If I’m not mistaken, geosynchronous orbits are those where the object in space appears to be “stopped” when viewed from the ground, meaning that from any spot on earth you might be able to look straight up to see a stationary satellite. Would it be possible therefore to lower a line through the atmosphere to touch the ground and possibly bring up supplies (that’d be one heck of a winch). Yeah, obviously the jet stream, airplanes, birds and the occasional hurricane would make such a proposition impossible. Wouldn’t it?
UNtil recently this was thought to be impossible, but some scientists are now proposing a space elevator that will do exactly that:
Practically speaking though, we are probably decades away from actually doing this.
I guess we’re going to find out. This group of very serious people plans to lower a line (well, really a belt) from a geosynchronously orbiting station, attach it to earth, and run an elevator up and down it. It seems like they’ve put a lot of thought into it and the basic theory is sound enough.
Previous space elevator threads:
OK, I don’t know why that submitted, but let’s try again.
Previous space elevator threads, since Guests cannot search:
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I first saw this idea postulated in a book by Arthur C. Clarke, The Fountains of Paradise. Although it was science fiction, the idea always seemed reasonable to me. Looks like he may have been right!
The late physicist Charles Sheffield independently conceived the idea for his novel The Web Between the Worlds, published essentially simultaneously with Clarke’s novel. One of the great coincidences in the history of sf.
When I was a child, there was a dramatic radio show (yes, I’m that old 
) that occasionally did what, at the time, passed as science fiction. One story was called Stairway to the Sun, in which a system of stairs and plateaus had been built or discovered that reached from earth to “other places.” I wasn’t clear on what the other places were, I was 6, so I don’t remeber much.