Daily Archives: January 19, 2008

Want to buy the Apollo 13 Engine?

The next time I’m in the Los Angeles area, I’m going to visit Norton Sales.  Here, for a quarter-million dollars, you can buy part of the Saturn 5 and, if you’re willing to spend over a million dollars, you can buy the actual Apollo 13 Engine.

Visit the OnOrbit post about this store to see a video of it.

Maybe 50 years from now, you’ll be able to visit this store and buy some used parts from a real Space Elevator.  “Yes, this was part of the original cable, now replaced due to meteorite damage.  It’s only $1,000 per linear foot.  And over here, we have one of the gripper wheel sets from one of the original Climbers.  It’s a steal at only $25,000.”

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah…

(Picture from the Norton Sales website)

But first, an announcement…

Over at the Space Elevator Reference, Marc Boucher announces the launch of:

“SpaceRef Interactive Inc. the company that owns and operates this site today launched a new social space news and networking service called On Orbit.

For space elevator enthusiasts and professionals the service includes a Forum dedicated to the Space Elevator. Notable space elevator figures including but not limited to Spaceward’s Ben Shelef and Brad Edwards will be contributing to the forum.

These forums join others already in existence, among them being the Yahoo Groups Space Elevator Forum, the Liftport forums and the National Space Society Space Elevator Chapter.

Correction and future posts…

As has been pointed out to me (several times), the original numbers I posted (here, here and here) for the strength of the Carbon nanotube fibers announced during the recent EuroSpaceward event  are wrong; the correct number should be ~9 GPa – 9 N/tex.  This is still a very significant achievement and if anyone shows up at the upcoming Space Elevator game with a tether this strong, they will blow the house tether completely away.

I will put up a post in the near future about how tether strength is measured and how I went awry.  It turns out to be a bit more complicated than I thought (gee, why I am not surprised?)…

However, for the next week or so, and in conjunction with the Photonics West Trade Show which begins tomorrow, I will be doing a series of post on a) some of the Climber teams who are going to be competing this year and b) TRUMPF and DILAS; two vendors who are really stepping up to further the concept of a Space Elevator.

Stay tuned…

(Homer pix from here)