Somewhere, RAH is smiling.
That’s a Rube Goldberg device.
Very large rockets are more likely to work and be practical.
You can generate oxygen and hydrogen fuel easily...make the booster re-usable and the whole thing is pretty cheap to operate.
I’m sure there are many objections but a moon station with the necessary elements to exploit moon resources seems to be a good long term objective and the things we could learn with a telescope and moon geology program before the completion of the base would be very beneficial.
StartTram is a pipe-dream.
We need to get a good sized iron asteroid into a stable geosych orbit.
Then ii’s really simple - just build a simple elevator to the now stable asteroid. Now out of the worst part of the gravity well, getting to the L5 point to trade over to a Highliner will get where you need to go...
All very simple and explained decades ago — using the technology of the times.
They seem to have forgotten something...
What about surviving acceleration from zero to nearly 9 KM/S in 30 seconds? Just off the top of my head, without really doing any math, isn’t that about 800G?
Mark
escape velocity is 11km/s. You’re not going to save any energy using a vacuum tube,, All you’re doing is mortgaging it.
The author doesn't even know the difference between power and energy. The whole story is a pipe dream. Pun intended.
Sounds like they read The Millennial Project...
https://www.amazon.com/Millennial-Project-Colonizing-Galaxy-Eight/dp/0316771651