5 m/s up? That's 200days in the lift! Go faster with 1000:1 gearbox!

[Alistair Smith]

These climbers I've seen so far are a great step forwards, but really you want to be getting up to space in no time flat. You want gearboxes with ratios of 1000:1 so you can keep accelerating up. The climbers seem to have limited RPM on their wheels, they need to be capable of x0,000 rpm. that way you could zoom up at hundreds of m/s! If you are building a mechanical climber, you need some well oiled bearings, probably magnetic (no resistance) and you'll want a lot of volts going across that space ribbon you can self power the motors with.

[A_M_Swallow]

The climbers are going vertically nor horizontally, so they are having to fight gravity every inch of the way.  They are speed limited by the power available and the maximum force they can impose on the cable.

edit: spelling

[neil]

I agree gravity until you reach GEO altitude = 23,000 kilometers. 1000:1 gear boxes have large losses = low efficiency, but the rollers can likely turn as fast as the ribbon can tolerate without a gearbox. CNT is slippery like Teflon, so the rollers need to pinch the ribbon with high pressure to make slippage very unlikely. High speed slippage will heat the ribbon rapidly, perhaps destructively.  Neil

[Mladen Milinković]

Thats if we use pinch ribbons as a way of moving climber,i think there is maybe better solutions then pinch ribbon(less power hungry ,more efficient,eliminating speed heating issues)