Bootstrapping - Step Nine

--- "victoriatangoman victoriatangoman@...
> > Is this what you have in mind? (MEO Tether.gif in

>
> Yes, in principle. All that I would change is to have a narrower
> axle and then a whole bunch of empty space, and then a big rim.
> Probably have spokes for structural reasons. Basically draw a
> bicycle wheel rim, and to scale, draw the axle, then from the axle
> extend the hundreds of km of cable.
>
> The tensioning of the cable will change the inclination of the
> payload.

Well, unless the Mass of the hub is much much greater than the mass
of the rim, I suspect that the system won't behave as you expect.
I'll pretend to know what I'm talking about for a second and let
somebody else bat me down. The angular momentum of the "rim" is
going to be extremely high because of its radius and potentially high
mass. The angular momentum of the hub will be lower because of the
shorter radius and lower mass. Therefore, changing the tensions on
the "spokes" would tend to move the hub rather than the rim. So, the
angle of inclination of the payload would not change (well, very
little anyway). With a rim of 30 km radius and a hub of 2 km radius,
getting that mass ratio right would seem to be very hard indeed.

No?

Chris.