Scientists Came Up With A Feasible Plan For An Elevator Connecting The Moon And The Earth

Recently, scientists have created a scheme to build an elevator that connects the Moon and the Earth; in other words, a Spaceline for our home and its natural satellite.

In their paper in August, Emily Sandson and Zephyr Penoyre, two astrophysicists from the University of Cambridge and Columbia University, details a way for us to build a 322,000 kilometer-long elevator that secured to the Moon and will dangle into the gravitational field of the Earth.

We will talk about the method later but first, let’s find out why we want such a thing constructed. The most convincing reason is that it is, to some extent, affordable. The expenses of building an elevator like that can be covered by one billionaire.

When the construction is done, that Spaceline will draw energy from the Sun to operate. For now, we are sending supplies by loading them on a spaceship, fly the probe to our Space station, and then to the Moon. With this project in place, the whole process will require just a small amount of the cost. The new method can also ensure a soft landing on the Moon.

The U.S government is planning to build shops on our only natural satellite to facilitating sending human to Mars, so an elevator is likely a revolutionary idea.

The concept of an elevator connecting the Moon and the Earth is not new. Another similar plan is to use a long nanofiber cable (it is so far, impossible) with one end tied to a counterweight in the Earth’s gravity, and the other stretches towards the Moon.

According to Sandson and Penoyre, with today’s technology, the above plan is unfeasible, as it is now impossible to make a strong enough line to handle our planet’s gravity but is still long enough to cover the vast distance between the Moon and the Earth:

The two astrophysicists have done the needed math and concluded that with our current technology, making an elevator and let it dangle in the Earth’s atmosphere is possible. Here is what they wrote in the study:

What surprises people the most about this concept is that the team has done all the calculations necessary to prove the feasibility of the idea. According to Sandson and Penoyre, we have been hindering ourselves for decades for not finding out about this as something we can actually make:

If this Spaceline can make it to reality, human will enter a new age of prosperity. It is more than an elevator to the Moon; it is a space version of the railroad technology’s advent.