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Design Considerations for the Multi-stage Space Elevator

A space elevator is a tremendous transportation infrastructure leveraging the rotation of the Earth to raise payloads from the Earth’s surface towards space and our solar system cheaply and routinely. The concept of a space elevator is simple - comprising a ground terminal on the Earth’s surface tied to a space station by an enormously long tether or cable (100,000km) on which climber cars could deliver crew and cargo to space. The challenges that are facing space elevator development are real - the preliminary baseline has technological challenges identified with verification and validation testing shown for each major segment. In addition, alternative approaches are presented so that the space elevator development teams can assess whether there are technologies and designs that could lead to earlier development. Accordingly, a Multi-stage Space Elevator concept has been developed out of several known technologies with experimentation and operational experiences. This concept has the potential of enabling space elevators earlier than previous plans while relying on known transportation technologies and approaches. To build a space elevator, the toughest challenge is to find materi

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