Rakaydos

And clearly you stopped reading right there, because the entire post your replying to agrees with you, except the one word you stopped reading at.

Fractal stages.

Probably twice the mass of your payload.

I actually meant the "within the current decade, but not for 20 years" thing he said in the first sentance.

I'm pretty sure he misyped century. otherwise the rest of his post makes no sence.

Or the first whiteknight, if we can scale it down enough...

Unless, of course, you size it to fit a "standard" hardpoint, so customizing the aircraft is unnessisary. The F14 is known to fire the AIM 54 Phoenix missile which is about 1000 pounds. (450-470 KG) The F14 had a service cealing of 15 KM, and a top speed of mach 2.3 at high altitude. Can you design an airlaunched anti-sat missile under 450 KG, with at least that kind of airlaunch performance?

An interesting conundrum. But what happens if we assume Elon Musk makes a leap of faith, providing a basic and expanding base on mars. How can orbital infrastructure reduce his costs AFTER he gets started?

Except you have photons coming if "from outside" continuously. Really, the detector is measuing hw much TIME it takes light to travel through distorted space, since light always travels the same speed. So an arm that is distored longer, the next photon has to travel longer, and when it bounces back it's slightly out of phase.

L1 point is closer. 100 tons of narrow ribbon, basted on the liftport numbers.

@tater still - even a very long maglev surface (even longer than 40km - there are several Maglev projects here on earth that are 200km+ long) would surely cost much less than a space elevator hanging from the Earth - moon lagrangian point - besides, under the moon's gravity, you could build the thing on top of bridge pillars much more spaced and high than what's possible here on earth. For a single ribbon cable, 100 tons of Spectra fiber is enough to span the entire length, with enough left over to minimise the nessisary counterweight. Two MCT launches could put up a double ribbon for redundancy, and away you go.

Again, it's not liftoff that is the hard part, it's landing. An elevator does that for you too.

I believe that, like orbital refueling infrastructure, an elevator is a "if you build it they will come" type endevor. Low traffic makes low capacity reasonable, and the cost reduction on that low capacity can be gamechanging.

Not really. Engine unit deploys parachutes, plane sees parachutes, snags the cable between engine and chute, flies off into the sunset.

"Vulcan style" implies you have aircraft in the "recovery zone" to snatch the falling engines out of the air and return them to the factory for re-integration.

Not really worse than having to get to geosynchronus orbit...

Less practical than an earth based elevator? What problems does an earth elevator NOT have, that a lunar elevator has, that makes up for material tech difficulties and space trash around earth?

Earth-Moon Lagrange 1 (EML1) is furthur from the moon than geosynch is from earth, but the moon's gravity is low enough that even the longer cable can be made of conventional materals. Like an earth space elevator, the lunar elevator hangs a counterweight out past the balance point, where it gets pulled toward Earth just hard enough to suspend the weight of the elevator cable toward luna.

That probably ties INto something called the NICE Model, which predicts that there was once a protogiant between IIRC protojupiter and protosaturn, but that over the course of planetary formation got ejected from the new planetary system. This modelI Gives thebest explanation of the current giant orbits. So IF planet 9 was once the NICE giant, I would expect It to have a higher angular momentum than I

That works for launch, but not for landing. You have to get the railgun to luna in the first place, after all.

For earth, yes. However, for exploiting the Moon or Mars, you can loft a 100 ton spool of Kevlar ribbon, and string it from EML1 to the lunar surface. That's enough for a 1 ton self-powered elevator car. More ribbons give more capacity.

Not for Earth, anyway.

Just move the counterweight out a little furthur, and the tension will handle anything mere air can throw at it.

Space Elevators on earth are impractically difficult, but the potential savings are ridiculus. We're talking THOUSANDfold price reduction to get to orbit, which keeps people chasing the white elephant. Now, EML1 and EML2 elevators, and mars elevators, are both entirely reasonable propositions, even with existing tech. the problem is that you need something on the order of 200 tons of kevlar just for the "pilot line", which would necessitate either in-space production of cable, or a launcher of MCT scale.

2016: SpaceX demonstrates Reliable F9 1st stage recovery. First FH launches, demonstrates booster recovery. Core stage recovery has issues. MCT platform announced. 2017: Reliable FH core stage recovery. First reuse of a returned F9 1st stage. 2018: MCT factory produces it's first Raptor Engine. Use of returned F9/FH stages becomes routine. Broadband internet superconstilations come online as a revenue source for SpaceX. 2019: First MCT launch to LEO and deorbit. MCT first stage RTLS and examined, MCT Supercapsule recovered and examined. Second MCT supercapsule docked to Space Station to test long term habitatability. 2020: First test of MCT(tanker)/MCT(payload) on-orbit refueling. SpaceX uses MCT to deploy a bare bones Kevlar EML1/lunar surface elevator in a single launch, begins charging for F9+elevator rides for lunar access. 2022-23: First manned martian flyby with MCT, configued for 12 months of sub-lightminute teleoperation of martian rovers. Begin sending supplies/ISRU equipment for a future manned landing. Lunar elevator expanded, manned lunar base established. 2025: First manned martian landing, testing habitat design and local resource use.