DYNAMIC MODELING AND EFFICIENCY COMPARISON OF SPACE ELEVATORS AND CHEMICAL ROCKETS FOR EARTH-MOON CARGO TRANSPORTATION

Abstract

To support the material delivery demand of large-scale lunar colonies, this paper establishes a unified physical dynamic model for space elevators and traditional chemical rockets. Different from existing separated single-carrier theoretical derivations, this study simultaneously incorporates radial force balance and transverse Coriolis oscillation loss into elevator energy calculation, quantitatively correcting the energy consumption increment caused by cable lateral swing, which fills the gap of simplified energy models ignoring lateral disturbance loss. For multi-stage rockets, the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation is improved by introducing system loss coefficient to quantify the extra energy consumed by nozzle loss and gravity loss. Comparative quantitative calculations show that the payload ratio of space elevators reaches 46.85%, which is 23.78 times higher than rockets, and the unit mass energy consumption is only 10.7% of chemical launch vehicles, though rockets possess slight advantages in single trip time. Numerical results further reveal that Coriolis disturbance accounts for 8%–12% of the elevator’s total energy cost, a critical factor neglected by most previous static models. The established dynamic model provides standardized energy and time evaluation indexes for multi-modal Earth-Moon logistics schemes, and lays a physical foundation for subsequent transportation capacity allocation optimization and life-cycle environmental impact assessment.