Even then. If you're building a million satellites, they only need to be about 42 meters long for you to make them into a contiguous ring in LEO. Smaller (22.5m) or fewer (537,000) for the same in a 200 km orbit around Mars.

Do that, and you can quickly bootstrap an orbital ring and make rockets obsolete from surface to orbit of either body.

In the case of Mars, the planet-wide dust storms make it a good idea to locate your PV off-planet, and an orbital ring is also very convenient for that.

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lefra 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe I missed something obvious, but how does an orbital ring make rockets obsolete for surface to orbit trips?

	▲	ben_w 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Because it's held up by being in orbit (strictly: a bit faster than that), you can by the same process as a maglev hang a stationary-with-respect-to-ground cable off it; and because the cable is only as long as your orbit is high (~200 km or whatever) rather than the 36,000 km you'd need for a full space elevator, we don't need to invent any supermaterials for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_ring

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Y_Y 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What would you like to make this orbital ring out of?

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ben_w 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Structually, it barely matters. The physics works even if each element isn't joined contiguously to the next, it's just that if you do make it contiguous you can also use it for power delivery and worry less about elements drifting out of alignment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_ring

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dvh 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Pangolin scales?

	▲	ben_w 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Goodness no, all subspecies are listed on Wikipedia as having various kinds of "Threatened" conservation statuses.