brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (11/18/84)
I thought we went through all this before. You can't put up a space tower unless you knock every single natural and man-made satellite out of orbit, or put them all into orbits that precess exactly a rational fraction of the circle every orbit. Otherwise EVERY satellite will eventually hit the beanstalk, destroying it, since these cables are strong up and down but can't take stress from the side. Some say the value of the tower would be worth knocking out every satellite. That's hard to say. And you can't just destroy them, you have to take them out of orbit. And you have to get all the natural rocks all the way up to almost geosync distance. And of course there are the military problems. Such a tower would be trivially easy for the enemy to knock down. Even star wars weapons mounted at the top could not save it. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473