wrote:
From: John Smith on Aug 9, 10:53 am

Priorities need to be examined here...

For an alternate way to reach terrestrial orbit, one possibility
is shown in the August 2005 issue of the IEEE SPECTRUM. It is the
cover story. In the same issue (beginning page 12) is a story
where Europe is joining Russia in building the "next" space shuttle.

SPECTRUM is viewable on the IEEE website, www.ieee.org.

From that site:

QUOTE

We need something better, and that something is a space elevator-a
superstrong, lightweight cable stretching 100 000 kilometers from
Earth's surface to a counterweight in space.

UNQUOTE

I kept looking for the link to Todd's "Inventions" page but
couldn't find it.

Maybe we could anchor this "cable" at the center of one of Todd's
cryogenically cooled storage capacitors, using the resulting explosion
to force the "elevator" into orbit...?!?!

In all seriousness...I wonder if the resulting oscillations in the
cable from it hitting an object in space (or something hitting it...)
will be adequately dampened by the time it get's to the cable's
antipode...?!?!

Now we don't only have to worry about an aquatic earthquate
casuing a tsunami, we have to worry about The Cable falling.

And for the "counterweight" to remain in one place relative to
Earth's surface, it would have to be of considerable mass, sped-up to
phenominal speeds in order to reach station-keeping over the desired
target.

Now the eggheads at IEEE suggest we can orbit a counterweight to
support a 100K Km cable capable of supporting trans-orbital flight
loads...?!?!

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Steve, K4YZ