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Originally Posted by shiney
I would love to see what humanity could accomplish if we were free of the shackles of self-interested businessmen.
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I have always wondered about the feasibility of a space elevator / space cable. So it would essentially be anchored to a space station/etc? Would it be a case of the anchor has to have more mass than the cable, to prevent it from simply falling to the earth?
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Well, the right length of cable properly weighted would balance perfectly between Earth's gravity and centrifugal force, so there's no need for a specific anchor to keep it in place. You'd set up a station at the zero G point to get somewhere for the spaceships to fall into space from, but the cable just sits there, much like a road does.
Not particularly important, but I find that a wonderfully poetic image. Until you have to start correcting the elevator's position when it drifts for one reason or another, anyway.