----- Original Message -----
From: "Damien Broderick" <d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au>
To: <extropians@extropy.com>
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2000 2:51 PM
Subject: Re: Orbital Towers.
> At 08:26 PM 2/03/00 -0800, Spike wrote:
>
> >The biggest
> >real world difficulty of a skyhook is one I seldom see mentioned:
> >that planes and satellites would hit it.
>
> You can twang it. Then time yr sats right. (Hairy, with thousands of the
> bastards.)
>
> >Furthermore, it isnt a free
> >ride at all. When a payload is lifted, the center of mass of the
> >cable is lowered, so unless you figure out a way to lift the CM
> >back to geo the entire structure starts to drift east.
>
> Doesn't it drift back when the elevator goes down again? (Assuming
> processed stuff in going down as well as raw materials and tools going
up.)
> And could this be part of the twang?
>
> Damien
I would assume you'd build it to be stable with X amount of counterweight.
Like a chairlift, with dead going up and down constantly.
Then, when you want to send something real up or down, just remove the same
amount of counterwieght, and add your payload. No problems.
Emlyn
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