The Phobos Project

Construction beginning/end

Martian space tether

In the wake of similar projects on Earth nearing completion, and with the Second Exodus in full swing, the construction of a Martian space tether is seen as essential to the continued economic development of the Mars colony. A space tether would dramatically reduce the cost of moving stuff up and down the planet's gravity well. With the technology already tried and tested on the two Earth space tethers, a consortium of corporations involved in the Mars colonisation programme gain UEF backing to initiate the Phobos Project.   Building the Martian space tether would be a herculean engineering effort and a unique challenge - primarily because of the choice of the Martian moon Phobos as the tether anchorpoint. Until the construction of the tether Phobos was in a low orbit, intersecting the equator regularly (twice every orbital period of 11h 6m). It is decided early on that a collision between the elevator and the 22.2 km diameter moon would have to be avoided by moving the moon itself out of the area, and if they were going to move the moon, why not use it as the anchorpoint?   Within months of the project being greenlit, rockets and mass drivers are attached to Phobos, and begin firing. Slowly the moon's orbit is arrested and its orbital distance increased. Within eighteen months it arrives in a geo-stationary orbit over the Martian equator. Automated manufactories on the surface of the moon begin using the moonrock to construct the bundles of carbon nanotubes that will become the tether. The caverns created by the tunnelling will later be pressurised and form part of the subterranean portion of the expanded John Carter Space Port.   It will be another eight years before the tether touches down at the base station atop Pavonis Mons on the surface of Mars. Anchorpoint, the town that grows up around the base station, quickly becomes a large transit facility and the second largest colonial settlement on the planet.