• Question: could you invent a moon lift?

    Asked by daviesl3 to Joanne on 16 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Joanne Davies

      Joanne Davies answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      Yes I could invent a moon lift but I would need a team of engineers to help.
      The job would be too big for one person to manage.

      What an exciting thought. 🙂

Comments

  • Photo: Martin

    Martin commented on :

    I studied a course on space systems and as part of that learned a bit about space elevators and sky arches. There are some really wierd and whacky ideas that people have come up with to make it cheaper to put things into space. One of my favourites is the space cannon (it does exactly what it says on the tin).

  • Photo: daviesl3

    daviesl3 commented on :

    okay thanks, because we had a talk on nanotechnology and the lady said they could build a moonlift, but afterwards i thought that the earth and the moon move around, which could be a problem!

    • Photo: Martin

      Martin commented on :

      You’re right – a moon lift would be very tricky, the base station would have to keep moving to keep up with where the moon was.
      A space elevator could link up to a geostationary space station so that the base station could be stationary (a floating platform on the sea somewhere on the equator would be good), but the space station would need to be 35,000 km away from the Earth – a very long cable indeed!

    • Photo: Joanne

      Joanne commented on :

      Anything’s possible daviesI3 🙂