3D Space Elevator Tether Simulator

Tether Design

Counterweight mass 50 t

Anchor altitude 1.50× GEO

Material

Logistics

Climber fleet size 4

Climb speed 200 km/h

Rotation time-scale 2000×

Peak tension

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Peak stress

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Design survives its own tension?

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Tether length

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Cable mass

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How it works

The tether corotates with Earth, so every element along it feels gravity pulling in (GM/r²) and a centrifugal effect pushing out (ω²r); the two cancel exactly at geostationary radius. Cutting the cable at radius r and summing the net force on everything beyond that cut gives its tension there — highest at GEO, tapering to zero at the ground anchor and at the counterweight. The tether's visible shape here is a real body-of-revolution built from that stress profile: it bulges where an optimally-tapered cable would need to be thickest, and color runs from cool (low stress) to hot red (near the material's tensile limit).

f(r) = ω²r − GM/r²
T(r) = ∫ᵣ^top λ(r′)·f(r′) dr′ + Mc·f(top)

Counterweight mass — anchored beyond GEO; its outward pull is what keeps the entire tether taut.
Anchor altitude — how far past GEO the counterweight orbits; farther out needs less mass but more cable.
Climber fleet — cargo capsules climbing simultaneously at staggered altitudes, the actual logistics throughput of the system.
Rotation time-scale — Earth's real day takes 24 hours; this speeds the corotation up so you can see it turn.

Real-world relevance: the cable's true diameter-to-length ratio is thousands of times thinner than drawn here — it is exaggerated so the taper is visible at all.

Earth (rotating) Tether (stress-colored) Counterweight Climbers

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