Mars and outer planets trading post.

Mars' Sky Hook.

The Red Planet.

The space age began on the 4th October 1957 when the Russians launched the first made made object, Sputnik 1, into orbit. This followed shortly after on the 3rd November 1957 when Sputnik 2 took the first living creature, a dog called Laika, into orbit. The next major step was on the 12th April 1961 when the Russian Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space in Vostok 1.
      On the 20th July 1969 the American astronaughts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon, the first natural alien body.

NorWEST in the 21st century.

      It wasn't until the 21st cenutry that the first woman was landed on the Moon, following the foundation of NorWEST (the North-Western European Space Team). Very soon after a Moon base was established and after a landing on a Near Earth Asteroid, humans walked on Mars before the century was out.
      The foundation of a Mars colony didn't take long and the same was true on the Jovian and Saturnian moons once they'd been reached. While all this was happening, however, most humans were still on Earth. This was because getting off Earth was astronimcally expensive due to the amount of rocket fuel needed to reach escape velocity (the speed to esacape Earth's gravity - 11km/s).

Leaving Earth.

      The soloution of this came about 375 years ago. A space dock was suspended 250km above the Earth. This was attached to a 1,000km tether that had an elevator that took you to a hotel at the top of the tether 1,200km above the Earth. This was called an Orbital Tether and people were able to reach the space dock in reusable, suborbital planes.
      This made getting into space easy and cheap and space toursim became a reality. In fact on the day the orbital tether opened the space ages first revolution began and the years was reset to 0 S.A. (Space Age).

The Space Age.

      After a short time the Orbital Tether became known also as a Sky Hook, or Space Elevator when instead of a space dock 250km above the Earth, the tether was joined to the Earth in the African rainforest and the Sky Hook beacme a skyscraper 72,000km high. The hotel was now 36,000km up with the other 36,000km there purely to balance it. Two more Sky Hooks are being planned for Earth in America and Pacifica that will be joined together.

Mars' Sky Hook.

      Since the use of Earth Sky Hook it has been thought that one may be used on Mars. At first it was deemed unnessesary due to Mars gravity being only 0.378 that of Earth's. However even with that amount of gravity a Sky Hook would make getting off Mars a lot easier and so it has been decided that Mars could do with a single Sky Hook and preparations are being made to have one built, although the site is still undecided.

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