skyports

using high speed lifts travellers go vertical straight up 5klms into the sky to skyports tethered from the earth. Low gravity and velocities matching the surface of the earth and constant refuelling mean high altitude and low gravity planes mean planes only touchdown for maintenence and are otherwise in constant flight.

would this actually work? i mean the skyport would need to 'pull' on the tether to keep it vertical so the lifts can traverse - so it has to be high enough to want to 'fly off' into space and hence pull on the tether. how high is this? what forces are we talking? could cables / steel really hold that force? How long would it take a high-speed lift to travel up to it? I think the world's fastest lift is 12.5m/s or 45klm/h. If it was 10 klms up that means a lift trip of about 15 minutes - how high does the elevator actually have to go?

I've heard somewhere that the vertical tether is actaully now being used as a cheaper way to get payload into space. As with a commercial airliner almost all of its fuels are used on take off, for a spacecraft overcoming earth's gravity is the hardest part. Using a low speed lightweight object (such as a lift) would require relatively no energy which could easily be provided by solar panels on the floating airport.

The hardest part would be getting the actual airport into space. each building component would need to be sent up. but maybe the tether could be installed first and allow progressive delivery and assemblage of parts into the final design.

each city would have a skyport and the actual flying craft would just bounce across the atmosphere flying only directly north or south, with the earth orbitting below. for example, it takes me 24hrs plus stopover time to get to england from sydney, as the plane is fighting the atmosphere and gravity the whole way. the earth rotates thru to london in just 11 hrs. if the distance of travel is only from the exact longitude of syndey, then directly north until it aligns with London's latitude (there is a clever way of saying this but I don't know what that is) and given at that altitude there is only enough atmosphere to control the flight direction, so fuel consumption could be massively reduced.