Ok, I had this weird idea about getting things into space without having to launch them...hazardous products..things that aren't safe to put into a large, flying, potentially explosive vehicle....

I know it won't work, but I want to know more about WHY it won't work.

The idea would be to attach a bunch of ropes to a space shuttle and launch it to the space station. Then we could attach the rope to a net or what ever and "pull up" the load.

Now...so far I've figured that there is no way to attach the rope to a shuttle externally because the jets will incinerate the rope

and I think that it would probably be difficult to make a rope a few miles long that would be strong enough to support ANY weight...

But I'm sure there are other reasons why this wouldn't work? Can anyone discuss them with me?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,

This idea, or a variant of it, has been quite well discussed in the SF and Space community. Probably the most interesting discussion is Arthur C Clarke's novel "Fountains of Paradise". The idea is that you pit a satellite into geostationary orbit, then lower a rope down to the earth. In order to keep the satellite "in ballance", you have to send out another weight in the opposite direction. However, once your rope reaches the earth's surface, you can go up and down the rope like an elevator at an energy cost less than a millionth of that of the Space shuttle (the figure I dimly recall is an energy cost of $27 to lift an avertag human to orbit). If you want to throw something away, you simply winch it out to the end of the far arm and let it go - it will never come back to earth (or put a small rocket to give it the last bit of energy to escape earth orbit completely).

The main problem is that the streength of the rope, just to hold up 25,000 miles of its own weight, has to be about 10 times that of the strongest material yet known to man. BBut only 10 times - there is hope yet.

actually that method of launching has been researched, and is something that might be considered in the future.

The string would have to weight almost nothing, and have great strength,
and it would be attached to an anchor sattellite in a synchronous orbit with the earth (so that the sattelite stayed above the same spot on the ground.)

check out this site:Space Elevator

there are a bunch of other links on that site discussing alternative methods to the shuttle also.

Enjoy,
-Chris

Wonder what kind of stress load the winds would put on this rope, the effect of lightning, and a stray Cessna hitting it.

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Originally posted by gatman:
Wonder what kind of stress load the winds would put on this rope, the effect of lightning, and a stray Cessna hitting it.

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I hadn't thought about that. hmmmm