Talk:Tether satellite

2006
This is a fascinating article, but it doesn't actually say how a space tether works.Simondrake 01:29, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Here's the content, if someone feels like rewriting it into a decent article: Picture a metal sphere orbiting around a body like the Earth.  The orbital path of the sphere passes through the sphere's center of mass.  If the sphere is deformed into a cube or a long rod, the orbit will not change, because the shape of an orbiting object doesn't matter.  All that matters in the center of mass.  If the sphere is deformed into a long thin rod, the orbit will be unchanged, however, the rod will tend to point through the center of earth due to tidal forces.


 * Satellites close to the earth orbit very quickly and those farther away orbit slowly. Since the long thin rod orbits at the speed required at the center of mass, the end of the long thin rod that is closer to the earth will be moving at less than orbital speed and will fall toward the earth.  At the same time, the end away from the earth will be orbiting faster than orbital speed, and will fall away from the earth.  These two actions will eventually result in the rod being aimed right at the earth's center.  Tidal force like these are apparently seen over lengths as short as the length of the space shuttle, although the forces don't get very strong until the long thin rod is kilometers in length.


 * Last step: imagine the long thin rod being deformed until it is a string, with no appreciable strength in bending.  If it is long enough, the tidal forces pull tether taught, and it will behave as a single object orbiting around its center of mass.  In practice, this is done by taking two satellites and propelling them slowly apart while a long tether is deployed between them.  If the tether is conductive, then it is a wire moving through a magnetic field (the Earth's) and a charge applied to the tether can generate motive force, making a satellite's orbit higher or lower.  This can be used to maintain a satellite's orbit (station keeping) or de-orbit an obsolete satellite.  Speculative uses:  a space station at either end of a tether will have tidal "gravity".  A tether long enough to reach geosynchronous orbit becomes a space elevator or "beanstalk" enabling cheap transit to space.  A massive tethered satellite in an elliptical orbit can drop the "bottom" tip of the tether into the atmosphere to catch a payload and drag it up to orbit.  A spinning pair of tethered satellites (called a "rotovator" by Dr. Forward) can also lift payloads to orbit and have the further ability to throw them beyond earth's gravity well.  Komodon 05:09, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

TSS-1 deployment fault
The cause of this failure was personally communicated to me by one of the astronauts who participated, and must be documented in the incident investigation findings, in the subsequent document. Wwheaton (talk) 22:29, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Citations and sources are needed
Please be sure that all additions to the Tether satellite article are  verifiable. Any new items added to the article should have inline citations for each claim made.

I have removed the major part of the unsourced material that had been previously tagged citation needed for at least a couple of months with no sources added. If you have a source, please feel free to add that material back in, along with the citation. Cheers. N2e (talk) 18:09, 30 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The Tether satellite article is interesting, but a lot of the claims remain unsourced. If any interested editors want the currently fact-tagged (but unverified) assertions to remain, now would be a very good time to get them reliably sourced.  Otherwise, I will intend to (temporarily?) remove a bunch of the claims that have fact-tags over two months old sometime in February 2011.  N2e (talk) 02:11, 25 January 2011 (UTC)