Hey, that's a great description. So based off that information, lets consider the following:
- The earth has a radius of 6375 km.
- The elevator counterweight will be swinging at about 100,000 km above the surface of the earth
(http://science.howstuffworks.com/space-elevator1. htm)
Although the angular of the counterweight would be the same as the base station, the linear velocity of the counterweight would be around (100,000 + 6375)/6375) = 16.7 times faster than the base station.
The linear velocity of the earth at the equator is: 1674 km/h
So the counterweight would need to be accelerated to 27955.8 km/h (an additional 26,282 km/hour from the starting velocity at the base station)
The next step would be to calculate how many pounds of rocket fuel it would take to accelerate a 1kg of mass to 27955 km/hr. Otherwise the counterweight will continue to get more and more crooked as mass is elevated up the cable.
I'm certain I'm missing something here, but if a large mass is going to be moving upwards towards a big counterweight, wouldn't there be a massive coriolis effect from accelerating the payload perpendicular to the rotation of the earth? It would seem we there would need to be a load of rocket fuel delivered to the counterweight every-so-often to counter the rotational deceleration from such an effect. Is that what they're planning to do or am I just crazy?
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Hey, that's a great description. So based off that information, lets consider the following: - The earth has a radius of 6375 km. - The elevator counterweight will be swinging at about 100,000 km above the surface of the earth (http://science.howstuffworks.com/space-elevator1. htm)
Although the angular of the counterweight would be the same as the base station, the linear velocity of the counterweight would be around (100,000 + 6375)/6375) = 16.7 times faster than the base station.
The linear velocity of the earth at the equator is: 1674 km/h
So the counterweight would need to be accelerated to 27955.8 km/h (an additional 26,282 km/hour from the starting velocity at the base station)
The next step would be to calculate how many pounds of rocket fuel it would take to accelerate a 1kg of mass to 27955 km/hr. Otherwise the counterweight will continue to get more and more crooked as mass is elevated up the cable.
I'm certain I'm missing something here, but if a large mass is going to be moving upwards towards a big counterweight, wouldn't there be a massive coriolis effect from accelerating the payload perpendicular to the rotation of the earth? It would seem we there would need to be a load of rocket fuel delivered to the counterweight every-so-often to counter the rotational deceleration from such an effect. Is that what they're planning to do or am I just crazy?