Weekend Walkabout – From India to Broadway…

In this Weekend Walkabout, we travel to India (learning about a Space Conference and why that’s important to fans of the space elevator) and then to Singapore (finding a “space elevator” at the Space Invention Camp) and then on to England (watching a cool video of a carbon nanotube ‘forest’) and finally winding up on Broadway (for a really short story with a space elevator in it).


First up is a Space conference being held early next year in India.  The second International Space Conference is being held on January 8th and 9th at Amity University in Noida, India.  While this conference will be focusing on “normal” space subjects (satellites, interplanetary missions, etc.), the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISESC) will also be represented there by Mr. Sourabh Kaushal.  Sourabh has presented at previous Space Elevator Conferences and was also a contestant in the now-defunct Artsutanov-Pearson competition.  He will have several ISEC publications (ISEC reports and CLIMB – the Space Elevator Journal) to hand out and talk about while he’s there.

I have written about India and the space elevator before, discussing my belief that they could be a real player whenever a space elevator becomes viable.  They have a real space program with many impressive achievements, a real military (necessary to defend a space elevator) and open sea lanes to two locations in the Indian ocean that the Edwards-Westling baseline book indicated as prime possibilities to locate a space elevator.  Add to this their national obsession with beating China in every way they can and I think they must be taken seriously when the materials finally become available to build a space elevator.


Recently I blogged about a study done several years ago extolling the virtues of the island nation of Singapore relating to building a space elevator.  I just found a video of a “space elevator” being part of, I believe, the Wonderswork Space Invention Camp being held in Singapore in November and December of this year.

You can see a Lego poster in the background of the video.  Young (ages 5 and up) children use these Legos and then advance to Lego Mindstorm kits to build various projects, including the ribbon climber shown in the video.  It’s nice to see kids as young as this exposed to these types of technologies.


Next up is a video of a carbon nanotube forest grown at the University of Cambridge in England.  Sadly, they talk about growing these nanotubes for “…their use in various electronic devices…” but Cambridge is also one of the leading research institutions in examining the materials/structural properties of carbon nanotubes (along with Rice University and the University of Cincinnati).

This would be a good time to mention a project I’ve just started and that is a materials review of carbon nanotubes, carbyne, graphene and boron-nitride nanotubes, the leading candidates at this time for becoming strong enough at the macro-level to build a space elevator.  In case you’ve ever wondered why these materials are the best candidates, you should enjoy my multi-part post on this subject that I’m planning.  It’s probably a couple of weeks away, but I’m enjoying putting it together.  Stay tuned!


Finally, we have a (very) short story with a space elevator as a part of it; Yes Way or Nuclear Bomb Called Desire.  I don’t know if Tennessee Williams would have approved, but he probably wouldn’t have minded, either.

The brevity of this story reminds me of the Urban Legend revealing the winner of a concise essay contest combining the elements of religion, sex and mystery.  The winner:

Good God, I’m pregnant!  I wonder who did it?

And with that, I bid you all a good week…