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Space elevators



In the local paper Sunday there was a column by Kent Faulk of The
Birmingham News about space elevators. The article was based on a report,
"Space Elevators: An Advanced Earth-Space Infrastructure for the New
Millennium", by David Smitherman, technical manager the Advance Projects
Office of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

The plan is to attach a carbon nanotube cable between a 31-mile tall tower
built in international waters along the equator and an orbiting space
station 22,000 miles in space. According to the writer - "At the end of
the cable above the station would be a large counterbalance or space anchor
to keep the cable from falling back to Earth. The report suggests using an
asteroid that would be pushed into position as an anchor."

Electromagnetic cars (the size of railroad cars) would ride along the
cable on up to six tracks. A depiction of the space elevator is given at
http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/CHARTS/pdf/108-c.pdf.

Setting 'minor engineering details' aside, is there any problem with the
physics of attaching a cable between earth and some geosynchronous station
orbiting in space?

Rick Strickert
Austin, TX