China has already revealed a roadmap for its upcoming crewed missions to Mars, but they may have something else planned that seems to be straight out of a science fiction movie: a Sky Ladder. Simply put, this space elevator of sorts aims to help transport humans and cargo to the Red Planet at a fraction of what it would normally cost.
The plans were laid out for the first time after China successfully landed a rover on Mars in mid-May, and it involve three stages: robots to retrieve samples to help look for a suitable base area, then a manned mission the planet followed by construction of a colony. For human to successfully colonize Mars, crews would have to be able to use the planet’s resources, including extracting any water beneath its surface, generating oxygen on-site and electricity. Now once this is setup, the carbon nanotube “Sky Ladder” would first be transported using a manned or cargo space capsule to a space station before it is relaunched, which means a large space station in geostationary orbit is needed.
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