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Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz
Okay a few people have mentioned the centrifugal force with respect to a space elevator.
That is not at all how it works.
It's not like the earth is swinging the station around and the only thing keeping it in orbit is the teather.
To figure out why that's the case, I recommend tying something to the ground and seeing if it swings around.
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Well in your example, gravity has something to do with it not flying around, along with the mass of the thing you are tying and the length of your rope.
If that's not how it works, if you're just dropping a rope from a station, what's the counterweight for?
Centrifugal force is exactly how it works, at least for the common idea of space elevators:
From Wikipedia:
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A space elevator for Earth would consist of a cable anchored to the Earth's equator, reaching into space. By attaching a counterweight at the end (or by further extending the cable upward for the same purpose), the center of mass is kept well above the level of geostationary orbit. Upward centrifugal force from the Earth's rotation ensures that the cable remains stretched taut, fully countering the downward gravitational pull. Once above the geostationary level, climbers would have weight in the upward direction as the centrifugal force overpowers gravity. (The diagram is to scale. The height of the counterweight varies by design and a typical, workable height is shown.)
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I guess you could have the teather drop down and not be under tension, but you'd need the counterweight to offset the mass of the rope being dropped still and I don't know how that would work since the counterweight would just move away in a different orbit as you reeled it out to counter the tether dropping. Some kind of station keeping rockets, I don't know that seems a LOT harder to pull off. I haven't thought much about a space elevator that wasn't under tension.