The Lunar Space Elevator. Crazy or Credible idea?
Arthur C Clarke once said :
"The space elevators will be built 50 years after everybody stops laughing."
Although an 'Earth' based Space Elevator may be many decades away due to the materials required, such as carbon nanotubes & new manufacturing methods required to build such a structure.
However, a Lunar Elevator can be constructed within a decade by using commercially available mass-produced high-strength fibres such as Kevlar or polyethylene fibre. There is also the possibility of manufacturing such materials on the Moon using ISRU (In situ resource utilization). For the moment, we'll leave talk of ISRU for another day as its a large topic in itself.
Difference between an Earth Based and Lunar Based Space Elevator🤷😕
The Lunar Elevator is of a similar concept to the Earth-based space elevator. As the Moon's surface gravity is about 17% of Earths gravity (On average Moon 1.62 m/s², Earth 9.807 m/s²) which means the engineering & Construction requirements for a Lunar Elevator can be built with using existing materials and Technologies.
A Major difference between the two systems is that a Lunar Elevator would have a tether/cable which extends out considerably farther out to about 100,000km. A potential hazard for this would be debris, manmade or meteorite (space crap). A maintenance cycle would have to be incorporated in the operation of any space elevator.
The connection point, or base, of a lunar elevator, does not have to be at the Moons Equator but could be located relatively close to one of the poles. If near the Lunar South Pole it could be located near Shackleton Crater, where evidence suggests that there is frozen water inside the crater. With ISRU, this water could be in turn used to produce drinkable water and rocket fuel.
What does this all look like?🧐
Fortunately, here is a video that I helped to commission showing LiftPorts Lunar Space Elevator Concept. It was for a conference with LiftPort. If interested, then I may add a voice over to it.
The video gives a general overview as to what's going on.
Here's a shorter version
on Dtube: https://d.tube/v/epicdave/xgtq4qdsv8l
And here's a link to the original version that we made:
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For more info check out the following links
Futuristic Moon Elevator Idea Takes Aim at Lunar Lifts: https://www.space.com/24905-moon-elevator-lunar-exploration-liftport.html
The Lunar Space Elevator (power Point): http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/meetings/fellows/mar05/1032Pearson.pdf