Space elevator in 15-30 years? We need to research interplanetary ships.

[Alex]

No, its not the Enterprise. But it might be its precursor. Because of the space elevator's ability to take vast amounts of material into space, we should be looking at creating a large vehicle for long term space travel: even space residency in orbit around other planets.

There are factors of sustainability:

Ecosystem(biosphere)
Reuse of Materials
Health: Physical and Psychological

We need to know how to make a sustainable biosphere that can travel a distance and "park" in orbit for a long time. It has to be something that won't be too destructive to the psyche. We need artificial gravity. A ring might suffice.

I believe that this might be the first step in colonizing other planets. You could essentially move one of these ecosystem ships to Mars, drop down another elevator as one would on earth, and then you have mission control right in Mars orbit. Sending shipment containers to Mars would then be cheap. One elevator ride out of earth, an solar powered ion/plasma spacecraft carries materials to Mars, one elevator ride down onto mars after the trip.

Cheap, sustainable travel to Mars. Then, we can ship the beginnings of industry to Mars. After that, we can utilize what is already on Mars rather than sending more stuff from here on Earth.
 
Because of the space elevator, ideas like these aren't so far off. The space elevator is the beggining of our exodus away from earth because it can haul up enough material to make life sustainable outside of earth.

[neil]

Hi Alex: Welcome to liftport. I agree. Some of that research should be done now. Robust space elevators will be a big help in colonizing our solar system. Research is also needed in how to make the space elevator robust with low maintenance costs.
We can now put a several mile long rotovator, some think bolo is a better name, in LEO = low Earth orbit with an Edwards type climber attached. Lasers on Earth could propel the climber to study how the climber movements produce and can reduce transients in the tether. Also I suspect the climber design is far from finalized. The climber needs to demonstrate laying thread to strengthen the bolo and also to repair damage to the tether. The tether could be Kevlar with a thin coat of not very useful CNT (which is slippery like Teflon) to be sure the roller traction is adequate. It is also uncertain how much laser energy can be sent to the climber without climber damage and tether damage when the laser beam misses the climber energy receivers.  Neil

[ken gettys]

If it takes 22000 miles to keep a space elevator station in GEO orbit above the earth,

1) What distance would it take to keep a space elevator station in orbit above the moon?

2) Mars?

3) What would be the closest distance between the Earth's space elevator station and the Moon's space elevator station?

4) How frequently would this minimum distance between the Earth's space elevator station and the Moon's occur?

[neil]

Hi Ken: A space elevator needs a counter weight beyond 22,000 miles altitude. Usual thinking is a few thousand tons at about 60,000 miles altitude. 100,000 miles at less weight may be best, so that could be the Earth station. The Moon's ribbon can be even longer = 136,000 miles with the moon station at the end. The moon ribbon would pass though L1 (approximately) and point toward Earth.
Perhaps once per decade, one of the stations would need to be propelled from it's usual orbit to avoid a crash or tangles ribbons. At that time travel distance would perhaps be less than 1000 miles. The other 3800 (about) close encounters would be 1000 miles to about 40,000 miles. This because th Moon's orbit is not exactly circular and the plane of the Moon's orbit is tilted up to about 28 degrees with respect to the plane of the orbit for Earth station. The speed difference is about 1200 miles per hour so some delta v and precise timing would be necessary to transfer from one station to the other. This may be impractical as both stations would need to be light weight, and a missed landing would put the payload in solar orbit.   Neil

[Frank]

Ken,

A Mars SE could be built with Kevlar or other similar materials but Phobos presents a problem since it is in an orbit lower than Mars GEO so will be in the way of the SE a lot.  Using Phobos as a base and extending a tethered craft to Mars has been discussed as a better alternative to a Mars SE.

[Alex]

Phobos is so tiny that a space elevator could be built from the ground up. The gravity on the surface varies 450% when factoring in Mars' pull. Its dimensions are (27)(22)(18) km, so it is comparable to the size of a few Himalayan mountains smashed together into one.