James Joyner is a Professor of Security Studies. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.
A couple days ago Dan Nexon at LGM wrote a post saying straight out that we are in a “consolidating competitive authoritarian regime”. Yesterday Dr. Taylor wrote a post expanding on Nexon’s post. I see late yesterday Nexon referenced, and extensively quoted, Steven’s post. Must reads. We need to clearly see the state we are in.
Hey, is it just me or has this year’s crops of stone fruits been lousy? I know how to ripen a peach or a nectarine, but nothing has worked. They go from rock hard straight to mealy. Last year, much better. Avocados have been good, though.
This is not a piece I particularly like. I see it more as background music: pleasant, but not worth concentrating on. Except for the passage between 2:02 and 2:55 in the linked video. That part gives me goosebumps.
There are an amazing number of versions of this piece. There are choral versions (it’s liturgical music), piano versions, piano + cello, violin solos, chamber ensembles, etc.
About space elevators, 99.99% of all the stuff I’ve read or watched about them consists of why it would work and a bit about the difficulties in constructing one. There’s very little about how it would operate once one was made.
Fiction is a bit better. In his space elevator novel, The Fountains of Paradise, Clarke has the engineer in charge ruminate about additional elevators, a ring connecting them, and how they can launch payloads into interplanetary space without the need of rockets or fuel.
So, there’s a lot I plain don’t understand about them.
Orbital mechanics is a difficult subject. One thing I do understand is that much depends on speed. For example, in order to orbit the Earth at 150 kilometers altitude, it’s not enough to just reach the altitude, you have to go at a certain speed relative to the Earth. It would be easier to launch a rocket at lower acceleration that can climb to 150 km, and never even break Mach 2 or 3 (though a faster speed gets you out fo the atmosphere faster), but then it would plummet back to Earth, because its speed is several orders of magnitude lower than it needs to be. Simplistically, it’s too slow to miss the Earth when the planet pulls back on it.
So if you climbed on a space elevator to that altitude, 150 km, you’d have the same rotational speed as that segment of the elevator does, relative to the center of the Earth. It would be higher than your speed at ground level, but far below orbital speed. If the car stopped there and you stepped out, naturally wearing a spacesuit, you’d plumet to the ground and get killed.
Yet at some point the rotational speed is high enough to keep you in orbit, and even to let you escape the Earth entirely. I just have no idea what speeds correspond to what altitudes, nor what the tangential speed can be calculated. I did study the latter in junior high school physics, but that was a long time ago.
So, even with all the massive complications and expense and engineering challenges, it’s not as simple as just building a space elevator.
And then there’s travel time. Assume the terminal at geostationary orbit, that’s about 36,000 kilometers from the surface. How fast would the cars in the elevator go? It may take you days to get there.
@Michael Reynolds: I always thought the Colbert Report was sane washing too.
Not sure I knew the word at the time, but his right-wing not-openly-racist, not-deep-in-qanon, not-loathing-the-rubes, not-motivated-mostly-out-of-spite character was really making the scum of the earth cuddly.
Satire fails when basic decorum prevents you from acting as badly as the people being satired.
@Kathy: Every time I consider space elevators, I end up thinking about the mass of the elevator chain. At 36,000 miles, even the lightest materials start adding up.
I would think that the station would need to have a greater mass, so the angular momentum keeps the chain reasonably straight and tight. And that would require incredible strength in the chain to not break. The whole weight distribution of the space elevator seems scary complicated.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s RGB Mars series has a space elevator snap. Maybe he did the math right.
However, the speed of the station, or any other point on the elevator is easy to figure out: 1 circumference per day.
This sounds very dumb, but you can calculate the circumference at any height easily, 2*pi*r, and convert days to hours. Radius is just how high you are (plus radius of earth).
And if you step off the elevator, I think what happens is dependent on your mass. If you were a spherical point-cow with zero mass, you would just fly off, after all, unaffected by the Earth’s gravity trying to pull you in.
I think a spherical point-cow with zero mass would have a hard time of things in general though. No wind resistance, no gravity…
I think we could be shedding massless point-cows all the time and we would have no way of knowing. Very slow, no-energy photons with cow spots, violating laws of physics as they hurly off in every direction, desperately wanting to moo with distress but lacking the ability to do so.
Thinking about Dr. Taylor’s “Has the Constitution Failed?” post from yesterday, as I appearently didn’t look at OTB yesterday, and now desperately need to stop thinking about the existential horrors presented by massless point-cows…
Has there ever been an successful authoritarian regime that was started with a very sick, very obviously not-long-for-this-world leader? (By successful, I would say hanging onto power for 20 years)
I’m not sure any failing democracy has even tried this.
Tear down the institutional guardrails and protections, and then try to do a transfer of power before building up new guardrails to protect the regime. Pretty much anything could happen, and it probably won’t be what they’re hoping will happen — not saying it will be good, just not what they’re trying to make happen.
Related, if you’re not sure if you want a cat, and don’t want to make that 20 year commitment, adopt an old, sick and frail cat. They might destroy your furniture, but as bad as things get, things will change before too long.
Granted, the old cat doesn’t bring an entire administration with him.
ETA: I actually worry that if Trump drops dead too soon, or things don’t get bad enough, that Democrats will get power and try to reform the current system, adding a few little laws here and there that will do nothing to stop the collapse. Just carry on, trying to restore normalcy.
@Michael Reynolds: You aren’t wrong concerning mass grown stone fruit. They are obviously growing a fruit which has the right colors but is rock hard to prevent obvious bruising during harvest and transport. They never do “ripen” they just go mealy and the hidden bruises appear. They are the shining example of the enshittification of good food.
If you were a spherical point-cow with zero mass, you would just fly off, after all, unaffected by the Earth’s gravity trying to pull you in.
IIRC, and I may be mixing in another story, Clarke had an engineer working outside the structure lose her grip and tether and drift off. At the terminal, above geosynchronous, she had escape velocity. They had no vehicle on the station so there was nothing to be done but say goodbyes to family and shut off oxygen.
The advantage may be in the ability to have controlled descents. No more heat shielding, not as much anyway.
The bugbear is materials. A heck of a lot of great ideas go pear-shaped when they get to material specification. Nothing we know of has the necessary tensile strength of such a structure and we are nowhere near one. Not even at 10% of what would be needed with even our most exotic materials to date. Considering improving strength-to-weight is a project we’ve put nothing less than our very best efforts into ever since we swung out of the trees and made our first tools it’s fair to say we aren’t anywhere close.
The same bugbear in energy. We live on a planet that resembles an orange, a skin covering a practically unlimited energy which we are not close to accessing for lack of the necessary materials.
I’ve read here and there carbon nanotubes could bear the weight load. The problem being thus far the biggest nanotubes are like a couple of centimeters long.
I don’t expect to live long enough to see a space elevator, assuming one is even possible to begin with.
A couple days ago at NYT one Debbie Millman, a brand strategist and professor, had a surprisingly interesting guest essay (gift link) on Trump and his ballroom. She speaks of Trump’s brand, and I was particularly struck by,
While people might think brands have soul, they are — by intention and design — manufactured meaning. This meaning is communicated through symbols to differentiate one set of beliefs and experiences from another. Consensus around these beliefs creates intimate worlds like-minded people can inhabit, and feel as if they belong. The success or failure of any brand can be measured by the degree to which audiences are willing to accept these constructs as their own, and how deeply they pledge their loyalty and devotion.
This is something I’ve been trying to clearly express. Trump has a very strong brand. To their followers his, and the Republicans’, brand is “real Americans”. I find that ridiculous, but as the lady said, brand meanings are manufactured. Whatever brand image Dems have is weak by comparison, and I don’t see anything being done about it. Dem’s are allowing GOPs to define our brand. And that brand is weak, out of touch, losers.
I said something here the other day without really putting that much thought into it, but now, the more I think about it, the more I worry that I’m right. To whit: Drones will be the more disruptive technology in the next ten years. Any asshole with 300 bucks can shut down a US airport. A handful of domestic terrorists could shut down JFK, Atlanta, DFW, ORD, Denver, SFO and LAX and cripple air transportation. And not just for a few hours.
These things should be regulated and we need to think seriously about laws specific to drones used as weapons, or for surveillance. In this case I don’t think the government will be the problem so much as any rando with a joystick, or some militia group. Can also be used for direct partisan attacks, for example buzzing opposition voter lines or rallies.
I am absolutely not joking when I say we should be ready to play Ukraine to their Russia. Fill in that ‘we’ and that ‘they’ however you like.
The Trump administration is preparing a plan that will make it harder for older Americans to qualify for Social Security disability payments, part of an overhaul of the federal safety net for poor, older and disabled people that could result in hundreds of thousands of people losing benefits, according to people familiar with the plans.
[…]
Jack Smalligan, senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute and a former Office of Management and Budget official through five administrations, wrote in a recent paper that if the proposed rule reduced eligibility for the disability program by 10 percent, 750,000 fewer people would receive benefits for all or part of the next decade. In addition, 80,000 fewer widows and children would receive benefits due to the loss in eligibility of a spouse or parent.
And of course the guy who competes daily with Stephen Miller to be the most evil motherfucker in this misbegotten administration is the one pushing to throw your disabled Grandma out on the street.
People familiar with the proposed changes said they are a priority of Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, who sought during Trump’s first term to update the disability rolls through executive action.
There are reports circulating about a South Carolina judge’s house burning down, starting with an explosion, and a couple of new reports at semi-news sites — there’s a Daily Mail article for instance.
Judge Diane Goldstein had imposed a temporary restraining order on South Carolina sending voter rolls to the DOJ. She was overruled.
No reports of any people killed. Her husband, at least one child and some grandchildren escaped unharmed. Possibly by leaping off a balcony.
Conspiracy theories forming as I tap this out on my iPad. Who knows, the currently unfounded conspiracy theories might be right. Or maybe it’s one of those perfectly normal partial house explosions.
The Daily Mail, which got indexed on Google news real fast, would like you to know that this was a $1.7M beach home, that her last name is Goldstein, that her husband’s last name is Goldstein, and manages to mention the name Goldstein an improbably large number of times, when “the judge” would be a fine replacement, if only for variety. Not something you can definitely say is antisemitism, but is certainly going to make the antisemites very aware that her last name is Goldstein.
@Gustopher:
The physics of cowons is a sadly undersubscribed field, imho.
Not to mention whan you start looking at Schrodingers cow: does the milk exist or not before you open the byre?
@Kathy:
@Gustopher:
@dazedandconfused:
Space elevators might be a wonderful thing to have.
But as of now, the materials for the elevator column lie within the realms of “unobtainium”.
Space elevators iirc would be possiible with current materials technology for the Moon, and likely Mars.
But then you have the entire problem of the required heavy lift from Earth to establish them in the first place inconveniently refusing to go away and stop being annoying.
A cooperative Earth a few hundred years from now could probably get the Moon and Mars systems done, if just for the lulz.
But then again, if my aunt had wheels, she’d be a bicycle.
@Mr. Prosser:
It’s an odd thing.
When in France, or Italy, the stone fruit in supermarkets, let alone in local markets, tends to be lovely.
In the UK, it’s mostly like chewing cardboard.
I have periodic desires to emigrate to France purely for the sheer wonderfulness of the peaches, nectarine. plums and (none stony, but the point still holds) melons and tomatoes.
When we used to do family holdays to France, a high point was always the first picnic with a fresh baguette, some pate, some cheese, and a selection of fruit.
(Plus a bottle of wine, of course. lol)
Why British supermarkets are so utterly incompetent in this remains a mystery.
Though it probably relates to France having shorter travel distances for ripe fruit, and more need to compete with local producer markets and locally supplied small grocers.
I’m not sure there’s a stationary orbit for the Moon, given its very slow rotation and proximity to Earth.
In any case, the lack of atmosphere and lower gravity makes things like electromagnetic launch tracks fairly easy.
Mars would be easier, but one of its moons orbits within the path the elevator would take. You’d need to move it. If it could be used for raw material for the elevator, that would simplify things. The tailing would make a good counterweight.
the first picnic with a fresh baguette, some pate, some cheese, and a selection of fruit.
(Plus a bottle of wine, of course. lol)
I’ve enjoyed Ducasse and Trotter and Senderens and Achatz and Robuchon and Savoy and Ramsay, but there is no better meal than a fresh baguette, paté, cheese, fruit and wine.
When I was a kid living in Fouras, Charente, I’d be tasked with jumping on my three-speed and riding over to the boulangerie to pick up a baguette or a grand pain. So fresh, so hot, I could barely hold on to them. Crust so crisp you cut open a pain with it. A formative experience. All bread since then has been measured against that bread and found ever so slightly lacking.
@Michael Reynolds:
Oh my.
Holiday in France, and I get to the local boulangerie in the morning. “Un pain long, si’l vous plait.”
I’ve eaten in Michelin star restaurants a few times (though not as often as I might wish, lol) but as you say: “fresh baguette, paté, cheese, fruit and wine” on a sunny day in France, and I’m more than content.
After that, British “sliced white” just ain’t in contention.
(Though the Italians aguably have even better tomatoes.)
A couple days ago Dan Nexon at LGM wrote a post saying straight out that we are in a “consolidating competitive authoritarian regime”. Yesterday Dr. Taylor wrote a post expanding on Nexon’s post. I see late yesterday Nexon referenced, and extensively quoted, Steven’s post. Must reads. We need to clearly see the state we are in.
Yikes. I’ll watch a few sketches that seem promising over the next couple days, but what I have seen of the season premiere of SNL was pretty awful.
I usually like Jost, and the impression of Hegseth was fine, but the writing was no good. Same for the Trump part of it.
The Jeopardy sketch consisted of a single joke that was okay, but not enough to carry the entire sketch.
Even the part of Weekend Update I saw was lackluster, with the exception of one particular joke.
The unhinged Doja Cat performance was the brightest spot I have seen.
@Kurtz:
SNL’s current Trump impression isn’t satire, it’s sanewashing.
Hey, is it just me or has this year’s crops of stone fruits been lousy? I know how to ripen a peach or a nectarine, but nothing has worked. They go from rock hard straight to mealy. Last year, much better. Avocados have been good, though.
Music for the weekend: Pachelbel’s Canon in D
This is not a piece I particularly like. I see it more as background music: pleasant, but not worth concentrating on. Except for the passage between 2:02 and 2:55 in the linked video. That part gives me goosebumps.
There are an amazing number of versions of this piece. There are choral versions (it’s liturgical music), piano versions, piano + cello, violin solos, chamber ensembles, etc.
About space elevators, 99.99% of all the stuff I’ve read or watched about them consists of why it would work and a bit about the difficulties in constructing one. There’s very little about how it would operate once one was made.
Fiction is a bit better. In his space elevator novel, The Fountains of Paradise, Clarke has the engineer in charge ruminate about additional elevators, a ring connecting them, and how they can launch payloads into interplanetary space without the need of rockets or fuel.
So, there’s a lot I plain don’t understand about them.
Orbital mechanics is a difficult subject. One thing I do understand is that much depends on speed. For example, in order to orbit the Earth at 150 kilometers altitude, it’s not enough to just reach the altitude, you have to go at a certain speed relative to the Earth. It would be easier to launch a rocket at lower acceleration that can climb to 150 km, and never even break Mach 2 or 3 (though a faster speed gets you out fo the atmosphere faster), but then it would plummet back to Earth, because its speed is several orders of magnitude lower than it needs to be. Simplistically, it’s too slow to miss the Earth when the planet pulls back on it.
So if you climbed on a space elevator to that altitude, 150 km, you’d have the same rotational speed as that segment of the elevator does, relative to the center of the Earth. It would be higher than your speed at ground level, but far below orbital speed. If the car stopped there and you stepped out, naturally wearing a spacesuit, you’d plumet to the ground and get killed.
Yet at some point the rotational speed is high enough to keep you in orbit, and even to let you escape the Earth entirely. I just have no idea what speeds correspond to what altitudes, nor what the tangential speed can be calculated. I did study the latter in junior high school physics, but that was a long time ago.
So, even with all the massive complications and expense and engineering challenges, it’s not as simple as just building a space elevator.
And then there’s travel time. Assume the terminal at geostationary orbit, that’s about 36,000 kilometers from the surface. How fast would the cars in the elevator go? It may take you days to get there.
@Michael Reynolds: I always thought the Colbert Report was sane washing too.
Not sure I knew the word at the time, but his right-wing not-openly-racist, not-deep-in-qanon, not-loathing-the-rubes, not-motivated-mostly-out-of-spite character was really making the scum of the earth cuddly.
Satire fails when basic decorum prevents you from acting as badly as the people being satired.
@Michael Reynolds: “Hey, is it just me or has this year’s crops of stone fruits been lousy?”
In the summer we get weekly deliveries of peaches from The Peach Truck — straight from upstate farms — and there were all really good this year…
@Kathy: Every time I consider space elevators, I end up thinking about the mass of the elevator chain. At 36,000 miles, even the lightest materials start adding up.
I would think that the station would need to have a greater mass, so the angular momentum keeps the chain reasonably straight and tight. And that would require incredible strength in the chain to not break. The whole weight distribution of the space elevator seems scary complicated.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s RGB Mars series has a space elevator snap. Maybe he did the math right.
However, the speed of the station, or any other point on the elevator is easy to figure out: 1 circumference per day.
This sounds very dumb, but you can calculate the circumference at any height easily, 2*pi*r, and convert days to hours. Radius is just how high you are (plus radius of earth).
And if you step off the elevator, I think what happens is dependent on your mass. If you were a spherical point-cow with zero mass, you would just fly off, after all, unaffected by the Earth’s gravity trying to pull you in.
I think a spherical point-cow with zero mass would have a hard time of things in general though. No wind resistance, no gravity…
I think we could be shedding massless point-cows all the time and we would have no way of knowing. Very slow, no-energy photons with cow spots, violating laws of physics as they hurly off in every direction, desperately wanting to moo with distress but lacking the ability to do so.
Thinking about Dr. Taylor’s “Has the Constitution Failed?” post from yesterday, as I appearently didn’t look at OTB yesterday, and now desperately need to stop thinking about the existential horrors presented by massless point-cows…
Has there ever been an successful authoritarian regime that was started with a very sick, very obviously not-long-for-this-world leader? (By successful, I would say hanging onto power for 20 years)
I’m not sure any failing democracy has even tried this.
Tear down the institutional guardrails and protections, and then try to do a transfer of power before building up new guardrails to protect the regime. Pretty much anything could happen, and it probably won’t be what they’re hoping will happen — not saying it will be good, just not what they’re trying to make happen.
Related, if you’re not sure if you want a cat, and don’t want to make that 20 year commitment, adopt an old, sick and frail cat. They might destroy your furniture, but as bad as things get, things will change before too long.
Granted, the old cat doesn’t bring an entire administration with him.
ETA: I actually worry that if Trump drops dead too soon, or things don’t get bad enough, that Democrats will get power and try to reform the current system, adding a few little laws here and there that will do nothing to stop the collapse. Just carry on, trying to restore normalcy.
@Gustopher:
Here’s the link to Wikipedia.
It’s a very complicated subject.
Extra points for bringing up spherical cows in a vacuum.
@Michael Reynolds: You aren’t wrong concerning mass grown stone fruit. They are obviously growing a fruit which has the right colors but is rock hard to prevent obvious bruising during harvest and transport. They never do “ripen” they just go mealy and the hidden bruises appear. They are the shining example of the enshittification of good food.
@Gustopher:
IIRC, and I may be mixing in another story, Clarke had an engineer working outside the structure lose her grip and tether and drift off. At the terminal, above geosynchronous, she had escape velocity. They had no vehicle on the station so there was nothing to be done but say goodbyes to family and shut off oxygen.
@Kathy:
The advantage may be in the ability to have controlled descents. No more heat shielding, not as much anyway.
The bugbear is materials. A heck of a lot of great ideas go pear-shaped when they get to material specification. Nothing we know of has the necessary tensile strength of such a structure and we are nowhere near one. Not even at 10% of what would be needed with even our most exotic materials to date. Considering improving strength-to-weight is a project we’ve put nothing less than our very best efforts into ever since we swung out of the trees and made our first tools it’s fair to say we aren’t anywhere close.
The same bugbear in energy. We live on a planet that resembles an orange, a skin covering a practically unlimited energy which we are not close to accessing for lack of the necessary materials.
@dazedandconfused:
I’ve read here and there carbon nanotubes could bear the weight load. The problem being thus far the biggest nanotubes are like a couple of centimeters long.
I don’t expect to live long enough to see a space elevator, assuming one is even possible to begin with.
A couple days ago at NYT one Debbie Millman, a brand strategist and professor, had a surprisingly interesting guest essay (gift link) on Trump and his ballroom. She speaks of Trump’s brand, and I was particularly struck by,
This is something I’ve been trying to clearly express. Trump has a very strong brand. To their followers his, and the Republicans’, brand is “real Americans”. I find that ridiculous, but as the lady said, brand meanings are manufactured. Whatever brand image Dems have is weak by comparison, and I don’t see anything being done about it. Dem’s are allowing GOPs to define our brand. And that brand is weak, out of touch, losers.
I said something here the other day without really putting that much thought into it, but now, the more I think about it, the more I worry that I’m right. To whit: Drones will be the more disruptive technology in the next ten years. Any asshole with 300 bucks can shut down a US airport. A handful of domestic terrorists could shut down JFK, Atlanta, DFW, ORD, Denver, SFO and LAX and cripple air transportation. And not just for a few hours.
These things should be regulated and we need to think seriously about laws specific to drones used as weapons, or for surveillance. In this case I don’t think the government will be the problem so much as any rando with a joystick, or some militia group. Can also be used for direct partisan attacks, for example buzzing opposition voter lines or rallies.
I am absolutely not joking when I say we should be ready to play Ukraine to their Russia. Fill in that ‘we’ and that ‘they’ however you like.
But you can bet he’ll make abso-fucking-lutely sure the 1% get their tax cuts.
(Gift link):
Trump plan would limit disability benefits for older Americans
And of course the guy who competes daily with Stephen Miller to be the most evil motherfucker in this misbegotten administration is the one pushing to throw your disabled Grandma out on the street.
There are reports circulating about a South Carolina judge’s house burning down, starting with an explosion, and a couple of new reports at semi-news sites — there’s a Daily Mail article for instance.
Judge Diane Goldstein had imposed a temporary restraining order on South Carolina sending voter rolls to the DOJ. She was overruled.
No reports of any people killed. Her husband, at least one child and some grandchildren escaped unharmed. Possibly by leaping off a balcony.
Conspiracy theories forming as I tap this out on my iPad. Who knows, the currently unfounded conspiracy theories might be right. Or maybe it’s one of those perfectly normal partial house explosions.
The Daily Mail, which got indexed on Google news real fast, would like you to know that this was a $1.7M beach home, that her last name is Goldstein, that her husband’s last name is Goldstein, and manages to mention the name Goldstein an improbably large number of times, when “the judge” would be a fine replacement, if only for variety. Not something you can definitely say is antisemitism, but is certainly going to make the antisemites very aware that her last name is Goldstein.
@Gustopher:
The physics of cowons is a sadly undersubscribed field, imho.
Not to mention whan you start looking at Schrodingers cow: does the milk exist or not before you open the byre?
@Kathy:
@Gustopher:
@dazedandconfused:
Space elevators might be a wonderful thing to have.
But as of now, the materials for the elevator column lie within the realms of “unobtainium”.
Space elevators iirc would be possiible with current materials technology for the Moon, and likely Mars.
But then you have the entire problem of the required heavy lift from Earth to establish them in the first place inconveniently refusing to go away and stop being annoying.
A cooperative Earth a few hundred years from now could probably get the Moon and Mars systems done, if just for the lulz.
But then again, if my aunt had wheels, she’d be a bicycle.
@Mr. Prosser:
It’s an odd thing.
When in France, or Italy, the stone fruit in supermarkets, let alone in local markets, tends to be lovely.
In the UK, it’s mostly like chewing cardboard.
I have periodic desires to emigrate to France purely for the sheer wonderfulness of the peaches, nectarine. plums and (none stony, but the point still holds) melons and tomatoes.
When we used to do family holdays to France, a high point was always the first picnic with a fresh baguette, some pate, some cheese, and a selection of fruit.
(Plus a bottle of wine, of course. lol)
Why British supermarkets are so utterly incompetent in this remains a mystery.
Though it probably relates to France having shorter travel distances for ripe fruit, and more need to compete with local producer markets and locally supplied small grocers.
Horrifying spectacle of the day: “ICE” tries to abduct a man in Chicago. The give up in the face of resistance, inclduing from bystanders.
https://www.threads.com/@donlemonofficial/post/DPcaW8BkTB1
More horror shows:
Chicago
Portland
Washington, DC
@JohnSF:
I’m not sure there’s a stationary orbit for the Moon, given its very slow rotation and proximity to Earth.
In any case, the lack of atmosphere and lower gravity makes things like electromagnetic launch tracks fairly easy.
Mars would be easier, but one of its moons orbits within the path the elevator would take. You’d need to move it. If it could be used for raw material for the elevator, that would simplify things. The tailing would make a good counterweight.
@JohnSF:
I’ve enjoyed Ducasse and Trotter and Senderens and Achatz and Robuchon and Savoy and Ramsay, but there is no better meal than a fresh baguette, paté, cheese, fruit and wine.
When I was a kid living in Fouras, Charente, I’d be tasked with jumping on my three-speed and riding over to the boulangerie to pick up a baguette or a grand pain. So fresh, so hot, I could barely hold on to them. Crust so crisp you cut open a pain with it. A formative experience. All bread since then has been measured against that bread and found ever so slightly lacking.
@Michael Reynolds:
Oh my.
Holiday in France, and I get to the local boulangerie in the morning.
“Un pain long, si’l vous plait.”
I’ve eaten in Michelin star restaurants a few times (though not as often as I might wish, lol) but as you say: “fresh baguette, paté, cheese, fruit and wine” on a sunny day in France, and I’m more than content.
After that, British “sliced white” just ain’t in contention.
(Though the Italians aguably have even better tomatoes.)