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How Wolfe's tether spreadsheet works
I plan to do a series of posts examining elevators and tethers. I will link to them as posts are completed:Lower Phobos TetherUpper Phobos TetherLower Deimos TetherLunar ElevatorPluto Charon...
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Lower Phobos Tether
A Phobos tether can be built in increments, it is useful in the early stages. So there's no pressing need to build a huge structure overnight. I will look at various stages of a Phobos tether,...
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Upper Phobos Tether
This is third in a series of posts that rely on Wolfe's model of tethers from tide locked moons. As with the Lower Phobos Tether post, I will look at possible stages of this tether examining tether to...
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Deimos Tether
This is a fourth in a series of blog posts looking at various tethers using Chris Wolfe's model.50 kilometer Deimos tether - minimum length to remain aloft.Mars-Deimos L1 and L2 are about 14 kilometers...
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Fact checking Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tyson is well known for fact checking movies, comics and other pop culture stuff. Here's giving Tyson a taste of his own medicine.Tyson's trailer for The MartianHermes' impossible trajectoryAbove is a...
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Limits to growth, logistic vs exponential
Malthusian growth modelThe Malthusian growth model sees population growth as exponential.P(t) = PoertwherePo = P(0) is the initial population size,r = population growth ratet = timeGrowth of microbe...
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Liftport Lunar Tether
This is the fifth in a series of posts using Chris Wolfe's spreadsheet to look at various elevators.274,000 km Lunar TetherThis is based on the Ladder PDF written by Liftport founder Michael Laine and...
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Rotovator help with re-entry
There are proposals for rotovators to catch payloads in low earth orbit and then throw them to higher orbits.It occurs to me that rotovators used for throwing comm sats to GTO could also help the upper...
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Hildas As Cyclers
Hilda Asteroids - Red, Sun Jupiter Trojans - Blue, Main Belt - GreenThe above image was made from screen captures of Scott Manley's beautiful animation Asteroids In Resonance With Jupiter.Jupiter...
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Lunar Sky Hook
Kim Holder has been urging me to do this blog post. Her comments in various forums have been helpful in thinking about this.Vertical Lunar Tether In A Polar OrbitThis sky hook is a gravity gradient...
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Tran Cislunar Railroad
Three Orbital TethersThis post revisits Orbital Momentum As A Commodity. But now I will examine these tethers using Wolfe's spreadsheet.I envision 3 equatorial tethers to move stuff back and forth...
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Pluto Charon Elevator
Double Tidal LockingPluto and Charon are mutually tidally locked. That is, they both present the same face to the other planet all the time. They hover motionless in each other's sky. Pluto is in...
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General template for space elevators
A Family of Conic SectionsBelow is a general vertical space elevator. The conic sections are the paths payloads would follow if released from a point on the tether a distance r from body center. We...
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Xenon
Xenon The Noble GasXenon is one of heavier Noble GasesScreen capture from ChemicalElements.comThe noble gases are the orange column on the right of the periodic table. These are chemically inert. Which...
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Lamentable Lagrange articles
Gravity doesn't cancel at the Lagrange points"There are places in the Solar System where the forces of gravity balance out perfectly. Places we can use to position satellites, space telescopes and even...
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Matrices
I enjoy linear algebra. I use it in making polyhedra and drawings. Here are a few visualizations of matrices. To keep it simple I use 2x2 matrices. 2x2 matrices act on vectors. The vertices of polygons...
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Zylon Mars Elevator
Mars Elevator With Conventional MaterialsMars spins nearly the same rate as earth (about a 24.62 hour day). Mars has about 1/9 earth's mass. At 17,000 kilometers, altitude of Mars synchronous orbit is...
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Tahoe recreational math conference
I've been invited to talk at a recreational math conference at Lake Tahoe April 28.I will talk about the family of conics associated with a space elevator or a vertical orbital tether.The presentation...
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Space Meow Boys
Sections of this long post:1) Space Cadets2) Space Meow Boys3) Tom Murphy4) James Nicoll5) Charlie Stross6) Opening A New Frontier Is DoableSpace CadetsWe are confined to a small, fragile planet. Being...
View ArticleAsteroid Day
On June 30 in 1908 the Tunguska object took out a good chunk of forest in Siberia.In February of 2016 the United Nations approved a resolution stating30 June International Asteroid Day to observe each...
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Orbital Mechanics Coloring Book 2nd edition
CostsThe folks making the first edition went belly up. So the first edition is out of print. I want to do a second edition. The makers of the first edition would print it in batches of around 50 (I...
View ArticleBridenstine's Why The Moon Matters
Back in December 29, 2016 Bridenstine made a blog post "Why The Moon Matters". Bridenstine was representative of Oklahoma at the time.Sadly the post was taken down when Bridenstine left his post as...
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Wish list for space video games.
Kerbal Space ProgramThe Kerbal Space Program has demonstrated video games can be a very effective teaching tool.It used to be very frustrating trying to talk about orbital mechanics. Use a word like...
View ArticleThe wrong question. Who invented calculus, Newton or Leibniz?
Science historian Thony Christie (also known as @rmathematicus) had a number of essays on the Scientopia website. Scientopia bit the dust and I thought the essays were lost. But Bryan Kelly showed me...
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Orbital Tethers as Momentum Capacitors
Orbital tethers as momentum capacitorsCarmack to Musk: What about rotovators?Carmack's game set on PhobosZero Relative Velocity Transfer Orbit (ZRVTO) between Phobos and Deimos tethersZRVTO mass...
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