Phobos

the monolith here on the right is actually a publicly available photo on Wikipedia.

The f- it was taken with the Phobos satellite, and, uh, I'll just read quickly what it says about that.

The Phobos monolith is a large rock on the surface of, of Mars's moon.

Oh, this is the one on Mars.

I'm sorry.

It is a boulder about 85 meters, 279 feet across and 300 feet tall.

A monolith is a geological feature consisting of a single massive piece of rock.

Monoliths also occur naturally on Earth, but it has been suggested that the Phobos monolith may be a piece of ejecta or of impact ejecta.

So have you, Blake." Blake nodded.

"I remember I was on the crew of the ship that landed first on Phobos.

You know what the Phoboians turned out to be like, of course.

They had about everything we had, and damned if we could do a lick of trading until the captain of our ship put something back in a box and happened to put a rubber band around the box.

They went nuts.

They'd never seen anything that had elasticity.

Rubber or anything like it simply wasn't known on Phobos.

We managed to find a few dozen rubber bands in the ship's office and practically bought out Phobos with them.

And this is a, the monolith here on the right is actually publicly available photo on Wikipedia.

The f- it was taken with the Phobos satellite.

And, uh, I'll just read quickly what it says about that.

The Phobos monolith is a large rock on the surface of, of Mars's moon.

Oh, this is the one on Mars.

I'm sorry.

It is a boulder about 85 meters, 279 feet across, and 300 feet tall.

A monolith is a geological feature consisting of a single massive piece of rock.

It was the very first pitch that I ever put together for the company.

And the thing that had captured my imagination was this idea of a mission to take a CubeSat on a sample return mission for the Phobos, the moon of Mars.

Oh,

wow.

Wow.

And I was like, oh, shoot.

And so that happened, like the pitch for the one kilo mission to do a sample return to Phobos was the thing that got me into Techstars.

And as soon as I got into Techstars, I had just had this conversation.

Mars gives us another option, and one of the most elegant in the whole solar system.

Phobos orbits only about 6,000 kilometers above the Martian surface, far below Mars' synchronous orbit, and almost directly above Mars' equator.

Its orbit is inclined by only about one degree to the Martian equator.

That is convenient because the tether hanging down from Phobos would sweep around Mars close to the equator rather than wandering over high latitudes.

Phobos also orbits Mars faster than Mars rotates.

Its orbital period is about 7 hours and 39 minutes, while the Martian period is about 24 hours and 37 minutes.

So Phobos rises in the west and sets in the east, crossing the sky more than once per day.

That means this is not a classic elevator attached to one point on the ground.

Mars gives us another option, and one of the most elegant in the whole solar system.

Phobos orbits only about 6,000 kilometers above the Martian surface, far below Mars' synchronous orbit, and almost directly above Mars' equator.

Its orbit is inclined by only about one degree to the Martian equator.

That is convenient because the tether hanging down from Phobos would sweep around Mars close to the equator rather than wandering over high latitudes.

Phobos also orbits Mars faster than Mars rotates.

Its orbital period is about 7 hours and 39 minutes, while the Martian period is about 24 hours and 37 minutes.

So Phobos rises in the west and sets in the east, crossing the sky more than once per day.

That means this is not a classic elevator attached to one point on the ground.