Powering Climbers Using Mechanical Waves

This presentation from the 2025 International Space Development Conference 2025 looks into the limits of power transmission to a space elevator climber using mechanical waves on the tether itself. It offers a refresher on mechanical impedance, and uses it to calculate the power that can be transferred as a function of wave amplitude. Since that power is insufficient to power a climber, some options are proposed to allow injection of more power for a given amplitude: tapering the tether so it is wider at the base, and using resonance. The effects of quadratic atmospheric drag are studied, and it is found that there is an upper bound to the power that can be transferred through the atmosphere by a given tether, as increasing amplitude at the base will not lead to increasing amplitude in space past a certain point. Transverse waves are found to not be able to support sufficient amplitude with reasonable mechanical impedances. The original version of this presentation can be found here.