Daily Archives: December 16, 2009

Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s 92 birthday…

If he was still with us, Sir Arthur C. Clarke would have been 92 today, December 16th.  I assume that most readers of this blog know who Sir Clarke is, but, if by some chance you’re not, then you’re missing a treat.  Sir Clarke was one of the most prolific and one of the very best SciFi authors we have ever had the good fortune to enjoy.

His novel The Fountains of Paradise was the book that inspired me and many others to dream about a Space Elevator – and now many of us are working towards making that dream a reality through the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC).

The Planetary society recently had a program celebrating their own Planetary Radio’s 7th anniversary.  The bulk of the show was replaying a March, 2003 interview they had with Sir Clarke shortly after they began broadcasting.  This is a fascinating interview and well worth your time…  One of the items from the interview that I found very interesting was Sir Clarke’s revelation about how at lunch one day with JR Tolkien (of Lord of the Rings fame), Mr. Tolkien revealed to him how he came up with the idea of the “Hobbits” – funny stuff…

They also briefly discuss the Space Elevator and The Fountains of Paradise.

Incidentally, the host of the Planetary Society’s Radio Show, Mat Kaplan, shows that he’s always had ‘the touch’ when it comes to conducting interviews – Mat, you’re the best…

This YouTube Video is of Sir Clarke talking about the Space Elevator.

I was just able to locate the vinyl record of “Selected Readings” of The Fountains of Paradise that is shown and referenced in this video.  I’ve been looking for it for over a year – I love ebay…

The three photographs of Sir Clarke I’ve included in this post have been, in previous posts of mine about Sir Clarke, but for new readers they should prove interesting.  The first picture is of Yuri Artsutanov (on the left), one of the modern day ‘fathers’ of the concept of the Space Elevator, and Sir Clarke.  It is undated and I found it online (and, alas, the original location of it no longer exists so I can’t reference it or give credit to anyone for it).  The second is also a picture of Mr. Artsutanov and Sir Clarke from 1980 (the other “modern father” of the Space Elevator, Jerome Pearson, kindly emailed it to me).  The third picture is of Soviet (yes, at the time it was “Soviet”) cosmonaut Alexei Leonov and Sir Clarke at Sir Clarke’s 90th Birthday party.  I found this picture on Thilna Heenatigala’s blog.

Listen to the Planetary radio interview with Sir Clarke, watch the YouTube interview with Sir Clarke and, if you haven’t read The Fountains of Paradise, do yourself a favor and find it and read it – you’ll be glad you did.

Happy birthday Sir Clarke – we miss you and your boundless optimism for the future.  Someday we will make a Space Elevator and, if there’s any justice, it will be named the “Clarke Elevator”…

(Click on any of the picture thumbnails to see a larger version of the picture)

My presentation at the 2009 EuroSpaceward Conference

My presentation at the EuroSpaceward conference seemed to be fairly well received (at least I wasn’t booed off the stage).  But then again, everyone was in a hurry to get lunch… 🙂

Anyway, here is a link to my presentation.  It consists of my opinion on the “State of ISEC”.  Part of me is discouraged that we haven’t done more, but the bigger part of me is very happy that we are up and functioning, that we have lasted more than a year, that we have some projects up and running and that we are (slowly) accumulating members.

If you are reading this and wondering what you can do to help the Space Elevator effort, I ask you to join ISEC.  Your membership fees & donations will go DIRECTLY towards space elevator related activities.  Much of the membership fees we collected this past year went to sponsor the Space Elevator Games, the ‘signature event’ in the field.  Our next major goal is to get these academic competitions up and running.  We are very fortunate to have the two modern “fathers” of the Space Elevator, Yuri Artsutanov and Jerome Pearson agree to have our academic prizes named after them.  We have a team of physicists and engineers ready to review the academic submissions.  As President of ISEC I have submitted our first Strategic Plan to the Board of Directors of ISEC and, once it’s approved, I’ll publish here (or on the ISEC website).

What we need now are funds to complete this task.  Please join us and help us make the Space Elevator a reality.