Shouldn't that be what we optimize for in the long run? Its the only way I can think of that space cargo becomes economical. Then you can ship raw material up to the Moon and build from there, launch from there etc. and vice versa.
Maybe we'll see what Helium-3 can do for humans at that point
Depends what you mean by economical, but a totally, rapidly reusable craft that takes mass to orbit would massively reduce the cost of getting mass to orbit. Not as inexpensive as a space elevator, but more achievable in the near term.
And then of course you need to supply power to anything climbing it - which is an immense amount of energy required to climb 30,000+ miles vertically - and there's no practical way of sending that energy up the cable itself (you could do it with superconductors, but the power requirements for cooling thirty thousand miles of superconducting cable is more than many nations consume). One option is to use microwaves to beam power to the climber, but this is currently only theoretical, and raises further materials science issues with the microwaves heating up the cable along its length.
Finally, having a space elevator is a massive hazard to the Earth in general. If most structures on Earth fail, the damage is limited to a small area where the structure stands. If a space elevator ever fails for any reason, it would wrap around the equator as it fell, releasing the equivalent of two Hiroshima bomb every mile along the equator as its kinetic energy is rapidly converted into heat. It's not quite as bad as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, but it would still be enough to significantly alter the climate and wipe out at least half a billion people from the impact alone. It's not a project that should be undertaken lightly.
> equivalent of two Hiroshima bomb every mile along the equator as its kinetic energy is rapidly converted into heat.
Little boy was 15 kilotons of TNT (63 TJ). Kinetic energy is 1/2 mv^2.
So you are claiming that the mass of a mile of the cable is such that mv^2 = 126e12 J
At equator the planet rotates at 463.8 m/s so you are assuming that the bottom mile of the cable weighs 585.5e6 kg? Ok, you're completely off base here.
Maybe let's look at a higher segment (at geosync orbit). Velocity there is 3.1e3 m/s. You are assuming a mile of that cable weighs 13e6kg. But on the way down it will both ablate (lowering mass) and slow down (lowering velocity), so you are assuming an even more insane higher number.
For comparison, a mile of one inch thick steel cable is ONLY 4e3 kg. Sure, space elevator needs something stronger, but even more so, lighter.
Yeah, you are just off by MANY orders of magnitude, and that claim was likely pulled out of nowhere
> descending from geostationary orbit will accelerate something to about 10e3 m/s, further increasing the energy.
In vacuum, yes, but we have air...resistance
That last paragraph doesn’t make sense though.
Isn't the moon tidally locked and that's why we never see the "far side" of the moon?
And the lagrange points are between us and the moon?
If so, I don't understand why the anchor on the moon can't be fixed.
There are currently no plausible way to avoid collisions of such a structure with satellites which are below the geostationary orbit. Sooner or later each passive satellite will hit the elevator, and active satellites will have to actively avoid collisions for the whole time they are on the orbit. Any collision would likely disintegrate the satellite and bring serious damage to the elevator - easily enough to break the elevator; after all we're talking about colossal kinetic energy in collision.
Even if nanotubes would be used and could work by themselves - I'm optimistic on that - the inherent conflict between space elevator and the rest of cosmonautics currently is enough to prevent this idea from working.