[extropy-chat] Space elevator numbers III

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, Feb 14, 2007 at 02:19:29PM -0500, Keith Henson wrote:

> Space debris and Van Allen belt radiation need to be considered in the 
> context of a space elevator.

What do you think about the proposed lunar elevator, made from
commercial aramide? Much less technically demanding, obviously,
both for the material and operation environment (no atmosphere,
no orbiting debris, no radiation belts, rather boring statics).
Unfortunately it would be at the lunar equator, and thus
rather far away from the rim of the Peary crater, which is
thought (not completely known at this time) to be permanently
illuminated.

It is not obvious, what would be easier for launches of lunar
material or moon-side fabbed gadgets, linear motors, or a tether.
Operating PV-driven capacitor banks in dusty UHV at -50 C to fire
solenoids in a sequence (spark gap? semiconductors?) is not
a very familiar design space.

I'm also completely clueless whether something just barely exceeding
lunar escape velocity can be captured by Earth, and how elliptic
the resulting orbit would be without further aerobraking or other
maneuvres (solar sail, ion drive, simple chemical rocket).
 
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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