I *think* the plan is to have centripital force acting as the counter to the downward force. You know the whole ball on the end of a spinning string analogy. It would be dependent on mass of the "ball" and angular velocity (speed of rotation).
Just throwing this out there and i guess it sells the elevator idea short but here it goes.
Perhaps the space elevator is more like a "fishing line" dropped from space that does not tie to the ground and only comes into the atmosphere as far as is needed for it to be reached by a lighter than air vehicle. This vehicle would ascend to the bottom of the line (which i imagine would be a moving target) and at that point attach a load to the line that can either self propel up the line or be drawn in.
Im also guessing it would require a lighter than air vehicle that is much larger than anything we have in use currently to move enough payload to be useful. And of course we should fill it with hydrogen so if anything goes wrong it makes a great highlight reel.
But i see the advantages of this to be mainly avoiding natural disasters especially those of the "every 100 years" order of magnitude.
for reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_altitude_balloon
Slashdot Mirror
I *think* the plan is to have centripital force acting as the counter to the downward force. You know the whole ball on the end of a spinning string analogy. It would be dependent on mass of the "ball" and angular velocity (speed of rotation).
Just throwing this out there and i guess it sells the elevator idea short but here it goes. Perhaps the space elevator is more like a "fishing line" dropped from space that does not tie to the ground and only comes into the atmosphere as far as is needed for it to be reached by a lighter than air vehicle. This vehicle would ascend to the bottom of the line (which i imagine would be a moving target) and at that point attach a load to the line that can either self propel up the line or be drawn in. Im also guessing it would require a lighter than air vehicle that is much larger than anything we have in use currently to move enough payload to be useful. And of course we should fill it with hydrogen so if anything goes wrong it makes a great highlight reel. But i see the advantages of this to be mainly avoiding natural disasters especially those of the "every 100 years" order of magnitude. for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_altitude_balloon