What is keeping us from anchoring a cable to Earth’s surface and tethering a platform in space?
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The concept you’re describing is called a space elevator, and the good news is that it doesn’t break any laws of physics, so all the challenges are engineering. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s not.
– the cable. It needs to be light and crazy strong. There have been some promising developments here, but we’re still a long way away from anything practical.
– a counterweight. If we have a cable up to a space station, the cable actually needs to go further and end up tethered to a big counterweight. So we would probably need to capture a small asteroid or something heavy and human-made.
– add concerns about space debris and terrorism. Fun fact, if broken, the cable would fall and encircle the earth two and a half times
The launch platform would probably be at the equator and on the ocean.
Getting stuff into space is the hardest and most expensive part of the process. A space elevator would be a huge achievement in allowing us to get materials up there at a fraction of the cost.
So, bottom line, this is doable, but we’re still a good way away from it moving from science fiction to reality. This is a huge, difficult, expensive project with technology that has yet to be invented but I’m very optimistic that we could see something in my lifetime.
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