“The concept is not of interest to NASA”

June 10th, 2007

This quote is taken from Dr. Brad Edward’s PowerPoint presentation posted on the Rutgers Symposium on Lunar Settlements website.  This presentation, titled “A Space Elevator for the Moon”, proposed that two, earth-based Space Elevators be built to supply the materials needed to do Lunar exploration in a robust way.  It’s quite persuasive, with the only caveat being the technology: “Immature but quickly developing”.  The advantages are clear; greatly reduced launch costs and greatly reduced launch risk.

You can find the PowerPoint presentation here and the abstract of his speech here (Bob Munck alert - it’s a pdf file.  Dr. Edwards abstract is on page 62).

Hopefully all is not bleak, though.  A new administration will be elected next year and, while I have no reason to believe that they would encourage NASA to be more innovative, they could hardly make it worse…

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