I a rope could be tethered to a space shuttle and dropped to earth, could a person on earth affect its flight?

Question

Could we hold it in place and alter its orbit around the earth? Would it be possible to pull it back to earth? Why or why not?

Remember this is hypothetical... I know it wouldn't really be possible, but if it where...
Could we hold it in place and alter its orbit around the earth? Would it be possible to pull it back to earth? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Your question makes a LOT of assumptions, the main ones of which are:

1) The shuttle is in perfect geosynchronous orbit, so you don't have this rope whipping across the landscape at 19,000 miles per hour

2) The rope is both strong enough that it can actually hold the tension produced by the weight of several hundred miles of it AND still thick enough to grab easily, and

3) it's completely non-conductive, because as the Earth turns, even a little movement through the magnetosphere could produce large static charges in any conductive material, so when you grabbed the rope, you wouldn't get electrocuted.

If all that were the case, then yes, you could indeed alter its orbit by pulling on the rope. Since it is assumed to be in perfect geosynchrony, the net forces upon it are zero before you start pulling, so any more force toward the earth will tend to deflect its path inward, assuming you have enough force behind it to change its angular momentum (its inertia, basically). It's just like pulling on the mooring line of a boat tied to the pier -- you can (slowly) moved a boat toward the pier, even though the boat weighs several tons and you could never lift it, because all you need to do is overcome its inertia and the water doesn't offer enough resistance to keep it from moving. The shuttle would be the same -- once you gave it a sufficient tug, it would drift in towards Earth on its own.

Answer 2

Well actually this is not a hypothetical question. There are plans to build a space elevator. You put a cable from space down to the earth.

If the weight of the cable is right (I think you need to have something at the end to balance it out, but I am not sure) then it will just float in space.

If a cable connected to the space shuttle is in perfect balance, then anything that changes this balance will change the orbit of the space shuttle.

It is a bit like a rope and pulley system. If you have load to lift and it is balanced by a weight on the other end, then you can lift even the heaviest load with your little finger.

The cable would be like this. Half of it would be pulling down under gravity and half with be thrown out by the shuttle on the end spinning around the earth. You could then move the shuttle with the power of your little finger.

Answer 3

This, as mentioned above, has already gone beyond the hypothetical. Preliminary engineering has been done and it appears that current light-weight high-tensile strength will fill the bill. The tether would be geostationary orbit length (22,000 miles) with a substantial mass that would include adjusting thrusters. There are competitions currently running to spur the technology
http://www.elevator2010.org/site/index.html

This is an exciting experiment, capable of greatly reducing the cost of overcoming Earth's gravity. Imagine cities in orbit. Personally I think this is where the money should go rather than toward a permanent moon base; much better and sooner return on investment.

Answer 4

The previous answer was way incorrect. Things burn up on entry to the atmosphere because of the speed they are moving compressing air molecules in front of the object entering. if something were to be stretched between the earth and space common sense wold say nothing would happen as long as the object in space was traveling fast enough to keep the line outstretched . too slow and you have reentry of the craft and lots of heat. too fast and you will either have reentry with more heat or you would bounce off the atmosphere and snap the tether.
these are by best attempts using common sense and logic. if you want something more scientific wait for someone else to answer. jeeze people answer fast. I was referring to the rope burning up as being wrong not the answer longer than mine. which is a good answer by the way.

Answer 5

The weight of the rope would probably weigh more than the space shuttle.

Answer 6

typically the go back and forth is in low earth orbit and the time is relative to its distance above the exterior of the earth. in many cases about ninety minutes for one orbit. At decrease altitudes, the drag from earth's surroundings is larger so decrease and quicker orbits are not any further in many cases used. the gap go back and forth isn't designed to achieve the severe altitude required for geo-synchronous orbit and for this reason hasn't ever been used for that purpose. The gas required to achieve that altitude is too large to make it useful for a motorcar that enormous. that is more beneficial a count of being useful and budget friendly than that is a technical difficulty.

Answer 7

the rope would burn up in the earths atomosphere... even if it was made of steel or carbon...