>>239901128>>239900655>>239899558The typical/true space elevator design is not actually good for Earth.
As feasibility goes
- we only know one material who have just barely the tensile strength if built with absolute purity.
- you'd need to build the typical magnetic train so it doesn't take a week to travel (at best)
- you better magnet away the Van Allen belt.
- it's really, really, really long. Go on and maintain 45k of cables & equipments.
And it's not that practical.
- you cannot have satellite on lower orbit unless it constantly dodge the elevator
- the elevator only start at roughly one spot, even if different design are possible, else you need a new one
- you cannot build one until you already have access to space that make it unprofitable
What would be more useful would be orbital ring(s).
- they ask for less resources (significantly shorter)
- they can take passenger from everywhere below the orbit
- in theory you can have more than one on different orbit
- they have an inactive state where they just orbit.
- you can sacrifice that and link it (them) to a launch loops.
Space elevator would still become very useful on lower gravity moon.
