The genius of Yuri Artsutanov and the trouble with rockets.

Comrade Yuri was a graduate student at the Leningrad Technical Institute in 1957 when one of his peers showed him a tiny whisker of material so strong that it could support a 400 kilometer length of itself in the Earth's gravity field. Realizing that a cable of such material hanging vertically would have a lesser pull at the skyward end, Yuri knew it could therefore be made even longer, and that made with the appropriate taper, it could be made longer still, he quickly worked out the relatively simple equations and published an article in the Sunday supplement section of Komsomolskaya Pravda in 1960.(The humble tovarisch regrets that his source does not provide the exact date.) The article described what has become known in English as a Skyhook.


Imagine a cable manufacturing factory in geosynchronous orbit. From it are extruded two lengths of cable, one Earthward, one Skyward. In time, both will have to be thickened, due to gravity and centrifugal force acting in opposite directions, but if adequate care is exercised, the forces will negate each other and the factory will remain stationary. Eventually the lower end would have its 36,000 kilometer length anchored to a convenient equatorial mountain, perhaps one of the Ecuadorian Andes. The upper end would have its 110,000 kilometer length anchored to a small asteroid, a counterweight which would keep the entire length under moderate tension to maintain its straightness. A system of "cable cars" could then be installed to raise and lower cargo and passengers. Since the most costly portion of any spaceflight is climbing out of the terrestrial gravity well, it should revolutionize the conquest of space.


So what has this to do with rockets? Well, a large portion of the expense involved in the current method of getting to orbit is the necessity of accelerating large volumes of propellant in the WRONG DIRECTION, that is, in the direction of the payload's desired travel. In fact, most chemical rockets carry twenty to sixty times their dry weight in fuel, which when burned produces raw heat. Tremendous quantities of heat must be dissipated when a spacecraft re-enters the Earth's atmosphere as well. Imagine instead if such energy could be harnessed as it falls to a lower level, much as water drives a hydroelectric turbine. Such energy could boost the next skyward bound cable car most efficiently!

So what to make the cable from? Current technology crytalline graphite fibers are already strong enough to make such devices on Mars and the Moon, and the theoretical maximum for such fibers is twenty times stronger than steel and four times less dense, making it eighty times more suitable than conventional steel.

If any planet absolutely cries out for this technology, it is MARS. Not only is there a mammoth extinct volcano right on the equator twenty kilometers high, Mons Pavonis, but the Martian moon Deimos is already at almost the optimum orbit for the counterweight.

PEACE!T.

At the Terrestrial "ballast stone" counterweight asteroid, a payload will be traveling at a horizontal velocity of eleven kilometers per second. Timing the release correctly would send it rapidly to any planet within the orbit of Saturn! See the Solar System on $10 a day! Actually probably better for cargo, of course, but still, a tremendously elegant way to get to a variety of exotic locations.PONDER!T.

"Where in the name of Heavenly Glory will the necessary carbon for the graphite cables come?" Here again we see the unique suitability of the application to Mars. Both Phobos and Deimos belong to a class of heavenly body known as "carbonaceous chondrites" and posess ample carbon. Phobos also possesses over three trillion tons of water- three trillion tons we will not have to schlep all the way from Earth. But we must act quickly! The orbit of Phobos is decaying and it will crash into Mars in a mere 100 million years. Carbonaceous chondrites are also to be found closer to Earth in the form of the Apollo and Amor asteroids. An example is Eros, which is estimated to possess some 60 billion tons of carbon, 54 billion tons of assorted metals, 45 billion tons of hydrogen and 5 billion tons of nitrogen. Any hydrogen or water found in space will yield a fraction of fusible deuterium isotope, of course, convenient fusion fuel.LET'SGO!T.

all this treasure will become a distinct liability if we are foolish enough not to become a truly competent spacefaring civilization, following the example of the dinosaurs and bucolically standing around waiting for the hammer of extinction to descend upon us. We will deserve it if such is the case too.HOPE!T.

[CastleStormer]

Where is all this water you are talking about? There aren't any polar ice caps...just a big fat hold banged into the side of the moon.

It still makes you wonder how a moon named after the word for "fear" is where we and the Russians lose so many probes.

You nice guy! Like the comets are mostly ice, you know? We on Earth are used to thinking of meteors as mostly stony or metallic simply because that is the type which survives passage through the atmosphere intact. In itself even this idea has been rather slow to gain acceptance: in 1807, Thomas Jefferson said, "I would find it easier to believe that two Yankee professors would lie than that rocks should fall from the sky." It's a "terracentric" bias. Maybe "common sense" has something to do with it, who knows? Anyway the crater on the Marsward side of Phobos is named "Stickney" after the wife of the astronomer who discovered it, and it always faces the planet, much as one side of our Moon is perennially facing Earth. You could literally throw a stone from Phobos to Mars, by the way.THANKSFORTHEGOODCOMPANY,T.

[CastleStormer]

I didn't know it was ice. It looks like a big ugly rock to me. So what is your take on all the probes lost there? The last NASA Bullshyyt I heard was that the last failure was caused by their misunderstanding of the metric system. Russia has also lost probes when they approach Phobos. And what about that "face" in the Cydonia region? I read all of Hoaglund's stuff on Mars. Pretty wild stuff..I remember reading Edgar Cayce and his messages on Mars long ago.

[Edited by CastleStormer on 12th October 2002 at 01:55]