The moon rotates too slowly (about once every 30 days), you don’t want a space elevator for the moon, the tether would have to be ridiculously long.
But there’s no atmosphere, so you have another good option: a linear accelerator, or mass driver. Basically you make a very long, very straight rail and use electromagnetism to accelerate a craft right up to orbital velocity. The only complicated part is constructing 50 km of rail, but I mean, it’s more time consuming than complicated. This is actually way more feasible than a space elevator.
Wut? Impracticality aside, could they build such a “ridiculously long tether”? What’s they make it of? Musk farts? Can’t wait for him to bankrupt the u.s. and build a space elevator that breaks and shatters, ruining astronomy and prospects of drone explorations of Mars
Uh, well truth be told, you could probably use steel cable or carbon fiber for a lunar space elevator cable, but you would need some really insane quantities… Like I said, I wouldn’t recommend it, just go the mass driver route instead.
But why are you even bringing up Musk? Nobody is suggesting involving him…
The moon rotates too slowly (about once every 30 days), you don’t want a space elevator for the moon, the tether would have to be ridiculously long.
But there’s no atmosphere, so you have another good option: a linear accelerator, or mass driver. Basically you make a very long, very straight rail and use electromagnetism to accelerate a craft right up to orbital velocity. The only complicated part is constructing 50 km of rail, but I mean, it’s more time consuming than complicated. This is actually way more feasible than a space elevator.
Wut? Impracticality aside, could they build such a “ridiculously long tether”? What’s they make it of? Musk farts? Can’t wait for him to bankrupt the u.s. and build a space elevator that breaks and shatters, ruining astronomy and prospects of drone explorations of Mars
Uh, well truth be told, you could probably use steel cable or carbon fiber for a lunar space elevator cable, but you would need some really insane quantities… Like I said, I wouldn’t recommend it, just go the mass driver route instead.
But why are you even bringing up Musk? Nobody is suggesting involving him…