Comment on If a Space Elevator became a reality, wouldn't the cable act as a kind of wick for all of the unfiltered radiation from outside our atmosphere?

• UnspecificGravity@piefed.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  How do you anchor the end in space so that you don’t just retract the cable every time you try to use it?

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  • mech@feddit.org ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That’s the neat thing about geostationary orbit. If the station at the upper end has enough mass, its own centrifugal force keeps it anchored in its orbit.

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    • MotoAsh@piefed.social ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It’s passed geostationary orbit. Geostationary orbit is balanced, but it needs centrifugal force pulling out. So, you need to be going faster than the orbit wants, hence, further out.

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    • UnspecificGravity@piefed.social ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Except that you would drag it out of geostationary orbit every time you used it? Like no matter how heavy it is your still moving it closer every time you pull on the cable. You would need to constantly thrust equivalent to the mass of the cable and whatever the cable is pulling. At that point aren’t you still basically just launching shit?

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      • mech@feddit.org ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Think of earth as a rotating bowling ball, with a string attached, and a tennis ball attached to the other end of the string. The craft you launch is an ant walking along the string.
        Its legs push against the string, but that’s nothing compared to the rotation of the bowling ball that keeps the string tight.
        Technically, the ant’s climbing will slow down the rotation of the bowling ball over time, but this won’t have a noticeable effect for many millennia.

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      • bufalo1973@piefed.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        The way a normal elevator works is one way to lessen the problem: the port on the top is used to launch cargo AND to receive it, so when you make the outgoing cargo rise you use the incoming cargo as the balance. 1 ton goes up, 1 ton goes down.

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  • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    If you figure that out give NASA a call, they’d be real interested.

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