4 ms·
You don't need to hold the orbit. Just jump to the elevator and grab on.
by emilfihlman 7y ago
You don't need to hold the orbit. Just jump to the elevator and grab on.
- t_fatus 7y agoWould be nice to get the savings in delta-v, I've no idea how to compute this.
- emilfihlman 7y agoA ballistic approach is enough so the kinematics are simple, too.
- extropy 7y agoThe gravity is only 3% up there, so more tricky. And reducing with square of the distance. Also every second you are accelerating straight up costs you gravity worth of Delta-v because gravity losses. So need to be quite short and intense burn to be worth it.
- emilfihlman 7y agoEh? You don't need to get sideways velocity at all. It's enough to only reach the distance. This is a major and huge saving in fuel.
- marcosdumay 7y agoMy estimate is ~9.5km/s from the Equator to the hook. Add some more for atmospheric losses.
- s1artibartfast 7y agoyou can use the partial escape velocity equation. ~10 km/s to get to GEO without the radial velocity. delta-V to the moon is about 18 km/s (one way). Keep in mind that kinetic energy is proportional to velocity squared.