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lefra • yesterday at 7:04 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

Maybe I missed something obvious, but how does an orbital ring make rockets obsolete for surface to orbit trips?


Replies

ben_w • yesterday at 7:10 PM

Because it's held up by being in orbit (strictly: a bit faster than that), you can by the same process as a maglev hang a stationary-with-respect-to-ground cable off it; and because the cable is only as long as your orbit is high (~200 km or whatever) rather than the 36,000 km you'd need for a full space elevator, we don't need to invent any supermaterials for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_ring