--- Michael Turner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't know how much perturbation is expected, but > remember that > the center of mass is about 23,000 miles out. At > those distances, > GEO satellites carry rather small engines to correct > for perturbations > that accumulate over *decades* of operation. > Presumably, being a > ribbon, it also has some elasticity, and over tens > of thousands of > miles, you'll probably just see some slight > variations in tension. > Note that the orbital perturbations seen in GEO > satellites must > be corrected, otherwise they'll drift out of range > of fixed dishes. > But if you get some drift in the center of mass of a > space elevator, > the next question is not "how do we correct it"? > It's "so what?"
This reminds me -- It's been at least ten years since I read the book, but in Arthur C. Clarke's _The Fountains Of Paradise_, IIRC, they talked about another cause of drift (swaying) of the elevator, which is the up and down motion of the "elevator cars". In fact, when they built a space elevator on Mars, they actually planned on timing the motions of the cars continually to cause the elevator to swing wide of Mars' moons, Phobos and Deimos, since it proved necessary to build the elevators out past their mean orbits. Wild stuff. Their attitude on the drift was even better than "so what" -- they used it to their advantage. That's IIRC. --Mark __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
