History
Tsiolkovsky once proposed a tower so tall that it reached into space, so that it would be held there by the rotation of the Earth. However, at the time, there was no realistic way to build it.
To try to solve the problems in Komsomolskaya Pravda (July 31, 1960), another Russian, Yuri Artsutanov, wrote in greater detail about the idea of a tensile cable to be deployed from a geosynchronous satellite; downwards towards the ground, and upwards away; keeping the cable balanced. This is the space elevator idea, a type of synchronous tether that would rotate with the Earth. However, given the current materials technology of the time, this too was impractical on Earth.
In the 1970s Jerome Pearson explored synchronous tethers further, and in particular analysed the lunar elevator that can go through the L1 and L2 points, and this was found to be possible with materials then existing.
In 1977 Hans Moravec and later Robert L. Forward investigated the physics of synchronous and non synchronous skyhook tethers, and performed detailed simulations of tapered tethers that could pick objects off and place objects onto the Moon, Mars and other planets, with little, or even a net gain of energy.
In 1979 the USA NASA examined the feasibility of the idea and gave direction to the study of tethered systems, especially tethered satellites. In 2000, the NASA and Boeing considered a HASTOL concept where a tether would take payloads from a hypersonic aircraft (at half of orbital velocity) to orbit.
Read more about this topic: Space Tether
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)