The launch cadence is an interesting topic that I haven’t had a chance to tackle. The rotational frequency limits how often you can boost stuff.
Since time is money you would want a shorter and faster tether, but a shorter time of rotation means that your time window to dock with the tether is smaller, so there’s an optimization problem there as well.
It’s a little easier when you’ve got catapults on the moon’s surface. You can have two running side by side and transfer energy between them electrically. So load up catapult #1, spin it up, launch the payload, and then transfer the remaining energy to catapult #2. You can get much higher launch cadence that way.
The launch cadence is an interesting topic that I haven’t had a chance to tackle. The rotational frequency limits how often you can boost stuff.
Since time is money you would want a shorter and faster tether, but a shorter time of rotation means that your time window to dock with the tether is smaller, so there’s an optimization problem there as well.
It’s a little easier when you’ve got catapults on the moon’s surface. You can have two running side by side and transfer energy between them electrically. So load up catapult #1, spin it up, launch the payload, and then transfer the remaining energy to catapult #2. You can get much higher launch cadence that way.