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SpaceNut ... it appears we do not have a topic for the large family of inventions that fall into the general category of skyhooks.
This topic is inspired by the popularity of the SSTO topic.
A skyhook may be defined in a variety of ways. I'll open with the one published many years ago in L5 News.
My memory of the article has faded, but the essence that I remember is that a vessel in orbit extends a cable in front with a length equal to the altitude of the vessel. The cable is equipped with a hook to engage with a payload package on the ground. The hook includes a propulsion unit capable of giving the hook a downward velocity so that it descends to the surface of the Earth to pick up the customer capsule. The cable has no tension until this point. As slack is removed, the cable absorbs the tension caused by the inertial of the customer capsule, and the capsule is drawn up and forward. Meanwhile, the vessel exerts propulsive force equal to that needed to lift the customer capsule and provide forward momentum.
Eventually the customer capsule reaches LEO with a residual upward velocity. The skyhook is released and the customer capsule continues on it's own, while the skyhook and cable rotate back to the forward position where the remaining fuel in the hook component stop the rotation.
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This post is reserved for posts that I hope will be contributed by NewMars members over time.
Skyhooks have a long history, so posts about that history would be welcome additions to this topic.
Members of the forum have (on occasion) even invented their own versions of skyhooks, so links to these would be welcome.
This topic has the potential to become a repository of links, text, images and whatever else members might come up with.
The practical feasibilty of a skyhook for LEO-snatch operations seems low (to me at least), but there might be a scenario where it would work well. Mars might be an example of a location where the strength of existing cable might be sufficient to support operations using this technique.
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An example of the concept applied to Mars is available in this topic:
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=10703
The topic is dedicated to the Cycloid concept for delivery of materials to the surface of a celestial object, and retrieval of materials from the surface.
Here is a link to a short movie showing the concept at Mars:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/nz4nwi0r … rav8t&dl=0
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