CanadaPlus , 16 days ago

Ah shoot, it looks like you posted a minute after my edit, and probably didn’t see it.

Orbital mechanics is big-boy stuff, and gets really subtle the moment you’re doing anything non-trivial. This is just two-body, so in theory it should be doable, but the tether pulling out energy as it goes along makes it more complicated. It’s a bit much tonight, but maybe I’ll give it a shot later. One thing that’s clear just from the equation for orbit energies is that there’s no limit to how much energy can end up inside the weight itself, as it gets faster in proportion with increased height.