The Boston Museum of Science produces a series of podcasts on various technical topics. In the current week’s offering, the Space Elevator games coming up in October are described, along with a “Space Elevator 101” primer for the uninitiated. Despite the technical errors in the presentation (geosynchronous orbit is defined as 27,000 Kilometers above the earth and all of the rest of their measurements are proportionally incorrect), it’s good to see yet another outlet talking about Space Elevators.
The presentation is linked to here and covers two topics. You can skip the first topic if you like (Scorpions for Cancer Therapy – as a cancer survivor, I found it quite interesting); the Space Elevator Games section begins at 7 minutes, 42 seconds in and lasts for a little over 11 minutes.
Write to Your Senator
The subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies is the Senate body that approves funding for NASA. The elevator 2010 prizes are funded thru NASA’s Centennial Challenges program. If you live in any of the states listed below it will help and certainly can’t hurt to write/email to your Senators expressing the need to continue funding for NASA Centennial Challenges.
Also express the need for funding required for basic Space Elevator R and D via organizations such as the NAIC. Brad Edward’s original research originally came from NAIC.
Ultimately the first SE may be privately financed, but government has the resources to do the fundamental R and D. For example Burt Rutan’s SpaceShip One was developed use CFD code, which was developed by NASA. If that code wasn’t available to Scale Composites then the costs would be considerably higher, possibly prohibitive.
SUBCOMMITTEE on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies. The members are as follows:
Senator Richard Shelby (chairman) (AL)
Senator Judd Gregg (NH)
Senator Ted Stevens (AK)
Senator Pete Domenici (NM)
Senator Mitch McConnell (KY)
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX)
Senator Sam Brownback (KS)
Senator Christopher Bond (MO)
Senator Mikulski (Ranking Member) (MD)
Senator Daniel Inouye (HI)
Senator Patrick Leahy (VT)
Senator Herb Kohl (WI)
Senator Patty Murray (WA)
Senator Tom Harkin (IA)
Senator Byron Dorgan (ND)
Just a correction on your numbers… geosynchronous orbit for Earth has a semi-major axis of 42,164km, which is 26,200 miles.