A 'sky ladder' to Mars

[dikowt dowg]

China wants to up the ante on the space race with a 'sky ladder' to Mars that can beam humans and cargo up in a capsule

The "sky ladder" involves a capsule guided by a series of carbon nanotubes, leapfrogging from one space station to another before landing on the moon.

www.yahoo.com

Xinhua News posted a video earlier this year that modeled how the system could potentially function for journeys to the moon. In the video, a capsule is seen being propelled from Earth to a Chinese space station, then leapfrogging its way to another space station before reaching a lunar landing pad.

 

[dikowt dowg]

 

[williewilliejuan]

Don’t tell @Bayou Tiger . This story has all of his least favorite things: space exploration and ladders

 

[DraftNerd]

Good luck launching a spool of cable….or maybe more accurately you anchor the spool here and attach it to the rocket. That won’t create much drag or anything.

Conceptually it’s super interesting. But totally not without engineering challenges.

 

[DraftNerd]

I happen to know a literal rocket scientist quite well and posed this to him. A few things.

* The station for the leg up from earth would have to be in geosynchronous orbit….roughly 20,000 miles up. That’s a lot of nanotube cable to drag up. Not simple.

* For this to work right to the moon the station there would have to have some kind of alignment….but there isn’t simply geosynchronous orbit around the moon as the moons spin is effected by earths gravity.

* For Mars you could put two stations in a geosynchronous setting. But, the distance from Earth to Mars varies greatly over time. Plus, both planets can be on opposite sides of the sun at times. I don’t think the nanotube line holds up well to crossing close or through the sun.

It’s all a bit preposterous. Maybe they find a solution for getting the line up from earth, as well as the issue with aligning with a moon that is constantly moving around us…..but Mars is a silly thing to throw out.

They’ve had some successes recently….their hubris is getting to them.

 

[MarkOU]

Stupid as hell.

Mars solar conjunction happens every two years. The chicoms might as well announce they're building teleportation like in the movie Doom.