Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 10:17:50 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Bring a lunch for this elevator ride...
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

At 08:42 AM 5/4/05 -0400, Paul Haggerty wrote:

>one I wanted to point out was resistance to severing.  A single strand
>runs the extreme risk of being severed by space debris. And the longer
>spent in LEO, the greater the risk.   The classic proposal  to avoid
>this is to increase the diameter of your tether (or beanstalk), but this
>adds enormously to the weight.  TUI has another solution:
>http://www.tethers.com/Hoytether.html

Interesting.  So long as your debris is small compared with the diameter of
the Hoytube, so that it never severs more than one substrand at a time, you
are in good shape.  If something big enough to cut a bunch, or all, of them
at a single location comes along, you are back to failed, but I guess if
it's that big you can see it in time to deflect it.

I wonder if they'll call these things "Bucky-Bungies"?  Or how long it will
be before someone tries Bungie diving from orbit with them?  :-)

-- Mike B.
--
Experience is something you gain just after you really needed it.