Space Elevator

The Moon being a great example.

Space is big. 1) The cable's vibration resonance can be adjusted to avoid the bulk of larger objects, 2) new satellites can be mandated to have emergency maneuver systems (with larger objects not yet de-orbited cleared out by an elevator consortium), and 3) the cable will necessarily have close range defense systems probably at intervals for smaller objects that might be harder to detect at long range. The cable, also, is enormous, which is the largest barrier to its implementation - it would dwarf every other artifact in human history, put together - and can not be made with any material we can currently create at scale. Compared with that, orbital TCAS of some sort is fairly trivial. In the long term, a space elevator is inevitable, but it's inevitable in the same way that . . I dunno, human-crocodile hybrids are, or fusion drive, or the way a lot of other medium-term future stuff is.

EDIT Also, this thing stops at the Karman line. That's not a viable space elevator. Pretty widget, though.

The designs already have to taper, so you're right, but you still need supermaterials (or powered/active support structures) to make one on Earth.

I love this. Reminds me of a thread I perused once re Orbital Ring Space elevator concept, and how it seems not only possible, but almost disgustingly cheap (in terms of the gains) with current technology. Not only would such an endeavor restore some aspect of pride to humanity, but the benefits are quite numerous.

To name a few low-hanging fruit:

The research done to make it possible, would definitely advance several fields.

The ability to access photons from outside of the atmosphere should vastly improve how much energy we could capture from the sun. Pair this with transparent solar tech designed to pass through the wavelengths that are useful to plants, and we can factory farm crops in space using fully automated systems. This could also lead to exploration of engineered crops that can withstand (and potentially absorb radiation), that may serve as a biological wall for the humans.

Obviously, it would be a given that asteroid mining would become vastly more simplified, and autonomous robotic space construction and perhaps even asteroid mining would become a fantastic way to profit from it (or/and dilute the value of existing rare earth minerals/metals).

Obviously, this would also make intra-solar travel orders of magnitudes cheaper.

Maintaining and cleaning up space debris would become substantially simpler.

Building planetary defense mechanisms (against extinction level events) would become more feasible if we have this in place.

There are obviously an enormous number of things that could go wrong with a project like this, but given a CERN or Manhattan Project level of funding and cooperation, I think we could build this in a couple decades.

This is the kind of future I would want to be a part of. The cost estimate I think was somewhere in the trillions, but even so, the potential benefits are so vast that it just doesn't make sense not to do it, right?

In case you don't want to google the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_ring

Don't even take my word for it. Go question ChatGPT about it.

Slightly tangential, slightly more achievable (?) , but I was just listening to a BBC Worldservice Radio Podcast on Space based Solar farms that would beam concentrated energy back down to earth [1]. By no means a new idea but they wrap up current thinking in 30min.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct5bjt