Appendix B calculates a fuel savings of ~25% vs using only rockets to get to the moon.
The saturn 5 rocket weighed 3,000 tons and was 96% fuel. Even if we only save 10% fuel, that's an extra 300 tons we can get to the moon.
The saturn 5 rocket weighed 3,000 tons and was 96% fuel. Even if we only save 10% fuel, that's an extra 300 tons we can get to the moon.
The Saturn V was capable of delivering 50 tons to lunar insertion. Reducing the fuel requirement improves the payload amount by that percentage. It’s not a direct trade off between the total mass of the vehicle and fuel for more payload.
I don't think you have your maths correct, either.
Going from a rocket that is 2880T fuel and 120T for everything else to a rocket that uses 25% less fuel gives you 2160T fuel and 840T everything else. Decreasing the fuel by 25% increased the rest of your budget by 7x!
If the starting point is 2,880t fuel for 120t payload, so 24t of fuel per ton of payload, then 25% less fuel gives 18t of fuel per ton of payload and thus your 3,000t rocket can now carry 158t of payload, or 32% more.
Even "we can see that the spaceline cuts the fuel cost of such a mission by approximately two thirds" is not a game changer compared to the cost of building the cable.
Space elevators are touted as game changers because although building one would be extraordinarily expensive it would slash the cost of sending payload to space by orders of magnitude, making it worthwhile.
This article talks about a cable from geostationary orbit to the moon.
That still leave the ground-to-geostationary part for conventional lifters.
Dang, I totally misunderstood, I thought this thing was going to go much lower.
Of course, it still probably isn't worth doing, there's not huge dollar reasons for people to be on the moon, mostly just fun science reasons.
And this thing doesn't even help with the orbit part, it helps with getting to a different part of the solar system once you get to orbit.
It's not like the moon lacks resources, we won't be needing to push 300 tons of anything to the moon if we have the capability to build the cable from it.