Has anybody heard of a proposal to connect earth to space permanently useing, i think, some kind of pulley

Question

could you noy use a gas lighter than air such as helium

Answer 1

Space elevator.

Proposed by Arthur C Clarke

A long time ago

Answer 2

What like attach a pulley to a satellite?  That would be cool but how would you pull stuff out of earth's gravity?  You'd need some kind of really strong motor and a really strong cable.

Answer 3

Sounds good, we could get rid of all the excess Co2 then and burn as much s**t as we like, sweet

Answer 4

Yes, it's called a Space elevator. This might answer a lot of your questions.

Answer 5

This is a theory from a book either Asimov of Arthur C Clarke. Can't remember the title though.

Answer 6

Yes, its called either a space tether or a space elevator.  The problem is that at the moment we don't have material strong enough to support even its own weight.  Current carbon nanotube technology offers some hope, but we don't know how to manufacture thousands of miles of the stuff.  You also need an asteroid in geostationary orbit to serve as an anchor.  If you s***w up your positioning of a captured asteroid, it could collide with the earth with generally poor results.  You also have to have machinery that can climb up the cable at a decent rate of speed.  DARPA conducted a contest for that last year, but with poor results.  Stay tuned.  It is our only real hope of economic space exploration.  Using rockets to escape earths gravity is just too expensive.  

Answer 7

Basically the cable would need to either be:

long enough to retain enough tension due to centripetal force of spin AND remain straight enough to not just fall back down and tie itself around the earth (so it's centre of mass has to at least be in a geosynchronous orbit - meaning that you need a cable over 36000km long with a huge mass at the end to counter the weight of the 36000km of cable "below" it) and this doesn't even address the monstrous tension of such a cable and the kind of fixings that would be needed at ground level ...

Or, you attach a cable to a satellite and make d**n sure it has enough fuel to constantly drag the cable forwards through the atmospheric drag caused by the incredibly fast rotational velocity required for orbit AND counteract the weight of anything being lifted.

It's basically not going to be a very efficient venture, much better to build a really big gun and shoot parcels up to a waiting receiver.

Answer 8

It sounds like you're describing the "space elevator" concept.  If you orbit a space station at a particular altitude and connect it to the ground with a cable, the combination of physical forces will stretch the cable straight.  This allows you to put payloads in space by "climbing" the cable, saving lots of energy over a space launch.  You can imagine elevator cars going up and down this cable, which would naturally have to be very large and strong.  Unfortunately we don't have way to build a cable strong enough to stand the tension such a system would put on it.

Answer 9

there was a proposal been around for a good 20 years to build a sky lift , literary a lift all the way to space , this could only be build on the equator or else centerfugal force would throw it there anyway and the stabilizerswould have to be very realiable , i beleave nasa looked into it sometime in the 80's and the idea is still being thrown around  

Answer 10

I remember reading about this in a newspaper a while ago. Some sort cable that they could then shoot things up into space along think it was just an idea and hasn't happened yet because the technology needed sorting out. It was going to be some sort of immensely strong steel cable, its an interesting idea I just worry its abit open to attack and would need to be pretty strong

Answer 11

i dont think we can make cable that strong yet.