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PM_Me_The_Surprise t1_ixykbvr wrote

Step 1: Produce 200 miles of a material that has the tensile strength to handle the load of 60 miles of weight and can also handle the wildly fluctuating temperature of space.

Step 2: Get it up there and in synchronous orbit.

Step 3: Unroll it

Step 4: Attach it to earth?

Yeah, this is really starting to sound like sci-fi to me. Especially that pesky step 1.

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Gmn8piTmn t1_ixyqcit wrote

200 miles? No. At 200 miles you need to orbit at 25mach. Try 35.000 km

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PM_Me_The_Surprise t1_ixzem2q wrote

I was thinking this was more to do with getting things to the ISS or other low orbit needs, but I get what you're saying. That's a long fucking cable.

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Gmn8piTmn t1_ixzh2dx wrote

It is but you can’t anchor one end of the cable at 250 miles because it will have to be moving compared to the ground at 28.000km/h (17.000+ mph) which means that you’d have a cable whipping around the earth at that speed. I mean the destruction would be monumental haha.

What you do is you anchor the cable at a geosynchronous orbit so it will be still compared to the earths surface at 35.000km away.

That’s a damn long cable lol.

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axionic t1_ixyu4gu wrote

It would have to be a thing where it's about ISS height and you'd need a space plane traveling at Mach 15 to catch up with the ladder.

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