Skyhook Equator. Orbiting Rotating Launcher Animator-Calculator

Intriguing. Entertaining!

iPhone16, and it seems to display for me just as your screenshot, the width displays more compact (less blue space).

The drop downs do not display for me; I didn’t alter my settings, so this was expected.

All in all, an engaging online calculator, even though not designed for mobile devices.

Thank you Doorman for your feedback.

That my Skyhook Equator program displays anything useful on a mobile device is more a testament to the device than to any intention or work on my part. I hadn't even looked at it on my own mobile until just now.

Your program looks awesome, though I'm not a rocket scientist so can't evaluate it the way you probably want. Are there plans to build a skyhook such as this? The cost would be extreme in my opinion. Also I think the tether would need to be stretchable so zylon might be too stiff. Nylon deteriorates when in the sun for a while. Being in upper atmosphere would add to that problem it seems, so the material used is a big problem to overcome.

"Your program looks awesome, though I'm not a rocket scientist so can't evaluate it the way you probably want."

Thanks StandardsGuy. Yes I would like rocket scientists to evaluate my calculator.

"Are there plans to build a skyhook such as this?"

Skyhook (structure) - Wikipedia

- has some information about proposals / plans. When searching the internet for other plans, best to pair the word "skyhook" with another like "space" or "orbit" to filter out other kinds of skyhooks.

The one other plan I would like to mention here and now is my Lunar Skyhook / Rotovator spreadsheet whose numbers suggest to me the possibility of building a combined lunar skyhook / space-station – a 250km – 300km long skyhook for landing and taking off from the moon also serving as a 1-G space-station.

"The cost would be extreme in my opinion."

Space megastructures - mega-costs.

"Also I think the tether would need to be stretchable so zylon might be too stiff."

Thank you for raising the important characteristic of stiffness.

The skyhook concept is also known as a "space-tether", but I suggest there are advantages of engineering a skyhook with greater lateral stiffness than the term "tether" implies.

In my opinion, a skyhook should be stiff enough laterally (stiff like a fencing sword rather than flexible like a whip) so that the rotation rate could be accelerated and braked by use of a counter-rotating flywheel.

The skyhook should be constructed in a "parking orbit" and able to be returned to that parking orbit at will for maintenance or to avoid collision with another critical low earth satellite, such as the International Space Station or the Hubble Space Telescope.

The skyhook would also have to absorb the shock of suddenly being loaded and unloaded by whatever it is that is being hooked or unhooked. Also the effective load would vary with each rotation - a maximum when hooking and a minimum at the hook's highest altitude, when gravitation partially opposes the centripetal acceleration.

"Nylon deteriorates when in the sun for a while. Being in upper atmosphere would add to that problem it seems, so the material used is a big problem to overcome."

There's very little in the way of atmosphere up there (most at the lowest, hooking altitude) but what there is, is fast-moving space debris and damaging radiation. So engineering a skyhook to last would be a difficult engineering problem.