Monthly Archives: December 2014

Taking a break…

It’s the holidays, family is in town and there are a few other things going on, so I’m taking a break from blogging.

Unless something momentous happens (“Flash – XXXX University announces the creation of a 45 MegaYuri tether!”), my next post will be on Monday, January 5th February 1st.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year everyone!

Research Mini-Workshop

At the previous two ISEC Space Elevator conferences, several workshops were held as part of the daily proceedings.  These workshops, each devoted to a specific topic, were focus on advancing our understanding of the space elevator.  Dr. Peter Swan, the president of ISEC, has been instrumental in organizing these workshops and finding a leader for each of them.  Conference attendees participated in each of the workshops and the end result of each of them was a written summary of the discussion and an action plan to move forward.

The Summaries from most of these workshops were posted on the ISEC website (I had previously blogged about that here).

A new workshop summary has now been posted on the ISEC website – this from the 2014 Conference.  This workshop was held as part of the activities of the ISEC Research Committee.  The purpose of this committee, chaired by Dr. John Knapman, is to categorize and prioritize the issues which must be addressed as part of the effort in defining the parameters of a space elevator.

The goals of the workshop were specified as:

  • Gain an awareness of the ISEC Research Committee’s goals and process
  • Review the list of topics that the Committee has produced
  • Identify potential contributors with relevant skills and interests
  • Where possible, add some level of detail, particularly on those topics where little work has so far been done
  • Where possible, propose who could carry out the work and where

You can find the summary of the Research workshop here.

All of the Summaries posted so far can be found on the ISEC website.  From the Home page, point to the Activities tab and you will then be able to see the Summaries from the 2013 and the 2014 ISEC Space Elevator conferences.

Shoot the Moon update

Shoot the Moon, one of the two space elevator documentaries successfully funded via Kickstarter, has posted an update on its Kickstarter website page.  This update also includes one of the cooler selfies that I’ve seen…

I thought the storyboard sketch drawing from the project update was particularly cool and so have included it at the top of this post.

As for me, I’m looking forward to my “4.5 inches of solar-powered, spinnin’ moon goodness”.

If this Documentary, along with Sky Line, also successfully funded via Kickstarter, really shows up in 2015, it will give a big boost to publicizing the effort to create a space elevator.

Happy Birthday Sir Arthur!

Today marks what would have been Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s 97th birthday – it’s very unfortunate that this science fiction luminary is no longer with us.

In previous years, I have written a lot about what Sir Arthur meant to the science fiction community, to the space elevator community and to visionaries everywhere – he was truly one of a kind.

Rather than repeat myself, let me just refer you to this posting I wrote on his birthday back in 2009.

And, as I also posted just a few days ago, the American co-inventor of the modern-day concept of the space elevator, Jerome Pearson, gave the Keynote speech at the 2013 ISEC Space Elevator Convention and he talked about his interactions with Sir Arthur.  It’s a very interesting talk and well worth the time to listen to.

RIP Sir Arthur – we miss you…

(The picture is from the back of the album cover – yes, a vinyl album – THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE – excerpts read by the author.  Click on it for a larger version.  In this album Sir Arthur reads various passages from the book – it’s really a thrill to hear them.  The album is long out-of-print, but can be found online occasionally.)

Peter Griffin learns about the Space Elevator…

I’ve seen this on a couple of websites lately (here and here) but don’t know who to give credit to.

The last sentence deserves comment: “If built, a space shuttle that docs [sp] at the top could be reached by the space elevator, thus eliminating the need for the shuttle to travel through Earth’s atmosphere and therefore greatly reducing the cost of space travel.”  The space shuttle was designed to re-enter the atmosphere as it had wings and landing gear and drag-chutes and all that good stuff.  If you were going to build a spacecraft that took people / cargo from a space elevator to Point A or Point B, then you wouldn’t need those (and related) items, you could build spacecraft that were optimally designed to travel in space.

Plus, being a bit pedantic, a space “shuttle” could dock anywhere along the length of a space elevator where docking facilities existed, not just at the top.

Anyway, yes Peter, yes…

Weekend Walkabout – Maker Faire, cosmic radiation and Kerbal…

This edition of Weekend Walkabout takes us from a very cool Convention / Faire in Tokyo, Japan and then onto Central Europe (via the International Space Station) and finally winds up with the Kerbal Space Program…

First up is another trip to Japan – and to the recently held Maker Faire, “…the globe-trotting DIY convention that attracts both weekend hobbyists and high-end tinkerers…”.  This web page has a number of very interesting photographs, ranging from a musical instrument called an Otamatone to neon samurai to virtually brushing an anime characters teeth via an Oculus VR headset to robots galore.  Of course there is a “space elevator” (the 14th picture from the top if I counted correctly).  The site takes forever to load – not sure why, but many of the pictures are worth the wait.  I think this would have been a lot of fun to attend.  The Maker Faire map page shows that these events are held all over the globe – you’re sure to find one near you in the near future…

Next up is a trip to Europe (specifically central Europe) via the International Space Station – (ISS).  One of the potential issues facing manned trips aboard a Space Elevator is prolonged exposure to cosmic radiation.  An experiment (code-named MATROSHKA) was undertaken over several years on the ISS.  A specialized mannequin was constructed, containing radiation sensors.  This mannequin was then subjected to many years worth of radiation exposure on the ISS and the data was then sent to scientific labs in Poland, Germany and Austria for analysis.  Their conclusion was “…that the individual dosimeters worn by the crew inside the ISS overestimated the actual dose measured inside the phantom by about 15%. However, in open space this overestimation exceeded 200%…”  So, cautiously good news.  However, as the analysts also pointed out “We must remember that measurements within the MATROSHKA experiment were performed at low Earth orbit where the Earth’s magnetosphere significantly reduces the number of charged particles from cosmic radiation. In interplanetary space there is no such shielding”.  Once again, I am indebted to the most-excellent SpaceRef newsletter for this story.

Finally, we visit the Kerbal Space Program.  This software package is described as “KSP is a game where the players create and manage their own space program. Build spacecraft, fly them, and try to help the Kerbals to fulfill their ultimate mission of conquering space.”  This seems to be like a Microsoft Flight Simulator for spacecraft.  I had run across this many months ago, but as I didn’t see a way to build a space elevator with it, I passed it by.  However, I’ve recently found a YouTube video from someone (Mr. Scott Manley) who has tried to build a space elevator with this program.  As Scott describes his efforts to (ultimately unsuccessfully) build a space elevator with KSP, he talks about how a real space elevator would work.  Some of his facts and terminology are incorrect, but enough of it is on target to make the whole exercise (IMHO) interesting.

That’s all for this week!

Jerome Pearson’s Keynote speech from the 2013 ISEC Space Elevator Conference

After a very long delay, the keynote speech given by Mr. Jerome Pearson, the American engineer who is credited with co-inventing the modern day concept of a space elevator, at the 2013 ISEC Space Elevator Conference, is finally available on Vimeo.

Jerome’s presentation focused on Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the noted science-fiction author who wrote, among many other works, the Fountains of Paradise, the book that interested a lot of people (including yours truly) in the idea of a space elevator.  Jerome provided technical assistance for this book and had a long friendship with Sir Arthur.

Jerome talks about the works of Sir Arthur, his life and his interactions with him.  It’s a very interesting speech by one of the pioneers in the effort to design and build a space elevator and is well worth the 37+ minutes you would invest in watching it.

Highly, highly recommended…

 

Coming soon…

I’ve got not one, not two, but THREE projects in the works for this blog.

The first I’ve already mentioned – a Materials primer that can be referred to and and cited when people want to know what materials we might be able to build a space elevator tether with and why they are materials that could work.  I’ve enlisted some expert help for doing this so I’m hopeful that the final result will be something definitive.

The second is an FAQ – something that the space elevator community badly needs.  Time after time I see the same questions asked on forums – and it would be just so nice to say “Look at the Space Elevator FAQ – Section 7.4” (or wherever) to see the answer.  There are two problems with an FAQ, of course.  The first is to be sure that the answers/explanations are concise and correct and the second is keeping them that way as developments in the field occur.  I’ve also enlisted some expert help for this project so, again, I’m hoping I’ll have something that all of us can use to advance our understanding of the Space Elevator.  Of course I don’t pretend to have all the answers and as people may challenge me and show where my answer to a specific question is incorrect or incomplete, I’ll be updating the FAQ accordingly.

And the third project?  I’m really excited about this – I haven’t had an idea this good in a while.  I’m not going to say anything more about it for now, but if I can pull this off, I think we’re all going to enjoy it.

The FAQ will happen first, and it will happen in pieces – as I post them, I’ll also be posting more explanatory text on the blog about the specific FAQ answers.

So, stay tuned!

The Space Elevator makes the Huffington Post…

The idea of a space elevator was featured in Tuesday’s HUFFPOST VIDEO online.  The level of discussion is not very deep and anyone who has followed the idea of a space elevator for any time won’t learn anything new here, but it’s great that this idea is being brought to an audience which probably hasn’t been exposed to it before.

The video starts out by referencing the IAA study on space elevators, but, unfortunately, doesn’t give any links for the listeners to learn more about the study – but still, all in all, it’s a plus…

(I’ve used a new WordPress plugin to be able to display this video.  I’ve tested it on a couple of platforms and it seems to work OK, but in case you don’t see or can’t play the video, you can also access it here.)

The LiftPort Lunar elevator

This video is much in the news lately…

I first saw this video at the 2014 ISEC Space Elevator Conference.  Michael Laine, the driving force behind LiftPort, gave a short talk at the conference and showed this video.  I’m not sure if the one now viewable on YouTube is an updated version from the one he showed, but it seems to be the same one I saw.  It depicts the deployment of a Lunar Space Elevator and it’s capability to mine regolith and transport it back to earth (or wherever).  There’s a lot of detail shown but even more detail that’s not shown – but it is a concept video, not an engineering blueprint.

The video shows a probe/pod that is launched from earth to some stationary point from the moon.  Then an anchor (attached to a space elevator tether) is deployed from the probe/pod to the lunar surface.  There it is anchored and then rovers are deployed to dig up regolith, process it (I assume), and then bring it back to the anchor for eventual shipment back to earth.

There has been a fair amount of debate in the space elevator community about the utility / usefulness of a lunar space elevator.  According to the LiftPort website, the Purpose of building a lunar space elevator would be:

The Lunar Space Elevator Infrastructure is going to serve many purposes for the human race. The first and most obvious is the opening up of the Moon for tourism and colonization purposes. LSEI can be built with current materials, but it would not have a lot of throughput. The goal of the study would be to determine a method of increasing transport throughput to enable humans to go back to the Moon. LiftPort’s LSEI architecture provides consistent, safe, and high-volume lunar transportation. Each Ribbon attached to the lunar surface allows for an additional 260 kg of cargo. Built up over time, 5, 10 or 15 such Ribbons allows for human-rated heavy-cargo capacity. By building a complete, reusable, and expandable infrastructure, LSEI can send three astronauts to the lunar surface every four weeks. In addition, the LSEI expands the capabilities of the Deep Space Habitat envisioned by the Global Exploration Roadmap and endorsed by NASA. Accessing the Moon also means accessing the minerals of the Moon. The Moon’s suspected to possess a motherlode of helium3, which many (ourselves included) believe it could be used to energize nuclear fusion reactions and provide vast amounts of energy in a process which avoids the radioactive waste of nuclear fission (the process used in nuclear power on earth currently.)

I would respectfully disagree.  Humanity has already proven (with 1960’s technology!) that it can send people to the moon (and back again).  It will essentially take the same amount of rocket energy to get someone launched from earth to the moon as it would take to launch someone from the earth to a lunar space elevator.  The launch needs are the same – and that’s the big dog on the block.  The landing requirements might be a bit different – landing on the moon versus rendezvousing with a lunar space elevator spaceport, but not by orders of magnitude.  And a rocket can land anywhere on the moon – with a space elevator, you’re tied to one surface point on the moon.  Of course if you pick the right point, maybe that’s all you need.  But the point I’m making here is that a Lunar Space Elevator will not, IMHO, materially improve our ability to send people to the moon…

At the Space Elevator Conference, Michael Laine also mentioned that a Lunar Space Elevator could also be a good precursor to an earth-based elevator, giving us experience in issues we would have to deal with here.  But, again IMHO, it would be unlike an earth-based space elevator in so many ways.  The entire physics of it is different; on earth, the space elevator tether is “held up” by centrifugal force and is held down by gravity (and a clamp at the earth-anchor station) while on the moon, the tether is held up by gravity – assuming it’s pointed towards earth – and centrifugal force would play no role here.  There is no belt of space debris a lunar elevator would have to worry about.  On the other hand, there would be oscillations in the tether which would have to be dealt with, as with an earth-based space elevator, and one would also have to deal with the logistics of an anchor station.  Also, one would need a method to detect deep-space objects which might impact the space elevator and a method to deal with them.  But at the end of the day, I think the issues would be so different that the only important, relevant experience which would be gained would be experience in building and maintaining big structures in space, things that the ISS is already dealing with.

Where I DO think a Lunar elevator might have some value would be as what was shown in the video (and mentioned as a secondary item on the LiftPort website) – launching valuable cargo harvested on the moon (helium-3 ?) and sending it back to earth (or wherever).  A Lunar elevator would certainly be superior to rockets in this regard.  But it might not be the best solution either, a lunar railgun launcher (such as in Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) might be more efficient.

At the end of the day, I think it’s all going to come down to economics – can a Lunar Space Elevator pay for itself?  Frankly, I’m dubious.  Leonard David, space reporter/author and keynote speaker at last year’s ISEC Space Elevator Conference, told me I should never end a post with the words “Time will tell“, so I won’t write that here, but I think that whether or not a Lunar Elevator will prove to be a viable economic idea will only be determined by future events 🙂

Weekend Walkabout – Astronomy, SETI and garbage…

In this edition of Weekend Walkabout, we take an eclectic journey from telescopes, to SETI to music about how to deal with earth’s garbage…

I’m sure that one of the reasons I was susceptible to the idea of a Space Elevator was my early interest in Astronomy.  The brief introduction I had to it in High School made me “look up” at night, wondering what was “out there” and how I could get “there” to find out.  My father made the stand I used to grind an 8″ reflector mirror for a Newtonian telescope (albeit not a very good one) and I spent many an evening outside learning the constellations and watching the planets move among them.  I tried to get my son interested in astronomy with my enthusiasm and giving him a Meade ETX-90 telescope and showing him how to use it, but sadly it just wasn’t for him.  The upside to that is that I have that telescope at home and have been gradually accumulating lenses and filters for it and have been starting to explore the field of astrophotography.  I bring all this up as a precursor to tell you about a new, FREE, eBook about Telescopes I have just learned about.  The eBook, TELESCOPE 101: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF TELESCOPES is authored by Marcus Schenk, and is available here (it’s in pdf format).  I haven’t read the entire book, but what I have seen so far is a very solid, user-friendly introduction to the various types of telescopes, WHY there are various types, issues that arise in using them for different types of observation and how to solve them, etc.  It appears to be an excellent primer on the subject and I would recommend it for anyone who has an interest in this.  And it’s FREE – hard to beat!

Does SETI need to shut up?  Speaking of what’s “out there”, I’ve always been interested in the SETI – the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence project (I used to have their search number crunching program on my computer, but during one of my upgrades, lost it).  It’s one of the “great questions” and I (probably naively) hope to have an answer to it in my lifetime.  Aliens, and whether or not they might be “friendly” to us, are a mainstay of science-fiction.  One school of thought says that Aliens WILL be friendly but another school of thought says they may not.  And that leads me to ideapod, which is (and I quote) “… a new social-media platform for sharing and connecting ideas“.  This question about SETI is being debated on this platform and it’s an interesting discussion, indeed.  If you want to participate, head on over to the ideapod community discussion…  In a previous post, I discussed StackExchange, another forum for discussions about various topics (including the space elevator).  It’s hard to know where the winners and losers will be in social media and online forums.  On one hand, I think that “expert guidance” is helpful – I see so many naive conversations about the space elevator on various forums that I want to cringe.  On the other hand, I think it’s important that unpopular ideas not be dismissed as they might, ultimately, be the correct ones.  There are many examples of this but a modern day Poster Child for “Unpopular positions that ultimately proved correct” is Alfred Wegener’s idea of plate tectonics.  It was an idea that was universally ridiculed when first proposed, but is now accepted as generally correct.  Global warming alarmists take note…

Let’s finish today’s post with MUSIC!  There have been several songs and music-videos about the space elevator (or that, at least, have had “space elevator” listed somewhere in their description).  I have reviewed several and found that almost all of them are just “yucch”, certainly not my cup of tea.  We now have another music “entry”, this about a “space escalator” that transports all of our waste into the sun.  The album, Shoot It At The Sun is by a group called The Porchistas.  Getting rid of the earth’s garbage by shooting it at the sun is an idea which gets periodically revisited by people who don’t realize that our species generates hundreds of millions of tons of garbage each year – far more than even the most optimistic space elevator scenario can envision.  It’s a problem we’re going to have to solve HERE, not by shipping our waste anywhere else.  Even “small” portions of this are so large, they defy the export solution…  Anyway, back to the music.  Frankly, I don’t like it, but perhaps you will.  For my money, the best (by far) song about the space elevator is the one by Glen Phillips which you can find on his Secrets of the New Explorers album (and on the sidebar of this blog).  I consider it the unofficial theme song of the space elevator and it’s going to take something really special to knock it off it’s throne.

More next weekend…

Hat tips to Harvey Burgess (for the information about the Telescope eBook) and Adrianna Roberts (for letting me know about ideapod and the ongoing SETI discussion).

The Miracle of Endymion

Anyone who is a regular reader of this blog knows about how the Space Elevator has become a staple in parts of Japan’s culture – TV shows, cartoon shows, Anime, Manga, books, etc. with a space elevator in them are quite common.

One of these movies, Miracle of Endymion, was released in 2013 (with a Blu-Ray edition coming out in February of next year).  From the Wiki:

The Toaru Majutsu no Index Movie: Miracle of Endymion (劇場版 とある魔術の禁書目録 エンデュミオンの奇蹟 Gekijōban Toaru Majutsu no Indekkusu: Endyumion no Kiseki) is a theatrical film based on the popular Toaru Majutsu no Index franchise released on February 23, 2013. It is centered around a terrible threat against the once peaceful Academy City that could lead to its destruction.

Academy City’s space elevator [is] Endymion. One day as its completion nears, Kamijou and Index meet a Level 0 girl named Meigo Arisa. Index and Arisa have a mysterious connection in their ravenous appetites. While the three are enjoying their time after school, Stiyl (who has brought in some other magicians) suddenly attacks. His target is Arisa. Why is a member of the science side like her being targeted by the magic side? With the attack from the magic side underway, Academy City deploys a unit meant to maintain order led by its female leader Shutaura. As the situation developing around Kamijou, Index, and Arisa grows more and more confused, Stiyl says, “That girl could likely cause a war between the magic side and the science side.”

When science and magic cross paths, the story begins with Endymion as its stage!

The Academy City in the story appears to be similar in setting to Professor X’s Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters.

According to one of the descriptions I read about this movie, it is “…set in the shared universes of A Certain Magical Index and A Certain Scientific Railgun…”.

A “Certain Scientific Railgun” – really?  I thought that was a translation error so went hunting for some more information about it.  I found this; “Part Girl.  Part Railgun.  All Awesome.  Misaka’s electro-manipulation abilities – and delightfully destructive Railgun projectile move – make her a rock star in Academy City. The techno-metropolis is packed with supernaturally powered students known as espers, including Misaka’s flirty friend and roommate, Kuroko.”

“Delightfully destructive Railgun projectile move” – I love it!

For completeness’ sake, I found a description of A Certain Magical Index: The description for Season 1 of this series starts out as “Kamijo is a student in Academy City, where people use science to develop supernatural abilities. The guy’s got a lot of heart – luckily for a young nun named Index. She’s on the run from a sorcery society that covets the astonishing 103,000 volumes of magical knowledge stored in her memory…”.

There are several other descriptions of this movie and its basis around the web – one of them describes the Academy City as a place where people are trying to make magic with a scientific basis.  But as Sir Arthur C. Clarke once explained in his Third Law, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Anyway, space elevators, magic & science, awesome art – what’s not like?  According to the movie’s description, it is subtitled in English, so maybe I’ll buy it as a Christmas present to myself.

The image thumbnails in this post all come from the The Miracle of Endymion movie.  There are several on the web – these were some of my favorites.  Clicking on any of them will display a full-size picture.

(Update – 09DEC14 – Chris Beveridge, who knows much more about manga, anime, etc. than I do, has written a review of this movie here – very useful if you want to know more about this).