Bridging two planets with a space elevator?

[Xriqxa]

Dan has mentioned that Chris is working on space elevators, which is really cool. But, is it possible to "bridge" two tidally locked binary planets with a space elevator?

What about Doming, for planets that are too small to support atmospheres?

[Xriqxa]

Well?

[Cosmos]

No.

[Xriqxa]

Okay...

[JAW1002]

Sigh*

[Greenleaf]

But, is it possible to "bridge" two tidally locked binary planets with a space elevator?

We are working on the more generalized concept of "tethers" which should allow us to connect any two bodies and thereby a series of bodies. We are however aiming for real material properties, which complicates matters immensely since "soft" materials, such as steel, is not strong enough for most cases, and "hard" materials such as carbon nano tubes are a pain to handle with explicit numerical integration, which is what we currently use.

The constant challenge with this work is that everything should be right, it should be stable and it should be fast. That is why we haven't yet spent the time to perfect this feature, but it is (almost) on the top of my list.

To let you know I am not just making this up, here is a composition of two old videos I found.

http://youtu.be/TWKiru7Nq-4

[Chris]

Dan has mentioned that Chris is working on space elevators, which is really cool.

As can be seen above, it's Thomas who works on space elevators (Tethers)