Whatever Works

If we're ever going to get off the earth for real we need to be thinking about things like this.

From The Scotsman:

SCOTTISH engineers are developing a gigantic "slingshot" to transport cargo to the moon as part of a European project to set up a base on the lunar surface.

Dr Gianmarco Radice and Professor Matthew Cartmell, from Glasgow University, have been given funding by the European Space Agency to develop their new system to send food, water and raw materials to the moon.

They claim that by attaching cargo to a set of giant cables orbiting the Earth it is possible to propel the materials to the moon with a fraction of the fuel needed to send it in rockets.

The system works by exploiting the centrifugal force that builds up when an object is in orbit. Radice claims cargo taken up by space shuttle from Earth can be offloaded onto an orbiting "tether". The huge cables, several kilometres long, will then spin around before propelling the cargo towards the moon.

If the cable is long enough and the orbital speed of the system is high enough, the cargo will undergo an acceleration process. A second "tether" orbiting the moon would catch the cargo and it could be retrieved by a short-range shuttle to be taken down to the lunar surface.