This is going to have to be done somehow.
35,000 km to cover with a continuous connection and perhaps the biggest engineering feat man will ever achieve apart from, perhaps exceeding light speed or time travel. Or discovering parallel universes and telepathy. Can we nullify the force of gravity?
The obstacles are not small, the objective is massive but the resources are there and every builder knows, if you put the technology, materials and skills together then the job gets done.
We need to build a road into space in a nutshell.
The biggest problem is the tether, the biggest advantage is the rapid advance of technologies and research facilities the world over.
So, do some research.
Key points are where to start from and where to. Where on Earth and to arrive at?
Then, how?
First, ok the concept:
The cable does NOT have to support it’s own weight over 35,000km. That is bollocks, and apparently the main stumbling block. Neither does the cable have to be one cable. It should be, eventually, but doesn’t have to be, initially.
It’s going to have to have a few (million) ideas and changes to make this work.
I humbly suggest this as my idea and if it’s been thought of before then I am glad I have caught up but why connect the wire to Earth. Connect it to a flying spaceport held up there by hot air balloons. Make it a semi-town. Space port 1.
Join 20 or 100 zeppelins together and make it work. Use solar and drone tech… It’s feasible.
This of course only gets one 20km from Earth, but you are now above the weather cloud, away from earthquake issues and that of building a land based foundation for the tether, and it’s mobile. Yes a marvel of engineering but why not?
Now for the other 34,980km.
Getting to 2641.9km beyond the Earth is the next milestone and this will need continuous power to stay in orbit. Can we wifi electrical energy to it?
At this distance from Earth gravity has only half the pull as it does on the surface…
It’s still a long tether but we no longer have to factor in ground tremors. Perhas shifts in atmosphere but also perhaps more manageable than tremors.
Our ability to airlift massive weights to that height (Space Port 1) are already mammoth and to land on and take an aircraft off from such a platform is not insurmountable.
This could be another massive staging ground. An asteroid engine powered around Earth perhaps. If this needed carbon fuels then how’s it to be gotten there? It’s a long pipeline but no longer than the cable laid across the Atlantic in 1854.
Remember each of these platforms would either need to be self sustaining with minimal maintainence or manned with engineers. Sounds like a train line but in this case weight is more of an issue.
We managed some cool bridges and tunnels.
For most of the rest I’m going to suggest pulse powered rocket engines fueled by solar panels. This would have to be more platforms of course. Perhaps massive ones in orbit.
Semi stop spots on the way with engines to drive them to keep up the weight they are carrying into orbit on the way. They would have to build up some speed and then be able to maintain it.
More than a few thousand engineering problems in there, but…
I think step one should be an international cooperation to build a Space Port 1. This could then be used for all launches into space.
We’re already doing mid air launches of rockets so perhaps this could be a first threshold.
Then Elon Musk and Richard Branson between them have to put up an x amount award for the first institution that comes up with a theory on how to get to milestone one.
A 2nd award of course needs to be offered for a theory that may get us to milestone infinity (energy ‘free’ space launches).
There is another massive factor in all this to. It’s humanitarian.
Getting to the moon saved humanity once upon a time. While the US and Russia were doing so much saber rattling to threaten all world peace 2 events affected things. The mission to land on the moon (which meant the US won that race) and the UN negioations. (Cuban missile crisis was not a joke). But world opinion at the time focused as much on the stars as it did internal politics.
For humanity to have this project on the go for a decade/s with it’s inevitable set backs and successes would be a pleasant distraction/avenue for man’s excess energy. The flat Earth society are making too much headway for my liking.
Ref: Newtons 1/2 g formula explained:
According to Newton the force of gravity falls off as the square the distance of the bodies that are attracted to each other.
Your original distance from the center of the Earth when you are on the surface is 6378.1 Km, if you wish to reduce the attraction to half what it is at the surface you must increase this distance to square root 2 times what it was hence you must be 2641.9 Km above the surface.
This attractive force will only be apparent as weight if you are supported on a solid surface if you were orbiting in a satellite you would have no sensation of weight.