A Lunar Elevator Through the Earth-Moon L1 Point: Tether Length, Tension and Transit Budgets

This study sizes the system named in its title from stated physical relations and a stated operating basis, and reports the result as SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED. The operating principle is tether balanced at the Earth-Moon Lagrange point with one end on the lunar surface. The lunar elevator is a civilian transport system intended to move cargo and passengers between the lunar surface and the balance-point station; it carries no payload other than transport cargo and station equipment. Every performance figure is computed by the deposited script from its inputs rather than asserted, and the headline outcomes include distance of the balance point from the lunar centre of 5.66e+04 kilometres; ribbon length from surface anchor to the balance-point station of 5.49e+04 kilometres; ribbon tension at the balance-point station with a climber on the span of 47.6 kilonewtons; counterweight mass including regolith ballast of 1.64e+04 tonnes. Mass, power, time and energy budgets are assembled from components so they can be audited line by line, off-design behaviour is discussed openly, and the limits of the sizing are stated in full. The design is presented as a civilian system throughout, with its governing constraint identified and quantified rather than merely encountered.