Millions of meters of cable leading to the planet
Millions of meters of cable leading to the planet
Publish Time:
2025-03-02
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Entering space is no easy feat. Currently, it's like climbing a mountain on a unicycle while carrying a backpack full of explosives. Aside from being incredibly slowrains.
Entering space is no easy feat. Currently, it's like climbing a mountain on a unicycle while carrying a backpack full of explosives. Aside from being incredibly slow, it also limits the amount of cargo you can carry, and death is a real possibility. Rockets need to reach at least 40,000 kilometers per hour to escape Earth's gravity. To achieve this speed, the vast majority of a rocket's volume is dedicated to fuel storage, leaving only a small top section for cargo. This is problematic for interplanetary travel because if you want to return alive, you need a significant amount of heavy equipment. So, is it possible to enter space with less fuel and more cargo? On Earth, we use infrastructure to solve transportation problems – roads for vehicles, ports for ships, and railways for trains.
Travel between locations becomes simple. We can apply the same strategy to space travel. Space infrastructure will make entering Earth's orbit and traveling to the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies easier and cheaper. So, what is space infrastructure? Unlike the space elevators in science fiction, there's a simple and promising technology that doesn't rely on new theories, super materials, or massive investments, and it has already proven effective in orbit. A cable and a counterweight form what's called a tether. This simple concept is surprisingly effective. What if we deploy hundreds or thousands of kilometers of tethers into space, using them as ladders for spacecraft and accelerating them by climbing to higher altitudes? This concept is called a space tether, and it works better when rotating. The counterweight balances the cable during rotation.
It keeps it centered. A rotating tether reduces the relative speed of its end to the ground at its perigee and accelerates like a slingshot as it reaches its apogee. This means the payload can gain energy from the tether and receive a super boost upon release, reaching almost twice the tether's rotational speed. Special fibers capable of withstanding the extreme conditions of a space tether already exist. We can use additional fibers to create a protective net to defend against meteoroids and spacecraft debris. Since the space tether will visit the same location multiple times a day, reusable small spacecraft can dock with it. Of course, it's not as simple as it sounds. At perigee, the end of the tether will streak through Earth's atmosphere at 12,000 kilometers per hour. Because of the atmosphere, we cannot lower the space tether too much.
Keywords:
Flammable,Explosive
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