Interesting Point on Space Elevator for Somebody to Check Out

[unca.alby]

OK, I just thought of this, having read more science fiction than is healthy.

I can not remember which specific story ... but ... they built a space elevator on Earth, then said, "Hey, that's a great idea, lets do Mars next ..."

But the problem was, to get up the geosynchronous point, the elevator needed to be higher than the orbit of one of the little moons. Meaning of course, that there would be periodic near misses and an eventual collision.

In the story, they resolved this little issue by setting up a harmonic vibration on the elevator. It would wobble back and forth, in exact time with the moon's orbital period. They even put a way-station there so tourists could watch the moon zip past.

Now I haven't checked any of this mathematically, so I was wondering, does anybody else remember which story I'm thinking about, and whether this would actually work out like that, and does it mean anything in particular for the Per Aspera game mechanics?

[chotnik]

Earth's geostationary orbit is 35,786 km above mean sea level.
Our Moon minimum orbit is 350,000 km.

But for Mars this is true - while Martian geostationary orbit altitude is only 13,634 km, Phobos orbit is only ~6000km above ground level.
But in the game if I remember correctly you can crash Phobos into Mars, so that solves the problem (Deimos is higher than GEO).

[unca.alby]

Originally posted by chotnik:

Earth's geostationary orbit is 35,786 km above mean sea level.
Our Moon minimum orbit is 350,000 km.

But for Mars this is true - while Martian geostationary orbit altitude is only 13,634 km, Phobos orbit is only ~6000km above ground level.
But in the game if I remember correctly you can crash Phobos into Mars, so that solves the problem (Deimos is higher than GEO).

Thanks for check ... and, FYI, the game has you crash Deimos to the surface. Deimos is the smaller one, so I guess it's easier to crash, even if it is higher up.

So I guess it's Phobos the Space Elevator would have to be on the lookout for!