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Comment by curiousgal | Hacker News Reader

How much space would they get on the ISS either ways? It'd be a good practice.

The end of this cable would be 36000km up, compared to the ISS's 400km. The first space elevator would primarily be used to shift stuff, rather than people at first - there's no point having convenient transit for people if they've got nowhere to go at the other end.

That's where the end of the cable is, but there's no rule that that's where anyone has to get off the elevator.

Interesting thought. Note that getting off 300 km up would not put you in orbit; you would lack the orbital velocity required for that. So if you get off there you'd have to burn around 8 km/s of delta-v, which is quite a bit of fuel to haul up.

For efficiency you'd want to go higher. There'd be a point much higher than 300 km where detethering would put you into a highly elliptical orbit where the periapsis is 300 km. Then you'd just have to burn retrograde to circularize. Off hand I'm not sure what the math for that would be but it should be pretty simple algebra.

Actually the cable will extend well beoynd that point. 36Mm is the altitide where the elevator would be travelig at orbital speed. Jump out any lower and you will drop back to earth. Unless you jump very hard (using rockets or something).

They’re not going to ISS, they’re going somewhere in geosynchronous orbit.

But it's still an apt comparison. People live for long periods on the ISS, and the amount of space isn't likely to get any bigger during their mission.

There is - and I don't mean to pun - plenty of space in space. Space stations could be quite roomy.

They'll be roomy just as soon as it isn't exorbitantly expensive to transport material to space. So, possibly sometime after this elevator is operational...

The slightly counter intuitive point is that you only have to transport wall material.

An inflatable "house" is conceptually completely possible.

Airplanes have to be small because of air resistance. Space stations have no such constraints.

Inflatable, sure, but not a balloon. Micrometeors/space junk are a threat, and more so for bigger inflated objects.

Yeah, the walls need to be strong enough. Whatever that means long term.

The mathematical argument of 2D vs 3D still holds.

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