Hacker News Reader

Comment by potiuper | Hacker News Reader

The water might be able to recycled instead of blasting it into space as rocket fuel if a [para-aramid or ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene fibre] lunar orbital elevator could be prioritized before the lunar cell phone network. #lunarproblems

View on HN

Orbital elevators are still science fiction at this point. There is no known material that can withstand the tensions required. Scientists think maybe carbon nanotube cables would be strong enough, but even then, good luck making a carbon nanotube cable that long.

That's the case for Earth. This would be on Luna, with about 1/6th of the gravity on Earth.

And no wind! But the atmopshere is the reason to build the thing in the first place.

You also can't build one on the Moon because you'd need to reach its "lunastationary" orbit, a point which is more influenced by Earth's gravity than the Moon's.

parent is speaking of a lunar orbital elevator. Given the gravity involved I doubt material would be the issue. Though there may be problems other then strength of the material - I think the moon's gravitational field is very irregular for example.

This, lunar elevators are well within existing technological capabilities. There have been calls to build a lunar elevator simply to get some practical experiencing in building an elevator.

Wouldn't a lunar elevator station need to be in a much higher orbit ("selenosynchronous"? is that a word) than an Earth-orbit geosynchronous elevator station due to the ca. 1/28th slower rotation rate?

This also makes me think of that XKCD whatif article:

https://what-if.xkcd.com/157/

The lack of regulation on the moon suggests that a cell phone network is more imminently useful relative to cost, compared to the usefulness to cost ratio of an orbital elevator.

Ah, but the lunar orbital elevator can also act as a cell tower that covers nearly half the lunar surface

Reply on news.ycombinator.com