Am 21.09.2016 um 23:37 schrieb Peter Fairbrother:
On 21/09/16 20:49, Derek Clarke wrote:The elevator drive is a kind "servo" machine.
Your country was settled with the aid of multi-month transit times. The
whole point of a beanstalk is to reduce the energy cost to orbit, and a
longer transit seems a good tradeoff to me.
I don't think longer transit times matter directly, but overall annual
capacity does. The longer the transit time, the more cargo needs to be
hanging on the wire at once, for a certain annual capacity - and the
amount of mass which the wire can handle is limited.
Something which has often puzzled me - cargo starts on the ground, with
a velocity of around 250 m/s, then is released in GEO with a velocity of
3 km's. Where does the extra momentum come from?
If it's from slowing the Earth (should Greenpeace be worried?), then
presumably the wire is slightly slanted.