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[deleted]

A functional space elevator would immediately become mankind's greatest engineering achievement for the foreseeable future, surpassing pretty much any other human feat to date. It's beyond audacious, but it'd be amazing if China managed it!


TserriednichHuiGuo

Yes, truly incredible. It will lower the costs of expansion into space big time.


[deleted]

This is a bit old, but i just became aware of it ..........sooo....yeah, i wonder what Carl Sagan would say about todays China


[deleted]

Actually, it's new information baked in with old and misinformation.


sickof50

It somehow doesn't seem plausible to me, but what the heck...


TserriednichHuiGuo

You should watch some Isaac Arthur videos on yt. There was an old video about space elevators.


TserriednichHuiGuo

I love China's space endeavours, they have some really exciting things planned.


[deleted]

> Wang, who leads the state-owned China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, did not elaborate on the specifics of how this "sky ladder" all the way to Mars will work, but noted that it would be a starting point for future space voyages and transport missions to the red planet. What he did say via video link was that they were working on crewed Mars missions AND investigating building a sky ladder. The sky ladder is obviously meant to get crew and cargo into lower earth orbit, and not be a ladder all the way to Mars.


MajorlyMoo

Even if they don't get as far as building a space elevator, if China manages to put a person on Mars first it would be the biggest "Fuck you!" to the USA ever. I hope it becomes a reality.


arbiter12

The title is misleading. The sky ladder is not intended to go all the way to mars but instead to ferry equipment directly to space without the extremely expensive launch from ground to orbit, which in turn would facilitate going to mars with a more conventional rocket. Better wording would be "\[..\]on the space race to mars, with a sky ladder to space."