Space Elevator

I love this page and I donated, but I was (naively) expecting it to get to geosynchronous altitude, which is the actual top of a space elevator.

Of course, that would require a page 420 times longer, and I don't know if a browser would even support it.

I mean the idea isn't actually real or practical. It's a thought experiment that makes for some fun calculus. No one's actually going to try and build one.

actually geosync isn't the top. You need to extend beyond that & have a counterweight that balances the weight of everything below the point of geosynchronous orbit. Otherwise it would fall down.

From the same site, there's the Size of Space page:

<https://neal.fun/size-of-space/>

There are a few sites which let you scroll through the solar system, from the Sun or Earth IIRC. Here's one:

<https://onotherplanets.com/solarwalk>

Ah, and "If the Moon Were Only One Pixel", which is what I'd had in mind, shared by @stared <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45641839>:

<https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem....> (2014)

(HN discussions: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44266828> (4 months ago), <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21735528> (6 years ago) <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32936581> (3 years ago).

Counterweight or just more cable. IIRC it's 170k (miles? kilometers?) if you use no counterweight. And note how fast that outer end is moving, it can throw things pretty hard.