Re: Re: [OT] Beanstalk anyone?

From: "Brian Bilderback" <bbilderback@hotmail.com>

> Popeyesays wrote:
>
> >A beanstalk top would be geo-stationary, would it not. It would not
have
> >much angular momentum and would at most drift away and be recoverable
for
> >some time.
>
> I thought about this some more, and here's what I realized:
>
> When dealing with an untethered orbiting satellite, this is true

Umm... not quite.

The concept that I'm most interested in consists of unanchored
beanstalks.
These rotate (due to tidal forces). They can be at virtually any
altitude.
Provided you keep on putting a tadge more energy into them (by ferrying
material into the gravity well) than you take out, their orbits won't
decay.

The best thing about them is that they can be made right now with
existing