"Ron Wanttaja" wrote in message
...

And when you come down, you have to get rid of all the 25,000 FPS.
Orbital
spacecraft take some small portion away with rockets, and scrub off
the
rest in atmospheric friction. The X-Prize folks have a far simpler
problem. Hopefully, that'll be addressed in the Y-Prize. :-)

Nice explanation, Ron. In a steady-state situation, with fuel going
up the tether and ore coming down the tether, the 25K fps forces
balance. Also angular momemtum.

You could have just recommended Arthur Clarke's "The Fountains of
Paradise". Since you didn't, I will! ;-)