Jones Beene wrote:
Manning the craft with humans is unnecessarily risky. The payloads, perhaps one of them being the next version of Hubble in KD form, can even manage to self-propel themselves up the stationary tether using power induced from the tether itself to drive their own propellers. They will not need to be pulled up.
But doesn't this rather miss the whole point of the elevator concept?
Shinnying up a cable is far, far more efficient than throwing stuff overboard "real hard" to lift yourself (as a rocket does) or attempting to shinny up the air (as a helicopter does). If you just use the tether as a guide line and a long extension cord, you might as well dispense with it entirely for all that it's buying you.
