The 'daydreamers' thread...post your craziest designs and concepts here

[Twodeaddogs]

there was one proposal to fly a steel cable up to space, held up there by a low earth orbit station and then have supplies sent up along the cable by a kind of high speed cable car. the snag was that the cable would be blown allover the place by the earth's weather so it didnt work.

 

[xwing]

A colossal elevator to space could be going up sooner than you ever imagined

Researchers are racing to make this science-fiction idea a reality.

www.nbcnews.com

a ton out there googling - elevator to space

even moon stuff now - space elevator to the moon

& mars..

 

[Tiger Tim]

there was one proposal to fly a steel cable up to space, held up there by a low earth orbit station and then have supplies sent up along the cable by a kind of high speed cable car.

Been a while since I thought too hard about space stuff but orbital velocities being what they are wouldn’t the top end of the space elevator need to be just a little above geostationary orbit? The “above” I think would be necessary to account for the weight of the cable.

Or do I have that backwards?

 

[cluttonfred]

Close...the center of mass needs to a little above geostationary orbit, so the counterweight at the end of the cable would actually have to be far beyond that height. See Space elevator - Wikipedia

 

[rbarnes]

Still dreaming on this... if you did a single boom under the rear prop you should be able maintain the original Zenith control layout and be able to set it up as a trike or a tail dragger ... hmmm