Re: Orbital Towers.

From: Zero Powers (zero_powers@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Feb 28 2000 - 23:18:21 MST


>From: Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net>
>
>EvMick@aol.com wrote:
>
> > I read the article in analog on SkyHooks and PinWheels back in the
> > eighties........Just for communication functions.....not to mention
>other
> > properties of low
> > earth orbit. altitude...
>
>Fellow Arthur Clarke fans, help me out here. Clarke wrote a book
>with a skyhook, I *think* it was Songs of Distant Earth, where they
>use a skyhook to raise blocks of ice to a synchronous satellite to use
>as a shield from particles during interstellar travel. Ive read all of
>Clarkes books, but its been years ago, so my memory is dim.
>
>In that book, Clarke has the cable and all being lifted to the
>spacecraft, which is surely a mistake. Its about the only clear
>example in which humble little spike will claim that the master
>did not do his homework. Clarke usually works out the
>necessary orbit mechanics in his hard sci-fi. Lifting the entire
>cable each time is surely incorrect. spike

H. Morevec deals with the problem in _Robot_ by constructing the cable in
two sections. One being lowered from orbit, the other built up from the
Earth's surface to join in the middle. I'm not a scientist but that method
seems to make sense to me.

-Zero

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