In article ,
says...

On 2020-06-11 20:06, Alain Fournier wrote:

I forgot to mention also that once you are past geostationary altitude,
you no longer have to figure out how to power your cabin. The cabin is
pulled out by the centrifugal force.



An elevator goes up and down.

Say I am 20km below geostationary. so roughly 24 hour orbital period.
I run the engine and move up 20km in one hour.

If I release any brake against the tether, would that put me into an
elliptical orbit and I would be going up/down 20km each 12 hours?

If I hae a brake against the tether, does this mean that I will continue
to exert downward force on it for 12 hours while my orbit is circularized?

So you're saying stay attached to the cable, whose orbital period
doesn't change and doesn't match the orbit you're trying to go in.

Doesn't make any sense. Just release and use rocket propulsion to
circularize your orbit. Besides, you're going to need to get out of the
same plane as the elevator so you don't ever run into it. That means
rocket propulsion anyway.

And more generically speaking: would it be correct to state that force
to accelerate an object horizontally as it climbs the tether would come
from the "centripetal" force of the mass beyond geostationary? ( object
woudl wat to deform tether by moving westward, and counterceight high
above would pull up to straighten the tether, essentially pulling object
eastward).

Actually, it comes from actually slowing down the rotation of of the
earth (a very tiny almost imperceptible bit). From the Wikipedia
article:

The angular momentum is taken from the Earth's rotation. As
the climber ascends, it is initially moving slower than each
successive part of cable it is moving on to. This is the
Coriolis force: the climber "drags" (westward) on the cable,
as it climbs, and slightly decreases the Earth's rotation
speed. The opposite process would occur for descending
payloads: the cable is tilted eastward, thus slightly
increasing Earth's rotation speed.

So not only would such counterweight have to support the weight of the
tether itself, not only would it have to support the weight of an
upcoming elevator and its cargo, but would also be what accerelated that
elevator fhorizontally as it climbs?

I have no idea what you're trying to say here. Read this section:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator#Climbers

Jeff

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