its ends hanging in space, and found that it might cut the costs of space travel to high orbit by 40 percent.

I think it's worth putting this idea down here, so that relevant projects could be linked to it in the future.

Mindey,


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两点:

  1. 我们现在就可以开始推出最轻的部分 - 尖端!系绳所需的强度在其整个长度上并不相同 - 为了最大限度地减轻重量,它必须向地球末端逐渐变细,并且尖端非常轻。因此,让我们在轨道上找到一颗合适的对地静止卫星,并为其带上一些胶带(系绳)。

  2. 已经在轨道上的太空垃圾非常适合配重结构。将垃圾送入地球静止轨道所需的燃料比将其从地球表面升起所需的燃料要少得多。

Two points:

  1. We can start rolling out the lightest part of it - the tip - right now! The strength required by the tether is not the same across its length - to minimize weight, it has to be tapering off towards the Earth's end, with very light tip. So, let's find a suitable geostationary sattelite in orbit already, and bring some tape (tether) to it.

  2. Space junk that's already in orbit, is great for the counterweight construction. It requires much less fuel to lift the junk into the geostationary orbit, than to lift it up from Earth surface.