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Fans of sci-fi and fringe tech may already be familiar with the idea of the "space elevator," which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like — and totally impossible with today's technology. But a pair of scientists think they've found an alternative: a Moon elevator. And it's slightly less insane... technically.
The idea of the space elevator, first explored in detail by Arthur C. Clarke in his novel "The Fountains of Paradise," is essentially a tower so tall it reaches space. Instead of launching ships and materials from the surface of the Earth to orbit, you just put them in the elevator of this tower and when they reach the top, somewhere about 26,000 miles up in geosynchronous orbit, they're already beyond gravity's pull, for all intents and purposes.
It's a fun idea, but the simple fact is that this tower would need to be so strong to support its own weight, and that of the counterweight at the far end, that no known material or even reasonably hypothetical one will do it. Not by a long shot. So the space elevator has remained well on the "fiction" side of science fiction since its first proposal. Hasn't stopped people from patenting it, though.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/12/scientists-propose-spaceline-elevator-to-the-moon/
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday September 15 2019, @03:53PM
The only one that comes to mind for Earth is buckytubes...but you'd need really *long* buckytubes, and they couldn't carry much excess weight.
OTOH, on the Moon, Kevlar would be strong enough. I think it would work for Mars, too, though I'd need to check...but why bother when it won't be build this decade or next. (You need a lot of traffic to pay for the initial expense.)
There are lots of other skyhooks that, while they don't reduce the cost quite as much, are a lot easier to build, and don't have failure modes that are as extreme. My favorite is the pinwheel (rotating tethers with a heavy weight at the center). For that one you need to fly to the upper part of the stratosphere to catch your ride. And you'll need a (couple of) station-keeping engine(s)...probably an ion rocket (or so).
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