"David Spain" wrote in message ...

The 'nail' in the Space Elevator coffin might not have actually ANYTHING to
do with the technical feasibility of building one, but that the environment
that it would operate within has become too hostile!

Scott Kozel posted about the hazards of aircraft hitting the cable, but a
far more likely scenario will be a member of a LEO satellite constellation,
such as Starlink or one of it many competitors that may be launched.

Having an entire constellation of thousands of low Earth orbiting
satellites may very well present too much of a challenge to have one stable
ribbon cable extending vertically across the orbital planes of these
constellations at the Earth's Equator. The orbital pathways of Starlink
look far more like a weave than a circle. Requiring frequent and
potentially costly moves of an Earth-side anchor even if it were designed
to be mobile from the get go. A further design complication. This may
render the entire concept moot. Like setting up a lemonade stand in the
middle of an eight lane superhighway!

I've seen suggestions that issues like this be solved in part by imparting a
"wave" in the cable to move it around as needed.

Considering our extremely limited experience with tethers and the failures
and problems, I suspect this is far from trivial.


So if this ever happens, maybe Moon or Mars will be the first, even if
technically doable on Earth!


There's a couple of other issues that need to be addressed:

Monoatomic Oxygen - Any materials will need to take this into account.

Voltage differentials between orbits.

Dave

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