Daring and creative, though I have no idea if realistically scientific. Still a fun idea around the problem presented.

The problems presented in Wilsons idea are real. Landing mulit ton craft safely on the surface of mars is something we don’t yet know how to do. The limitations we face are real. The strength of the prestressed steel wire strands is accurate, as is the theoretical limit for carbon nanotubes. The improved nanotube strength and the mass of the cable, well I just made a guess. I dont have any real figures for those, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. I originally thought of phobos as the moon to go to, but deimos is almost in syncronus orbit with mars, just a little too far out. Probably a better place to start, less delta v required to get into the orbit you want. But as Phobos is much closer to mars and moving faster, it may present a problem for the cable. I have to think about that for a bit to see how it would play out.

You could escape Deimos’ gravity well just by riding a bicycle off of a ramp.

Why not just have the carbon from Deimos shipped to Phobos? Would the ∆V problem be less than it would be for Earth?

Thought: Take some excess Demios carbon, make a pusher plate for it, and then nudge it into Phobos’ orbit via a jury-rigged Orion drive…

(Sorry for my rambling!)

Or maybe nudge Phobos into a different orbit, placing the pusher plate inside Stickney…