After completing the fixing of the ground end of the first cable of the space elevator, a spacecraft roared into flight, pulling the other end of the cable and began to rise into the air, climbing to an altitude of 45,000 kilometers above the surface of Ganymede. The other end of the 45,000-kilometer-long cable extends to this height, almost fully stretched. The cable has a diameter of about 7 centimeters and a length of 45,000 kilometers. It seems to be extremely heavy and cannot be pulled by a medium-sized spacecraft. But the fact is that such a long and thick cable has a total mass of only more than 170 tons, and can be stretched into space by the current spacecraft. After the stretching work was completed, a heavy spacecraft loaded with heavy ballast flew over at a speed exceeding the escape velocity of Ganymede. At this speed, it should have escaped the gravity of Ganymede and entered space. However, due to the extra thrust of the engine, it did not fly away, but was "pressed" here. But soon, it won't have to burn extra fuel to maintain orbit. The reason was simple. Some clones in space suits floated over and fixed one end of the cable connected to the underground of Ganymede to the heavy cargo ship which was fully loaded with ballast and had a total mass of 15,000 tons. A load-bearing structure has already been set up on the cargo ship, which can evenly distribute the tension of the cable to every part of the hull to prevent it from being damaged. The connection was complete, and the next moment, the heavy cargo ship's engines shut down, losing the thrust that kept it so high yet still next to Ganymede.
Under the influence of inertia, it began to fly away from Ganymede. The slightly bent cable gradually straightened. When it completely turned into a straight line, the huge pulling force from the 10,000-meter stratum of Ganymede passed through this cable, directly spanning the long distance of 45,000 kilometers and extending to the heavy cargo ship. Its movement suddenly stopped. A mass of 15,000 tons was firmly held by this cable with a diameter of only 7 centimeters. The cable was stretched straight. Looking at the data coming from various sensors, Li Qingsong nodded with satisfaction. Everything is as expected. Once the first cable was built, subsequent work became much easier. More cables were continuously produced on 2,500 production lines. One end of these cables was also fixed under the rock layer ten thousand meters deep. They were entangled with the previous cables along the way and finally connected to the heavy cargo ship. The cable of the space elevator began to grow thicker rapidly. Similarly, at the end of the space, with the heavy cargo ship as the base point, a larger amount of ballast was attached. As long as it is within the force limit of the cable, the heavier the ballast at the space end, the greater the centrifugal force, and the more cargo the cable can transport. In addition to the terminal, a space base located in synchronous orbit needs to be built. In a synchronous orbit, the orbital angular velocity of an artificial object is the same as the rotational angular velocity of Ganymede. Therefore, it can rotate around Ganymede while remaining relatively stationary relative to a certain location on the surface of Ganymede. When viewed from the ground, it looks like the object is always suspended somewhere in the air without moving. The space terminal base is equivalent to a "dock" in space. In the future, all goods entering or leaving the surface of Ganymede will be transferred here. Large-scale construction has also started on the ground side. The docks, lifting, transshipment, power supply, railway lines, etc. appeared one by one in two and a half years. When the last cable was wound up and the cable diameter reached the predetermined 10 meters, Li Qingsong used a special lightweight steel plate to directly wrap the entire 45,000-kilometer cable to block external influences.
The ground base has been completed, and the "cable car" used to undertake the ascent and descent tasks of the space elevator has also been developed. The cable car is semi-circular in shape, with an inner diameter of 10 meters, which fits the space elevator cable, and an outer diameter of 20 meters. As a result, it has a cargo area of about 110 square meters. A cable car is five meters high, with a total internal volume of 550 cubic meters, and can carry up to 300 tons of cargo. If it is manned, it can carry about 300 clones if comfort is not sought. When building the main cable, Li Qingsong had already pre-buried the power supply lines and electromagnetic coils. These cable cars can then use electromagnetic force to stick to the cable and perform ascent or descent operations. Its maximum operating speed can reach three times the speed of sound, which is about one kilometer per second. At this speed, it only takes about 12 hours to rise from the surface to the synchronous orbit of Ganymede, about 43,000 kilometers away. At the space end base, it will unload the cargo it carries and then transport it to other planets or bases via spacecraft. Then it will turn down and transport the cargo from other planets or bases from the synchronous orbit to the surface of Ganymede. This completes an exchange of goods. Under the control of Li Qingsong, this cable car can make one trip every two minutes and can send or receive 700 trips to space a day. Based on an average cargo load of 200 tons per trip, this space elevator can send about 140,000 tons of cargo to space a day and receive about 140,000 tons at the same time, for a total of 280,000 tons! That’s over 100 million tons a year! In the past, to send and receive 100 million tons of cargo, Li Qingsong needed to prepare thousands of dual-use aerospace spacecraft to travel between space and the surface, and he was busy all day long without stopping. Hundreds of millions of tons of fuel alone are consumed every year. Not only is it costly, but it is also extremely troublesome. But now, with the completion of this space elevator, everything is different. The cable car uses electricity, and it consumes about 4 million kilowatt-hours of electricity for a full-power voyage. There are a total of 1,400 up and down trips in one day, which is approximately 6 billion kWh of electricity. To generate 6 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, with the power generation efficiency of the nuclear fission power plant that Li Qingsong currently controls, less than one ton of uranium 235 is needed to produce enough electricity. Although uranium mining is relatively complicated, the change from consuming hundreds of millions of tons of fuel each year to consuming just over 300 tons each year now is a change from underground to the sky. At this moment, the space elevator has been put into use, and it has been running at full power since the beginning. On this side of the space elevator, one upward cable car after another rushed along the cable like a cannonball, and instantly disappeared into space. At the same time, from the endless sky, one cable car after another was speeding down to the base on the ground. Railway lines extend from the ground base, and countless heavy-loaded trains roar in with cargo, unload again, and leave again fully loaded. On the other side of space, one heavy cargo ship after another also came and went fully loaded. This space elevator truly opens up the transportation channel between space and the earth's surface.