Elevating Ideas: Highlights from the June ISEC Newsletter

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Just a quick note to let all my readers know that the June issue of the ISEC Newsletter has just been released.

One article that stood out to me was the conclusion of the Solar System Space Elevators series by Peter Robinson. In past newsletters, Peter has been systematically examining most of the major objects in the solar system to see how feasible they might be to deploy a space elevator on. It’s been a very interesting study, and he wraps it here.

Also included is an article by Adrian Nixon & Blaise Gassend about how a graphene-based tether would stand up to micro-meteorite strikes. Past literature I’ve seen on this has focused on carbon-nanotube based tethers, so this is an interesting addition.

Finally, ISEC has announced the upcoming Space Elevator Conference, taking place virtually this year on September 6th and 7th. The virtual format is designed to better accommodate international attendees. Keep an eye on this page for updates and registration details when they become available.

Of course, there’s lots of other great content in the newsletter as always.

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Happy reading!

Introducing WSPEC

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The World Space Elevator Competitions has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Introducing WSPEC – Mordy Friedman, organizer of these new games, sent me this document explaining what WSPEC is about and what it intends to do. Summarizing:

The World Space Elevator Competitions (WSPEC) is a global non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the technologies necessary to make space elevators a reality, thereby enabling more accessible and sustainable space exploration. Through international competitions like the Climber and Power Beaming challenges, WSPEC encourages innovation in fields such as robotics, tether design, and wireless power transmission, engaging students and enthusiasts worldwide. Building on the legacy of earlier space elevator contests, WSPEC aims to unify and expand these efforts, fostering collaboration, education, and scientific progress. With a strong focus on STEAM outreach and practical problem-solving, the organization views the pursuit of a space elevator not only as a visionary goal but also as a catalyst for technological breakthroughs that can benefit humanity, regardless of whether the elevator is ever built. WSPEC invites individuals and organizations to support its mission through sponsorship, team formation, or advisory roles.

Read the document to get the full picture.

Mordy also wanted me to let everyone know that WSPEC will have a table with ISEC at the upcoming ISDC. being held from June 19-22 in Orlando, Florida. They’ll be displaying some of the JSETEC climbers and would love to connect with anyone who will be there.

Be there or be square!

Update: 13Jun2025 – If you want to get in touch with the WSPEC team, please contact Mordy at mordy@wspec.org.

Picture credits:

Tether and Climber from Family Science Fest event at the 2012 Space Elevator Conference in Seattle, Washington.

A Weekend Walkabout of Earth-Based Tether Transit

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While the dream of a space elevator still lies on the technological horizon, some of the work to make it real is already underway — not in orbit, but much closer to home. Around the world, engineers are building and testing machines that climb tethers, cables, and vertical lines in challenging environments. These systems may look humble next to a 100,000-kilometer ribbon to space, but they provide real-world platforms for learning how climbers might one day ascend the sky.

So, for this edition of the Weekend Walkabout, we’re hitting the road — and the rails, and the racks — to visit some of the real-world places where Earth-bound climbers are already being developed, tested, and deployed. Each stop gives us a glimpse into technologies that could one day help payloads and passengers rise steadily into space.

Rottweil, Germany — Elevator Test Towers That Reach for the Sky

Our first stop is in Rottweil, where TK Elevator built a 246-meter testing tower — one of the tallest in Europe. Inside are shafts designed to trial ultra-lightweight elevator cars, regenerative braking systems, and vertical control tech under real-world wind and weather conditions. While it’s not climbing to geostationary orbit, it’s the kind of environment where future space elevator climber tech can be refined and proven.

Medellín, Colombia — Urban Ropeways in the Clouds

Next, we head to Medellín, where the Metrocable system redefined how cities connect hard-to-reach communities. Designed to climb steep slopes with minimal land disruption, these cable cars are a case study in weatherproof, load-balanced tethered transit — including how to stabilize systems in high winds and heavy use. It’s the kind of design thinking that may be essential for early-stage climbers moving through Earth’s turbulent lower atmosphere.

Tokyo, Japan — Warehouse Robots and Vertical Precision

In Tokyo and across Japan, automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) quietly operate in high-density warehouses, where robotic lifters climb, sort, and retrieve items with astonishing accuracy. These systems solve many of the same problems that space elevator climbers will face — efficient power use, vertical coordination, and collision-free operation. Think of them as scaled-down, rapid-cycle testbeds for vertical movement.

Tignes, France — Ropeway Engineering in the Alps

In the French Alps, near Tignes, ski gondolas and cable cars ascend rugged peaks in extreme weather. The environment here demands careful planning around cable tension, vibration damping, and support structure integrity — all of which will be critical as we design kilometer-scale tethers that must survive the elements for decades.

Mojave Desert, USA — Laser-Powered Climbers Race Skyward

Finally, we land in the Mojave, where NASA’s Power Beaming Challenges once showcased solar and laser-powered climbers racing up vertical tethers. These competitions pushed the limits of wireless power transfer, a likely requirement for actual space elevator climbers, which can’t afford to carry heavy batteries or fuel cells.

From Factory Floors to Orbit

Earth-bound systems can’t fully replicate the vacuum of space, microgravity, or the sheer length of a real tether. But they give us something just as valuable: hands-on testing platforms. We can prototype, stress, and refine climber technologies in ways that would be prohibitively expensive — or outright impossible — to do in orbit. Whether powered by solar, battery, or beam, these systems let us iterate. Fail fast. Improve faster.

So next time you ride an elevator, spot a cable car, or see a robot climbing a warehouse rack, take a moment to think about where that tech might eventually lead. Every climber that crawls up a cable today brings us a little closer to climbing the sky tomorrow.

Translation Project: Woven Pathways to the Sky

Every week, we explore how the phrase “space elevator” might be expressed in a different language — a small reminder that the dream of space belongs to the whole world.

This week, we take inspiration not from future tech, but from a masterpiece of ancient engineering: the Inca rope bridges of the Andes.

Built entirely from hand-woven grass, these suspension bridges — the most famous of which is Q’eswachaka — spanned deep gorges and connected the vast Inca Empire. Renewed annually through community ritual, Q’eswachaka is often called “the last Incan rope bridge”, and it’s still in use today. The bridge’s design required precise tensioning, careful load balancing, and total trust in the materials — sound familiar?

So, for this week’s Translation Project, we turn to Quechua, the Indigenous language of the Andes, still spoken by millions in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and beyond.

What might “space elevator” look like in Quechua?

Hanan pampa chuklla (A conceptual approximation: “skyward lifting platform”)

hanan = “above” or “sky”
pampa = “plain” or “platform”
chuklla = loosely adapted from pulley/elevator concepts

Like the bridge itself, this translation is woven from context and tradition, not just vocabulary. It reminds us that the spirit of the space elevator — a path to the heavens, built strand by strand — is something many cultures have imagined in their own way.

And that’s a wrap for this week!

Picture credits:

TK Tower – By Wladyslaw Sojka – Own work, FAL
Q’eswachaka – Rutahsa Adventures
Ropeway Engineering in the Alps – Société des téléphériques de Grande Motte (STGM)
Laser powered Climber – NASA

May 2025 ISEC Newsletter: Space Elevators in literature, Dr. Swan’s Prestigious Award and much more…

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The latest issue of the ISEC Newsletter (May 2025) has just been published—and as always, it’s packed with good stuff. Here are a few highlights that stood out to me:

  • First Ascent, the first book in Douglas Phillips’ “The Ascending Carbon Series” is now available on Amazon. I’m always on the lookout for new authors, and finding one who’s writing about a space elevator? That’s a win-win in my book.
  • Further to the theme of space elevators in literature, in this month’s History Corner, David Raitt explores how space elevators have appeared in science fiction by diving into the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). He highlights sixteen titles tagged with “space elevator” — from Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise to Tchaikovsky’s Firewalkers — and shares how the ISFDB and Wikipedia offer rich resources for discovering how this concept has inspired storytellers for decades.
  • The newsletter also notes that Dr. Peter Swan was awarded the International Astronautical Federation’s Distinguished Service Award to “honor his lifetime commitment to Engineering and Technology, HIS VISION AND LEADERSHIP, as the founder of the IAC D4 IAA Far Future/Space Elevator Symposia”. Congratulations Pete – well deserved!

There’s much more to explore in this issue.

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Happy reading!

Weekend Walkabout: Robots, Awards and a Tower That Flies

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This week’s Weekend Walkabout might be better named “Weekend Flyabout”—one of our stops involves flying between the northern and southern hemispheres via a proposed structure that’s almost a space elevator. And at the center of it all? Dubai – a place much in the news lately. Let’s get started!

Our first stop is in Japan for the International Conference on Space Robotics (iSpaRo’25), being held in Sendai from June 23–25. This is a new platform for scientists and industry experts to discuss advancements in space robotics, including in-orbit servicing, lunar/Mars exploration, and satellite operations. It will feature speakers from academia and industry, fostering collaboration on robotics for space applications. While not explicitly focused on space elevators, the conference’s emphasis on robotic manipulation, autonomous navigation, and lightweight materials closely aligns with climber technology. Japan’s history with space elevator research, via the Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA), and their ongoing climber competitions makes this conference especially relevant – a great opportunity for some cross-fertilization here.

Our second stop is in the UK, where, during the blog’s hiatus, Jordan William Hughes won a €10,000 prize for his design of the Ascensio Space Elevator. As noted in the BBC report, his futuristic concept earned the prize for space architecture and innovation from the Jacques Rougerie Foundation in Paris. I’m always a little jealous of these gorgeous designs—I’m one of those people who struggles to draw a straight line even with a ruler.

And for our last stop: I’ve written before about how a partnership between India and the UAE—especially Dubai—feels like a natural fit for constructing a space elevator. The logic behind such a collaboration is compelling.

But then what? Once they’ve built a space elevator, what’s next? “Ho hum, space elevators are so 2050. What else you got?”

How about this: the Analemma Tower.

This is a proposed concept for a skyscraper suspended from a cable tethered to an asteroid in an eccentric geosynchronous orbit. According to the designers:

“Analemma can be placed in an eccentric geosynchronous orbit which would allow it to travel between the northern and southern hemispheres on a daily loop. The ground trace for this pendulum tower would be a figure eight, where the tower would move at its slowest speed at the top and bottom of the figure eight allowing the possibility for the tower’s occupants to interface with the planet’s surface at these points. The proposed orbit is calibrated so the slowest part of the towers trajectory occurs over New York City.”

The architects, Clouds AO, suggest constructing the tower in Dubai—fitting, since the city has a reputation for pushing the limits of tall building construction. Fun fact: someone at the top of the Burj Khalifa (the world’s tallest building, also in Dubai) sees daylight for 2–3 minutes longer than someone on the ground. For the Analemma Tower? Try 45 extra minutes of daylight.

The visuals on the Analemma Tower website are stunning—serious eye candy. You’ll find detailed depictions of the orbit, environmental interactions, and the 20,000+ meter structure itself. It’s well worth a visit.

Building something like this? Beyond cool.

And finally, for our Translation Project: Since the languages of this week’s stops already have translations, let’s detour to an unexpected Weekend Walkabout destination—Ancient Rome. Naturally, the concept of a space elevator was unknown to the Romans, so no such phrase existed in classical Latin. But after a bit of research, I found that the idea could be expressed in several different ways, depending on how one chooses to interpret or adapt the words. In the end, I settled on the elegant and succinct Elevātor spatialis—a fitting fusion of ancient structure and modern imagination.

And that’s a wrap for this week!

 

 

Space Elevators: Earth’s Spin to Lunar Tethers, Hauling the Future to Orbit

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In Taoist philosophy, the number 2 embodies yin and yang—complementary forces that create harmony, like Earth and sky in balance. The number 2 also drives binary code and cosmic orbits, sparking technological progress. And did you know that in ancient Egypt, the god Thoth, flanked by two ibises, symbolized equilibrium?

In space tech, two elevator designs—Earth’s 100,000-km spinning tether and the Moon’s 250,000-km gravity-taut cable—reflect this balance, promising to haul megatons to orbit. One design shines in a bold tech contest, the other in a visionary lunar plan—let’s explore both.

HackerNoon and Spacecoin Champion Earth-Bound Space Elevators

The Spacecoin Writing Contest, hosted by tech publishing giant HackerNoon and decentralized internet pioneer Spacecoin, is fueling future-based thinking. HackerNoon, with its 4 million monthly readers and commitment to open-access content, partnered with Spacecoin—already launching satellites to deliver borderless connectivity—to inspire writers to explore space tech and blockchain. Their contest, running from December 2024 to September 2025 with a 15,000 USDT prize pool, has already delivered gems.

In Round 1, finalist @nftbro’s post, Here’s How a Space Elevator Could Work, took the runner-up spot in the #spacetech category. The article dives into the mechanics of an Earth-based space elevator: a cable stretching from the planet’s surface out to 100,000 kilometers in space, held taut by Earth’s rotation, with climbers hauling cargo skyward. Check out the full post on HackerNoon and see why Spacecoin’s satellite-powered mission is the perfect backdrop for such bold ideas. Kudos to both sponsors for elevating the space elevator conversation!

Lunar Space Elevators: Earth’s Gravity for the Win

While Earth’s rotation powers the classic space elevator, a lunar space elevator flips the script, using Earth’s gravity to keep its cable taut. Inspired by a Universe Today article, “A Comprehensive Plan to Manufacture a Solar Power Satellite from Lunar Materials,” we’re exploring a tether anchored on the Moon’s surface, extending to a counterweight 250,000 km toward Earth. Unlike Earth’s design, which relies on centrifugal force, this system uses Earth’s gravity pulling on the counterweight at the end of the Lunar tether to keep it taut.

The Universe Today article outlines a plan to build solar power satellites using lunar materials, but the lunar space elevator’s true potential lies in its ability to haul massive amounts of cargo—think megatons of regolith, metals, or even prefabricated satellite components—into space. Rockets, limited by fuel costs and payload constraints, can’t compete with a system that, once built, could operate like a cosmic conveyor belt. Earth’s gravity does the heavy lifting (pun intended), making the lunar elevator a low-energy, high-capacity solution for lunar mining and beyond.

Two solutions—earth’s rotation or gravity—it’s very cool (and fitting!) that our planet powers both of them.

Weekend Walkabout: From India’s Stars to Ecuador’s Peak and Greenland’s Qilaksioqqut

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This week’s Weekend Walkabout jets to India’s space conference, Ecuador’s cosmic peak, and Greenland’s linguistic gift to space elevators—let’s get started!

We first travel to India and learn about the just-completed Global Space Exploration Conference – GLEX 2025. Hosted by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and the Astronautical Society of India, it took place in New Delhi from May 7-9, 2025, and was extensively covered on X (@GLEX2025). While there was no Space Elevator track, these conferences can only increase incentives for visionaries, scientists and engineers to deliver better solutions for space travel. Couple this with the ISEC proposal which states that their space elevator solution can send supplies to Mars on a daily basis and my off-stated belief that India could be a real leader in the space elevator arena and there is a lot of synergy here. Here’s to more space-related conferences in India, and, hopefully to include space-elevator tracks soon.

From India, we head south and west to Ecuador, another country that straddles the equator. In addition to this geographical advantage, Ecuador has history with space exploration, hosting a NASA tracking station since 1957, and taking control of this station from NASA in 1982. They also recently (2023) signed the Artemis Accords, a resolution affirmed by multiple countries for the peaceful exploration of space.

Ecuador’s Chimborazo, towering 6,263 m, lies just 177 km south of the equator—close enough to make it a prime candidate for a space elevator anchor. Its summit is also the point on Earth farthest from its center due to earth’s equatorial bulge, standing tall as a potential space elevator anchor. Fun Fact: Is Chimborazo’s 6,263 m summit the thinnest-aired spot on Earth? Surprisingly, no—Mount Everest’s higher 8,848 m peak has a thinner atmosphere, with fewer air molecules above, as shown by its lower pressure (314 hPa vs. 490 hPa). Still, Chimborazo’s equatorial position makes it ideal for a space elevator, leveraging Earth’s spin to lift climbers to orbit with less energy. Alas, security concerns will probably mandate a space elevator being located at sea, but imagine a tether rising from this volcanic giant, connecting Ecuador to the stars! Most Ecuadorans would refer to it as an ascensor espacial, Spanish for space elevator.

Finally, we wind up in Greenland, a place much in the news lately. In an earlier post about Greenland, I wrote about how the Thule Nano Institute was leveraging zinc nanofibers to make a space elevator. In the real world, however, there doesn’t appear to be a word in their native language (Greenlandic – known by its speakers as Kalaallisut) for space elevator. It is a polysynthetic language, meaning complex ideas can be expressed in single words by combining roots, affixes, and suffixes, sometimes forming very long words. So let me take this opportunity to add the next language to my Translation Project and propose a new word in Kalaallisut – Qilaksioqqut (pronounced KEE-lack-see-OK-coot). This can be translated as “sky lifter”. I will leave it to my myriad Kalaallisut-speaking readers to say “yay” or “nay” to my proposed new word and its pronunciation.

And that’s a wrap for this week’s Weekend Walkabout.

Exploring Eight Space Elevator Architectures: A Historical and Visionary Journey

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I’m slowly working my way through the wealth of material on the International Space Elevator Consortium’s (ISEC) website – it really has become, as Dr. Peter Swan puts it, a “Body of Knowledge” about all-things space elevator.

The number “eight” In Buddhism, the Noble Eightfold Path, is a core teaching for achieving enlightenment, comprising eight practices: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. It’s also the number of spokes on the Dharma wheel.

And did you know that in Chinese culture, the number eight is also associated with business success which is why the 2008 Beijing Olympics began on August 8, 2008 (08/08/08) at 8:08 pm?

In this post, I want to talk about another “eight” by highlighting David Raitt’s 2021 “Space Elevator Architectures“, a report published in the Quest journal (Volume: 28 #1). Raitt traces the space elevator’s evolution through eight distinct designs or Architectures. He begins with Konstantin Tsiolkovsky’s 1895 vision of a tower to space as the first Architecture and describes each significant step along the way, culminating in the “Eighth Architecture”. This latest design integrates ISEC’s Galactic Harbour-based space elevators with rocket ships to provide both routine cargo hauling and specialized missions to provide a complete space transportation system (to borrow a phrase).

Raitt frames the space elevator not as science fiction, but as a visionary infrastructure project inching toward feasibility, grounded in over a century of evolving architectural thought. Rather than summarizing the eight Architectures (and risk leaving something out), I recommend reading the document itself. It’s an eminently readable 10 pages packed with information – perfect for history buffs like me.

For more on the “Eighth Architecture,” check out Cathy Swan’s “Modern Day Space Elevators” article in the June 2023 issue of Spaceflight, which explains its advantages in clear, accessible terms (and is where I borrowed the phrase “space transportation system” from).

We’re all waiting as fast as we can for the next steps toward making space elevators a reality—and just as the Buddhist Eightfold Path leads to enlightenment, the Eighth Architecture might illuminate the path to a new era of space travel. Happy reading!

 

Weekend Walkabout: Global Conferences, Indonesian Art, and Lift Antariksa

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This edition of Weekend Walkabout starts with a Conference in the USA, moves on to another Conference in Australia and winds up with more cool artwork and a new translation from Indonesia – something for everyone!

Stateside, we kick off with the National Space Society’s 43rd International Space Development Conference (ISDC), held in Orlando, Florida, from June 19–22. ISEC, a longtime NSS affiliate, continues its tradition of hosting a full Space Elevator track—check out the lineup here and here. ISEC’s Chief Architect and President Emeritus, Dr. Peter Swan, will chair the track.

NSS, born in 1987 from the merger of the National Space Institute (1974) and L5 Society (1975), came very close to fielding an entry for Climber competition at the 2009 Spaceward/NASA Space Elevator Games. Their bold plan? Use a laser to heat a Stirling engine, driving the Climber’s power instead of relying on photovoltaic arrays. Though they ultimately didn’t compete, their tests at TRUMPF’s Michigan facility produced awesome photos and videos. Search ‘NSS’ on the blog to see them in action!

Next, we head down under to Sydney, Australia, for the 76th International Astronautical Conference (IAC2025), set for September 29–October 3, where space elevators will again take center stage. Hosted by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), founded in 1951 in Paris, IAC2025 will feature the Space Elevator Session (IAC-25, D4.3), also co-chaired by Dr. Peter Swan – that man gets around, doesn’t he? Australia’s growing space sector, backed by its Space Agency and proximity to equatorial regions like Indonesia, makes Sydney a fitting host for discussions on tether designs and orbital hubs. ISEC’s rich history with IAC includes dozens of presentations on topics from potential tether materials to galactic harbors—explore the full list here. For more ISEC events, including past IAC talks, visit the ISEC Events page.

Finally, we land in Indonesia, a space elevator enthusiast’s dream thanks to its equatorial perch—perfect for an Earth station. First, enjoy this conceptual space elevator artwork by Frank Lewecke, an award-winning artist featured on Dune covers and Bavarian TV’s Space Night. His vision captures the futuristic promise of an Indonesian-based tether.

Next, we add to our translation series with the Indonesian term for space elevator: lift antariksa or elevator antariksa, written in the same Latin alphabet as English. With the world’s 4th largest population (285 million) and 7th largest GDP by purchasing power parity, Indonesia’s industrial might and space agency, INASA, could make it a candidate for a future space elevator hub. Could Jakarta or Bali host the next galactic gateway?

And that’s a wrap for this week – thanks for reading!

Housekeeping and miscellany…

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Just a quick update on some blog maintenance and cool finds for space elevator enthusiasts!

I’ve finally finished clearing out all of the sidebar dead links – there were so many, sigh. In the future, I’ll be working on adding back a few of the more noteworthy ones via the Wayback machine as time permits. If you spot any still-broken links on the sidebar, or if you have suggestions for notable links to include, please let me know in a comment or an email to ted [at] spaceelevatorblog.com.

A link I want to highlight is in the Space Elevator Humor section. Four comedians (Louis Katz, Chris Garcia, Alex Koll & Sean Keane) created 40 short (about 1 minute long, each) comedy sketches of four passengers in an Elevator – to Space. These were created some 15 years ago and were posted on Vimeo. They disappeared and I thought they were lost but then I found them on YouTube. The sidebar link is to the Playlist. They really are funny (IMHO of course) and well worth a visit. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but I’m particularly fond of this one.

And finally, I received a comment from Chris Hibbert who informed me that he has updated the information on the Wikipedia Space Elevator Competitions page (which I didn’t know existed). Thanks Chris! I’ve added this link to the Reference Sites section on the sidebar.

Weekend Walkabout – European competitions, a glimpse of the future in Brazil and the Space Elevator company…

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This week’s edition of Weekend Walkabout starts in Europe, moves on for a stop in Brazil and winds up in India. And we get not one, but two new translations of Space Elevator…

We start in Europe where the WARR Student Group at the Technical University of Munich hosted the most recent space elevator related competition, EUSPEC 2024. Four teams competed: Space Robotics, Alpha Centauri, Inoue Lab Team and Meier’s 11. Check out their webpage for more details and also photos of the competition.

From the EUSPEC 2024 webpage – credit TUM/WARR.

The people behind this competition are the WARR Space Robotics people. From their website: “WARR Space Robotics is an interdisciplinary team of robotics enthusiasts at the Technical University of Munich. The team is the result of the merger of the former WARR exploration (founded in 2017) and WARR space elevator (founded in 2007) teams in 2023.” A January blog post briefly describes their participation in the Japan Space Elevator Challenge (JSPEC) held last December in Fuji, Japan.

The EUSPEC 2024 webpage mentions EUSPEC 2026 so besides the hoped-for-revival of the Space Elevator Games, we have another competition to look forward to.

Next we jet to Brazil, where this very cool artwork by Dave Seeley imagines a space elevator located on a river in Brazil.

Looking at a map, we can see that the north branch of the Amazon River exits Brazil into the Atlantic Ocean at Macapá, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amapá. What’s really cool about this is that the equator runs right through the middle of Macapá, giving it the nickname “The Capital of the Middle of the World“. And, as we all know, the equator is the prime location to place a Space Elevator. What’s even more cool is the flag of Macapá (pictured). The flag’s red, yellow, and green stripes frame a silver Fortaleza de São José tower silhouette, eerily resembling a climber on a tether. Did a time traveler design that flag?

In Macapá, locals might call a space elevator ‘Elevador Espacial’ in Portuguese, the official language of Brazil.

Finally, we land in India, a potential powerhouse for a future Space Elevator. I’ve often written about how I think that India could be a real contender when a Space Elevator becomes feasible. The Edwards/Westling seminal book on Space Elevators identified a couple of locations in the Indian ocean that could be prime locations for a Space Elevator Earthport and, of course, India has direct sea lanes to those locations and a real Navy that could defend them. A space elevator could boost India’s space ambitions, complementing its navy’s strength and strategic Indian Ocean access.

Business Today India recently posted a nice series of graphics (“22,000-mile cable to space”) about a potential space elevator.

And, if the Indians ever get serious about this, they’ll probably want to purchase the website spaceelevator.in – which is already taken by the Space Elevator company. From their website: “At Space Elevator, We’re Committed to Raising Your Expectations When It Comes To Vertical Transportation Solutions…Space Elevator Is A Distinguished Name In the World of Elevators And Lifts, Known For Excellence in Manufacturing And Providing Top-NotchServices“. Sounds good to me…

And this brings us to our weekly Translation Project updates. This week we’re going to get two new translations, not just one.

India has 22 scheduled (official) languages but has many more – the 2011 Indian Census recorded over a thousand distinct “mother tongues”. Of these, the languages with the most speakers are Hindi (by far), followed by Bengali and Telugu. I already have the Hindi translation in the Translation Project and am now adding Bengali and Telugu.

Bengali: মহাকাশ লিফট (Mahākāśa liphaṭa – “Great Sky Lift” or “Space Lift”) – Fun fact: In addition to being the second most common language spoken in India, Bengali is the official language of Bangladesh.

Telugu: అంతరిక్ష ఎలివేటర్ (Antariksha elevēṭar – “Space Elevator” or “Cosmos Elevator”)

And that’s a wrap for this week’s Weekend Walkabout.

Something Old, Something New: ISEC and SEDevCo

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Imagine a ribbon stretching 100,000 km into space, ferrying payloads to orbit daily—cheaply and sustainably. That’s the dream driving the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC), founded in 2008, and its newer “partner”, the Space Elevator Development Corporation (SEDevCo). I was there at ISEC’s inception, helping shape its mission, and I’m very pleased to reintroduce ISEC to my readers.

ISEC: Pioneering the Vision
ISEC took shape in 2008, and beginning shortly after its launch, I served as its president for four years. One of our proudest achievements was launching annual studies tackling key space elevator challenges. For example, our 2010 study, Space Elevator Survivability: Space Debris Mitigation, addressed how real the problem of orbital debris is, while the 2013 study, Design Considerations for Space Elevator Climbers, explored how climbers could be powered and operated.

When I stepped down, Dr. Peter Swan took over as President and expanded ISEC’s expertise, recruiting specialists in materials science, aerospace engineering, commercial space operations, among other disciplines. Today, ISEC’s studies cover such topics as the Apex Anchor, software simulators, and climber-tether interfaces, with their work showcased at events like the International Space Development Conference. A more detailed description of ISEC’s activities can be found on their What We Do webpage.  Upcoming posts will dive deeper into ISEC’s ongoing efforts.

SEDevCo: Building the Future
Enter SEDevCo, a newcomer turning ISEC’s research into reality. While ISEC focuses on science and education, SEDevCo’s mission “is to accomplish activities leading to the development of the world’s first Space Elevator Transportation System”. Dr. Swan, Chief Architect for both organizations, bridges their efforts. The path to SEDevCo’s formation is detailed in ISEC’s September 2024 Newsletter, but their focus is clear: make space elevators real. Visit SEDevCo’s website and grab their pamphlet—it’s a crash course in why space elevators would revolutionize space access.

A Glimpse of Tomorrow
Check out a gem from SEDevCo’s website: an amazing video by Lux Virtual showing a future space elevator operation from a futuristic ocean-based port. It’s a glimpse of a future that ranks very high on my cool-o-meter.

 

Weekend Walkabout: Lifti ya Anga and Oita Space Hike 2024

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Longtime readers of this blog may recall my Translation Project, an effort to translate the phrase “Space Elevator” into as many languages as possible. Before the blog went into hibernation, I had gathered 30 translations—spanning both real and constructed languages—with help from several readers. You can view the current list by clicking on the Translation Project tab near the top of the blog.

Another familiar feature was my “Weekend Walkabout,” a (mostly) weekly post exploring space elevator-related items around the world. I’m pleased to reintroduce both, combining them starting this week. Each week, I’ll add a new translation to the Translation Project and discuss it (among other topics) in my Weekly Walkabout posts. And without further ado…

Translation of the Week: Swahili – Lifti ya Anga

This week, I’m adding Swahili, spoken by over 100 million people across East Africa, to our space elevator translations. The term Lifti ya Anga (“elevator of space”) captures the dream of ascending to the cosmos. It’s particularly fitting since Swahili is chiefly spoken in Eastern Africa, a region transected by the equator—the ideal location for a space elevator’s Earth Port due to Earth’s rotational forces. Cities like Nairobi could be prime candidates for a future spaceport hub, though challenges like regional security concerns would need to be addressed. Pronunciation: “LEE-f-tee yah AH-ng-ah” (Tips: Emphasize the “LEE” and “AH” sounds, and keep the “ng” soft, like in “sing,” not “finger.”)

To celebrate, I’ve created a kanga-inspired graphic—a traditional Swahili fabric often adorned with wise proverbs. Our space-elevator-themed proverb, “Kupanda nyota, ngazi kwanza” (“To climb the stars, a ladder first”), reflects the space elevator’s role as humanity’s ladder to the stars. The kanga features a baobab tree (Swahili: mbuyu, pronounced “mm-BOO-yoo”) with a tether rising from it and surrounded by baobab flowers. I know I’ll never win any graphic design awards, but I hope I get at least a passing mark for effort…

Shifting gears to Japan, the Oita Space Hike 2024 event last October caught my attention for its space elevator tie-in. Held on October 12–13 at J:COM Horuto Hall in Oita, this space education event—organized by Oita Prefecture and Oita Asahi Broadcasting (OAB)—aimed to inspire young people with hands-on space activities. One of its experience booths featured a Space Elevator Climber Programming Experience, where students programmed a simulated climber to navigate a tether, addressing real-world challenges like speed and stability. This kind of engagement is crucial for nurturing the next generation of space elevator innovators, especially in Japan, a hub for space elevator research with initiatives like Obayashi Corporation’s 2050 vision. I’ve reached out to my old acquaintance Shuichi Ohno from my JSEA days to see if he can share more about this event—stay tuned for updates!

And that’s a wrap for this week’s Weekend Walkabout!

Prune prune prune…

1 Reply

I’ve received a few emails (thank you!) from readers who note that I have a whole host of broken links in my sidebar.

Yes, I know, these were all working once upon a time, but 10 years is several lifetimes on the internet.

I’m working on pruning and updating them – it will be a work in progress over the next several days. It’s just a sad state of affairs that so many of these sites are inactive or don’t even exist anymore. Even the Space Elevator Reference is now an empty, parked site for crying out loud!

So, patience please, dear readers – WIP…

Zinc Nanofiber Tether Shocks World—Greenland’s Alien Tech to the Stars!

Hold onto your climbers, folks—it’s April 1st, and the space elevator game just got weird. An obscure lab in Qaanaaq, Greenland (population: 600, sheep: more), claims a tether breakthrough that’s got Trump eyeing the ice sheet harder than ever. The Thule Nano Institute—yes, it’s real today only—says they’ve cracked a 100 MYuri tether using alien technology, smashing Toray’s puny 4 MYuri fibers and Tsinghua’s 45 MYuri lab toys. Why’s Trump obsessed? It’s not oil—it’s aliens.

Under Northern Greenland’s ice, they found an abandoned extraterrestrial base—think The Thing meets Close Encounters. Inside: zinc-based nanofibers. This isn’t your grandma’s zinc—these fibers, artificially strengthened by harmonic resonance at 432 Hz, hit 150 GPa tensile strength at 1.5 g/cc. That’s 100 MYuri—enough for a 100,000 km tether with room for a gift shop. The kicker? That 432 Hz hum’s in “Stairway to Heaven”—Led Zeppelin’s now the official elevator music for climbers zipping up this cosmic strand.

Quotes are flying:

  • Elon Musk, Tesla/SpaceX mad genius: “Greenland’s zinc nanofibers? Wild—beats my 69-ton tether flops. Rumors about this base were first posted on X and Dogecoin’s spiking 420% today—coincidence? ‘Stairway to Heaven’ climbers are my vibe—Mars’ll wait while I hodl.”
  • Keith Olbermann, Sourpuss Blowhard: “Trump’s drooling over this—zinc nanofibers for his stupid wall! Bigger, uglier borders, not elevators. Greenland’s a distraction—space is a lie, and this is MAGA’s latest grift. I’m nauseated.”
  • Múte Bourup Egede, Prime Minister of Greenland: “Musk thinks he’s Mars king? Nah—we’ve got alien zinc now. I’ll tether my way there first, plant our flag, and leave Elon in the dust. Greenland’s not for sale—it’s for winning.”

Trump’s Greenland grab? Not climate or bases—it’s this. Sources (read: my imagination) say he’s pitching a “Space Wall” to keep Martian migrants out. The Thule Nano folks won’t share—too busy blasting Zeppelin and weaving tethers. Now we’re really reaching (for the Stars)…

Ten Years Later – I’m back

It’s been exactly ten years since my last blog post. Ten. Years. Ten freakin’ years. Holy moly, time flies. Much has changed in my life: I’ve moved, made lifestyle changes, jumped back into software engineering, among other twists. But the space elevator? That fascination never faded. I kept www.spaceelevatorblog.com alive while so many other space elevator sites bit the dust.

And yet it’s hard to blame the people who’ve moved on. Ten years on, not much has shifted. Tether tech’s stalled—Toray’s 4 MYuri fibers still rule. No one’s spun a new material longer than a few centimeters that beats it, let alone hits the 30-50 MYuri we need for an Earth-based elevator. Without that, we’re still dreaming, not building.

So why revive this blog now? Enter Mr. Mordy Friedman from Etheria Space. He contacted me a few days ago, and we had a great chat about his plans to relaunch the Space Elevator Games in the U.S. Over to Mr. Friedman:

“Our current plan is to launch the competition with a demonstration in 2025 (ideally at ISDC) to generate awareness and recruit teams and sponsors. We then aim to scale up for 2026 with a mile-high climber competition, structured in two classes: climbers with onboard power and those using power beaming. The onboard power competition is designed to increase participation and explore diverse climbing methods, while the power beaming competition, which is more challenging, will be the main focus, driving the development of this crucial technology. We are still working on the tether competition, looking for a way to make it compelling enough to drive the right development in that area.

This relaunch is being framed as a continuation of the games, building on the past games and the ongoing efforts in Japan, but expanding it into a global effort in collaboration with ISEC (USA), JSEA (Japan), and TUM (Germany) and hopefully others.

For anyone interested in learning more, or getting involved, they can reach out at contact@etheriaspace.com.”

He also emphasizes that all of this is very preliminary and subject to change.

Ambitious? You bet. Can he pull it off? We’ll see. I’m rooting for him, offering my old contacts, Spaceward rulebooks, and whatever else I can dig up from my ISEC and blogging days. It’s reason enough to dust off this site. Plus, him pinging me right at the 10-year mark? The Universe is winking—and who am I to argue with the Universe?

Randy Quaid I’m back

 

There’s plenty to unpack in the space elevator world—tethers, climbers, games, and more. I’ll roll it out over days and weeks. Join me—we’re climbing again.

Nine years – and that’s enough for now…

Today marks nine full years that I’ve been hosting and authoring the Space Elevator Blog and I’m going to call it quits, at least for the time being.  I have several other projects on my plate and I’m not getting any younger…

Being a part of the effort to promote the idea of a space elevator over the past nine years has been fun and interesting and full of highlights with my being a part of the Space Elevator Games topping the list.  This competition was held over several years and in several venues and was a joy to participate in.  Spending several days at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (now known as the Armstrong Flight Research Center) with NASA personnel and all the contestants for the 2009 Space Elevator Games was beyond awesome and I want to thank Ben Shelef, the Spaceward Foundation and, of course, NASA for allowing me to be a part of it.  It was truly special.  A close number two was the formation of the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC), an organization that I was very proud to be the president of for four years.

What is the status of an earth-based space elevator?  In the most important area, tether strength, we’re still where we were nine years ago.  No one has produced a tether from new materials that matches, let alone exceeds, tethers made from conventional materials and until that happens, an earth-based space elevator remains a pipe-dream.  But research continues, and perhaps someday material like this will become a reality.  If and when it does, then perhaps I’ll restart this blog.  I still love the idea of a space elevator, but the reality is that right now (and for the foreseeable future), it’s just not possible to build one…

Two groups still continue to press forward with this idea however, the aforementioned International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) and the Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA).  ISEC, under the current leadership of Dr. Peter Swan, is in very capable hands.  While they are not working with the materials science necessary to make a super-strong tether, they continue to investigate other areas in order to, in the very appropriate phrase from Ben Shelef, “increase our understanding of the space elevator“.

If you are interested in keeping up with developments in this arena, you can visit the ISEC web page, “Like” their Facebook page or follow them on Twitter.

So, goodbye for now and thanks for reading!

The Lonely Astronaut finally gets a Space Elevator

TwistedMojo has a new episode out in the Lonely Astronaut series and it has a space elevator!

If you’re not familiar with the series, an Astronaut is stranded on the moon and somehow survives several decades.  There are rescue attempts, Sexual Harassment training, hallucinations, etc. – but all funny (if you have a warped sense of humor like I do).

The latest episode is about another rescue attempt, this one based on the idea of a lunar and earth-based space elevator.  Forget the ‘science’ – everything is wrong, but it’s still funny.

Oh, and this is definitely NOT workplace safe…

 

 

Shoot the Moon update

The folks creating Shoot the Moon – a story about Liftport‘s effort to build a space elevator – have posted another update for their Kickstarter funded project.

Hey, everyone!

Since our last update, we’ve converged on the Seattle area for a month of shooting. This week alone has been packed with activity. Here’s a quick recap:

Our storyboards our in! The talented Ben Granoff has visualized what our special effects sequences might look like. Now that we have these in hand, we’ll pass them onto our model designers/makers (more on that later), and they’ll get started building. Take a look at some of Ben’s work below.

On Tuesday, we stopped by the Tethers Unlimited’s (TU) headquarters in Bothell, Washington. Since a tether is the central component of a space elevator, you can imagine why we wanted to chat with CEO Rob Hoyt and VP of Engineering Jeff Slostad…

You can read more, including seeing some of the storyboard pictures (one shown above) and pictures from the workshop of the people who are designing the model miniatures being used in filming.

As noted above, the team visited Tethers Unlimited and spoke with VP of Engineering Jeff Slostad.  Mr. Slostad gave the Keynote presentation at the 2012 Space Elevator Conference and spoke about “Thinking Unlimited” – not letting your thought process and expectations being bound by previous experiences.

He’s a handsome man…

I’m looking forward to the film…

Weekend Walkabout – Thailand to Japan to Fantasy Land…

Welcome to this edition of Weekend Walkabout.  In this post, we visit India Thailand to see a ‘possible competitor’ to a space elevator, then journey to Japan to see the latest with our favorite anime series, Gundam, and then wind up in what can only be described as “Fantasy Land”.  There’s also a programming note concerning this blog and Facebook.  And without further ado…

A new “lift system” has been demonstrated in India Thailand and it is just awesome.  Frankly, I don’t ever think it will be a competitor to the space elevator 🙂 but it ranks pretty high on my cool-o-meter.  Make sure you watch it to the end…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD_yQZ4iNjY

At the very end, when all of the pieces are falling, it reminded me of one of the qualifying runs by the Kansas City Space Pirates at the 2007 Space Elevator Games.

Next up is a stop in Japan.  If you’re a fan of Anime, you almost certainly know about Gundam.  This started as a TV series in Japan in 1979 and now has grown to be much more than that.  According to Chris Beveridge, who knows much more about these things than I do, something very cool has happened:

While fans of Gundam Build Fighters Try have been treated to a proper simulcast for that series and its previous incarnation, fans of Gundam Reconguista in G haven’t made out as good. But that’s now managed to change some as the series has begun streaming on the official Gundam Info YouTube channel with English subtitles (as well as streams in other territories/subtitles). The addition comes as about twenty-two episodes have been broadcast in Japan since it’s debut last year.

Chris tells us that the plot concept of Gundam Reconguista in G is:

The Universal Century, an era of historic migration into space and space wars has ended, and some time has passed. Now, mankind believes that their pursuits and prosperity will continue on peacefully into the new era, the Regild Century (R.C.)

R.C. 1014. The Capital Tower is a space elevator which towers over the land connecting Earth to space. The tower’s purpose is to bring down Photon Batteries from space that power the Earth, and as such is perceived as a holy place…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJZXfjjNOGk#t=82

Read more about it here.

Finally, we wind up in “Fantasy Land”.  The baseline model for today’s concept of a Space Elevator was defined in the book by Dr. Brad Edwards and Eric Westling; The Space Elevator: A Revolutionary Earth-to-Space Transportation System.  If you want to understand how a space elevator could work in the real-world, this book is a must-read.  I’ve often referred to it on this blog.

However, it appears that this book has become worth its weight in Gold.  Longtime Space Elevator Blog reader Paul R. recently sent me this snapshot from Amazon:

When I checked this item yesterday, this price was still advertised.  Just to let everyone know, I have a copy that I will sell for just $1,999.99!

Finally, some programming notes.  I have killed, once and for all, with a wooden stake to the heart, the “Subscriber” function for this blog.  I’ve tried it twice now, but all I get are registrations from spam-bots and it’s just a waste.  So, if you want to subscribe to this blog, you’ll need to do it via RSS or…

There is now a Facebook page for this blog.  Yes, I’ve gotten with it with technology that’s only several years old 🙂 but still is relevant.  “Like” The Space Elevator Blog on Facebook and you’ll get a notification every time a new post appears on this blog – Thank you!

Hat Tip to Dr. Peter Swan, president of ISEC, for the URL of the new Indian Thai “Space Launch system” and to reader Paul R. for letting me know about the “greatly in-demand” Edwards-Westling book – thank you both!

 

09Mar2015 Update – Thanks to reader Bob Munck for pointing out that the “space lift” is from Thailand, not India and also that they are called “Girandola” – you learn something new every day…

Book Review – Celestial Phoenix

Yes, I said that my next post was going to be on tether capacities and power systems, but that can wait – a new space-elevator themed book is available!

Celestial Phoenix is written by new (I think) author A. P. Williams and is available on Kindle at Amazon.

Be warned – this book is NOT politically correct.

The gist of the book is that an engineer and his beautiful and talented wife orchestrate the building of a space elevator set against the backdrop of the world gone mad and falling apart.  The elevator is eventually used to start a lunar colony, a place of perhaps the “last, best hope” for humanity when the crap really hits the fan.

In the category of “Did I enjoy the book?”, the answer was an unqualified “Yes”.  I started reading it yesterday evening and only put it down when I was too tired to hold my eyes open.  I spent a good part of today finishing the book.

The space elevator which was built was designed mostly according to the principles described in the Edwards-Westling book on this subject.  Build it on the equator?  Check.  Build it out of carbon nanotubes (or other super-strong material)?  Check.  Increase the capacity of the “seed” tether by using the elevator itself?  Check.  Power the climbers with lasers?  Check.

But there are some differences too.  Williams has the elevator based on an island rather than an ocean-going platform that was described in the Edwards-Westling book.  While this simplifies some things, it also becomes more difficult in other ways as there are no unclaimed islands – wherever you want to build a land-based space elevator, you will have a local government to deal with (Williams writes about this a lot in the book).  Also, and this is my second biggest quibble with the design, Williams describes multiple tethers going up to a single space station.  According to technical people I know and trust, this is just not realistic.  Tethers spaced so closely together will inevitably touch and get tangled up, causing all sorts of problems.  The counterweight (“Apex Anchor” in the current vernacular) will keep everything generally taut.  But there will be oscillations in the tether which will naturally occur and also those that have to be propagated throughout at least some parts of the tether to avoid satellites and other large space debris.  And my biggest quibble with the design is on the subject of space debris, this book ignores the issue.

Still, all in all, it’s not a bad depiction of a possible space elevator – certainly better than some of the half-baked ideas I see on various internet forums…

The writing of the book was, in general (and IMHO of course), fairly well done.  There were a couple of loose ends, some spelling/grammar errors, etc. and also some stereotypes which, for me anyway, detracted from the story.  For example, the “evil government bureaucrat” was an ugly, single, middle aged woman who owned a cat.  Hello!  And the “journalist” who was portrayed as being biased and uniformed was named “McYaps”.  The good people were really good and the bad people were really bad – not much grey there.  Corporations could do no wrong and government could do no right.  And some of the villains, the Chinese and Iranians, were fairly predictable.  Finally, things seemed to go just a bit too well in every technical aspect of the space elevator and colonization of the moon – only one accident was recorded.  Again, that’s just not realistic.  But all in all, the book kept me very interested in what was going to happen next.

And, as implied earlier, Williams is not afraid to offend various ethnic and religious groups, in ways that one usually doesn’t see.  As this is The Space Elevator Blog, and not FoxNews or MSNBC, I’ll not comment on his political leanings.  I will say, however, he has a unique take on how things could fall apart and how they might be put back together again…

Overall, I give this book a rating of 3.5 stars.

Payloads

Many of you remember, I’m sure, a cartoon on the most-excellent XKCD website entitled Payloads.  This cartoon compared and contrasted, in increments of “horses” (which I calculate to represent 1,200 pound increments), the differences in Launch Vehicle Capacity and Spacecraft mass of various space craft from the past, present and future.

The kicker for Space Elevator fans was, if you moused over the original cartoon, the comment “With a space elevator, a backyard of solar panels could launch about 500 horses per year, and a large power plant could launch 10 horses per minute” would briefly appear.

I have no idea where he got the space elevator numbers from but, as a proponent of the idea of a space elevator, I have to compliment the enthusiasm on his part 🙂

How much payload COULD a space elevator launch?  The answer to that is, as you might expect, complicated.  It depends almost exclusively on the carrying capacity of the tether and the power system.  I’ll talk more about this in the next post, but for now, you can read the Space Elevator Power System Analysis and Optimization document written by Spaceward CEO Ben Shelef.  It lays out very clearly why power systems have such a profound effect on the throughput of a space elevator.

Here is my contribution / augmentation to the XKCD cartoon showing the weight of the Climber and the Payload which can be carried by a Climber for the Edwards-Westling baseline 20MetricTon space elevator.

Total Climber mass, with Payload, is 20 Metric Tons.  Payload makes up about 40%.

Click on the graphic to see a larger version.

Weekend Walkabout – From shooting things into the sun to India to Canada…

This Weekend Walkabout continues to catch up on some things I didn’t blog about while I was taking my holiday break.

We start off by hypothetically shooting things into the sun, then learn about the latest success from the Indian space program and wind up in Canada – learning about the Hudson Bay Space Elevator…

Have you ever been interested in shooting someone into the sun?  Want to know the physics involved and some of the problems you’re going to face?  Well, fear not – Mr. Ryan Hardy has done the research for you!  An answer posted by him over at Quora (and reproduced at Gizmodo, which is where I found it) makes it clear that, unless you are contemplating using a space elevator for this task, you are going to flatten and incinerate your payload.

I love this article – he’s actually run the numbers (something which is all-too-often sadly lacking in articles like this).  And humor abounds – I think my favorite part of the writeup was this;

Once the person makes it through the barrel, they will be immediately greeted by Earth’s atmosphere at Mach 90. The acceleration from the resulting drag would be comparable to the acceleration felt while coming out of the cannon, but in the opposite direction. The thermal loading would heat the air ahead of the person to tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of Kelvin.

So, in summary, you’ve embarked on one of the largest engineering projects in history and found a way to pulverize and incinerate a human being in less than three thousandths of a second.

Read the whole thing – it’s a treat – well done Mr. Hardy!

(The image is the Lego version of the Schwerer-Gustav, an enormous artillery cannon used by Nazi Germany in WWII.  Ryan Hardy’s article shows why even a device as large as this has nowhere near the power to shoot something into the sun.  Click on the image to see a somewhat larger version).

Next up is another milestone for that under-the-radar space program from India, this the successful launch of their Next Generation Launch Vehicle, one intended to put payload directly into geosynchronous orbit and also, eventually, for crewed vehicles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD0RtxuGxug#t=1632

The actual launch is just before the 26 minute mark.  You can read more about this event at the most excellent SpaceRef website.

I have blogged many times (for example here) about India and the space elevator.  I think they will have both the expertise and the desire to build and operate a space elevator.  They have a real and growing space program.  They are a respected military power.  And two of the prime possible locations for a space elevator are in the Indian ocean with Indian access via direct sea lanes.

Don’t discount India – they really could be the first ones…

And finally, we have a hypothetical space elevator anchored in Hudson Bay (yes, the Hudson Bay in Canada).  This has been supposedly described by Scott Sigler in his book The Rookie.  Don’t confuse this book (which is about football in the future) with The Rookie with Dennis Quaid (which is about contemporary baseball).

I haven’t read the book yet (I’ve put it on my to-be-purchased list), but I did see this review of it by Paul L on Scott Sigler’s website.  He points out the following:

Hudson Bay is at 60 degrees North latitude. There’s just no way to anchor a space elevator at Hudson Bay with a satellite or a counterweight. And if you tried to build from Hudson Bay to a satellite at the equator (with the counterbalance going south of the equator) the forces don’t balance. Instead their would be a huge torque on the elevator (let alone no feasible way to build the elevator that far north).

He’s right, but it’s a shame you can’t build a space elevator in Canada.  It could be guarded by the Royal Canadian Elevator Police, it could have a beer named after it (or perhaps a line of clothes) and, could you imagine what Doug and Bob McKenzie could do with this?  OMG – look what they did with the Canadian arm on the space shuttle:

Oh those wacky Canadians…

Should we give up on the dream of space elevators?

Making the rounds over the past several days has been the BBC Future article Should we give up on the dream of space elevators?

The author, Nic Fleming, quotes both Elon Musk (of Tesla, SpaceX , SolarCity, Paypal and who knows what else) and Dr. Peter Swan, the President of the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC).  Mr. Musk states that “This is extremely complicated. I don’t think it’s really realistic to have a space elevator” and, that it would be easier to “have a bridge from LA to Tokyo” than it would be to build a space elevator.  Dr. Swan, on the other hand, thinks building a space elevator is a “slam dunk” once the materials problem has been solved.

I must respectfully take issue with statements from both parties.

Musk’s statements regarding the space elevator’s complexity and building a bridge from LA to Tokyo are almost certainly true, but I fail to see the relevance.  Just because something is hard to do doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile attempting.  And, building a bridge from LA to Tokyo is not going to open up the solar system to colonization and mineral mining and all of the other truly spectacular opportunities that await.

And I can’t agree with Dr. Swan’s statement about the non-materials issues / problems being “slam dunks” either.  There are so many unknowns about building and operating a space elevator that using the term “slam dunk” to describe them is really premature.  Yes, humans have decades of experience in space, but not with constructing and operating anything remotely like a space elevator.  And yes, the unknowns are being addressed – it’s a major focus of ISEC (an organization of which I was proud to be the President for four years).  I liked to say that one of the things we did/do at ISEC was to “take away reasons that people can say ‘no’ to a space elevator”.  But we’re still in the early stages of that effort.  It is quite possible that technical issues will ultimately make a space elevator impossible.  But we don’t see any now and, unless and until we do, the idea is so compelling that it would be foolish not to pursue it.

At this point, it might be useful to review what the advantages of a hypothetical space elevator are over conventional rockets (IMHO of course):

  1. The space elevator is massively scalable.  If/when a space elevator becomes possible, there is absolutely no reason why you can’t build one (or more than one) that can send hundreds of tons of payload from earth to space every day.  It’s a transportation infrastructure, like the trans-continental railroad.
  2. Riding on a space elevator is akin to riding on a high-speed train.  You do not have to worry about cushioning cargo against high-g forces and the “shake, rattle and roll” that always accompanies rocket launches.
  3. The space elevator will pollute less.  I don’t know the numbers here and don’t know how much pollution (however you want to define that term) a rocket generates, but the space elevator’s “pollution” should be essentially zero.
  4. The space elevator should be safer.  Rockets still have a 1-3% failure rate and it’s difficult to see how that can be significantly improved.  A space elevator should have a failure rate close to 0%.
  5. It should be cheaper to send cargo to space via a space elevator rather than via rockets.  This alleged advantage is, IMHO, more difficult to prove.  It’s always a great talking point; “Space Elevators will be able to send payload into space much cheaper than rockets can“, but I’ve yet to see the numbers on this (despite my best efforts).  It’s hoped that this is true, but it’s not a “slam dunk”…

I don’t see any obvious disadvantages of a space elevator vs. conventional rockets.  Yes, it’s true that a ride to space in a space elevator is much slower, but so what?  As you can have multiple cargo loads on a space elevator at the same time, you can set up a pipeline – getting cargo to LEO or GEO or points in between/beyond on a daily or near-daily basis.  And yes, it’s also true that human cargo will traverse the Van Allen belts (and other places of radiation) for a much longer period of time on a space elevator than they would be in rockets.  But, if you assume that this problem is going to be solved for longer space voyages (to Mars and beyond), then whatever technology is used to solve this problem will apply equally to both modes of transport.

One possible game-changer is if SpaceX can really prove the concept of reusable rockets.  If they can do this significantly better than NASA could with the Space Shuttle, then they may largely negate two of the potential advantages of the space elevator (scalability and cost).  It remains to be seen how many times a SpaceX rocket can be re-used and what the turnaround time/costs/issues are.  Let’s remember that the cost of a 747 is much more than a rocket, but the 747 can be “reused” thousands of times and thus the cost per trip / per pound is significantly amortized.

Fun times ahead…

Last week for ISEC Membership drive!

Just a reminder that this is the last week for the 2015 ISEC membership drive!

ISEC is holding its second annual Membership drive. A one-year Professional level membership, new or renewal, can be purchased for just $58 (regular price is $68) while a one-year Student level membership, new or renewal, can be purchased for just $20 (regular price is $25).

Any new or renewing members can choose as their membership benefit, any publication currently offered by ISEC. This includes any issue of CLIMB – The Space Elevator Journal or any of the several ISEC reports that have been produced; each of them giving an in-depth look at a specific aspect of the Space Elevator.

Professional level members are eligible to receive both the print and electronic versions of these publications while Student level members are eligible to receive the electronic versions of these publications.

This membership drive ends on February 28th so don’t delay – Join or Renew your membership now!

Weekend Walkabout – Seattle to India to Russia…

This edition of Weekend Walkabout starts in the USA (specifically Seattle), moves on the India and then finishes in Russia.  There is also a ‘programming note’ I discuss at the end of this post.  And without further ado…

Our first stop is in Seattle, Washington, USA.  According to allevents.in/seattle, our friends at Liftport is hosting a talk about the space elevator (“Space Elevator – Past, Present, and Future”) on Wednesday, February 25th at 7:30pm.  This event will be held at T.S. McHugh’s Irish Pub in Seattle, Washington.  From the announcement:

The Space Elevator is an idea that has been around for over 100 years. Building a ladder to space and climbing to the heavens by using a robot attached to a string, straight up. So what is the status of this project? Where do we stand? What do we need to make this vision a reality?

There is a Facebook page you can Like to get more information to follow this and other STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math) events.

Next up is a stop in India. I had previously blogged about the International Space Conference which was held at Amity University in India.  The idea of a space elevator as well as the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) was well represented at this conference by Mr. Sourabh Kaushal, a long-time colleague in this effort.  ISEC was a “Knowledge Partner” sponsor.

From all reports, the conference was quite successful.  The picture, below, shows ISEC literature being distributed at the conference.  More pictures from the Conference have now been posted online.

Lastly, we make a stop in Russia.  I found a website / forum that appears to be all-things space elevator.  There are only a few posts and all of them are dated May 5th, 2014.  I don’t know if they really were posted on that date or if it’s some bug/issue with the website.  I’ll be checking it from time to time to see if there is anything new posted.

Most of the items on there have already been covered in this blog, but there were links to a couple of videos that I hadn’t seen before.  The first one shown was originally aired by the Russian state-sponsored TV station, RT.com, and shows someone giving a brief explanation about the space elevator.  It was very nice to see that Yuri Artsutanov was credited with the idea – that doesn’t happen as often as it should.

If you’re not a native Russian speaker, you can translate the website using Chrome, but you’re on your own listening to the videos 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zlXNvyThuk#t=28

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u5lmfIW5gQ

Finally, a programming note.  Some of you may recall that a few months ago, I had turned on the feature for this blog to have registered Users – i.e., people could subscribe to the blog and have it automatically send them current postings.  After some complaints and problems, I turned it off.  With the new version (4.1) of WordPress which I’m now running on, I’m hopeful that these issues have been taken care so I’ve turned the feature back on.  Please let me know if you are experiencing any problems with this feature.

The Incredible (Mr.) Limpet

A study was recently released by the Journal Interface which showed that the teeth of Limpets contained the strongest material yet found in nature.  This material has been measured to have a tensile strength of 3.0 to 6.5 GPa, stronger than spider-silk (the previous champion) and approximately the same strength as the carbon fibers produced by Toray.

6.5 GPa is about 20-25% of the strength needed to build a space elevator, so this is a potentially significant development.

It is speculated that the reason for the strong teeth is that limpets need them to extract nutrients from rocks and evolution has given them the means to do so.  The material in the teeth which provides the strength, nano-fibers of Goethite, are something I’ve never heard of before.  Not being a materials scientist, I’m probably talking through my hat here, but perhaps someone could infuse a substance harder than rock with some of the nutrients needed by limpets, and see if limpets can further evolve to extract it.  Also, there are myriad types of limpets and they exist in both fresh and salt water.  Perhaps some of them have evolved even stronger teeth…

At the very least, it should give real materials scientists something new to think about in their quest to develop stronger and stronger materials.

One final note: one of the authors of the study was none other than our friend Dr. Nicola Pugno.  Nicola has been a long-time researcher in the field of materials development and has authored numerous articles on this subject, including ones in Volume 1 and Volume 2 of CLIMB, the Space Elevator Journal.

 

ISEC Membership Drive!

ISEC is holding its second annual Membership drive.  A one-year Professional level membership, new or renewal, can be purchased for just $58 (regular price is $68) while a one-year Student level membership, new or renewal, can be purchased for just $20 (regular price is $25).

Any new or renewing members can choose as their membership benefit, any publication currently offered by ISEC.  This includes any issue of CLIMB – The Space Elevator Journal or any of the several ISEC reports that have been produced; each of them giving an in-depth look at a specific aspect of the Space Elevator.

Professional level members are eligible to receive both the print and electronic versions of these publications while Student level members are eligible to receive the electronic versions of these publications.

This membership drive ends on February 28th so don’t delay – Join or Renew your membership now!

Shoot the Moon – more updates

Over the past few weeks, the Kickstarter campaign to create the Shoot the Moon documentary has issued a couple of updates:

Project Update #12 – Posters, starships and more filming in the Northwest

Hello Everyone! Happy New Year!

2015 has started with a flurry of activity for Shoot The Moon. The team will be in Oregon and Washington for the next few weeks shooting additional interviews, b-roll, and capturing Michael and David’s activities. If you’re in the neighborhood give us a shoutout on twitter.

The team back in New York City are busy organizing the existing footage and prepping for the editing process. The home stretch is upon us.

Thomas Roner of The Chopping Block/Chop Shop has been designing the Shoot The Moon swag. He just completed the movie poster!

We hope you like it as much as we do. Thanks Thomas!

We asked you to help us get some great special effects for this movie and you delivered. We are now happy to report that the storyboards are nearly complete. During our time in the Northwest, we met up with Charles Adams – the world renowned starship builder and designer. He will soon get to work designing amazing space elevator stuff for the special effects sequences. We are lucky to have him onboard and happy that he found the time in the midst of his work on the next Star Trek movie and other cool Sci-Fi projects.

Stay tuned for our Kickstarter survey. We are nearly there in terms of shipping items to our backers.

Thanks again for all your support! We wouldn’t be able to do this without you!
The Shoot The Moon team

Project Update #13 – Home stretch for Production

Dear backers,

As we gear up to film the miniature sequences you so generously helped us fund, the main production of Shoot The Moon is in the home stretch! Expect a bunch of updates over the next 30 days as we finish shooting the body of the film.

In the meantime, a side project of mine could use your help if you’re so inclined! Brian And Lindsay Will Totally Eat That is just finishing what has been a very exciting Kickstarter campaign.

It’s a comedy webseries I’m going to direct for MaximumFun.org. I’m really proud of the two pilot episodes we’ve put out, and if you have a few bucks to spare, we could really use the help!

Back it now!

Thanks,
Benjamin Ahr Harrison

ISEC January 2015 eNewsletter now available

The January, 2015 eNewsletter from the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) is now available.

You can access the eNewsletter here.

You can also view all eNewsletters that have been issued by ISEC by going to the ISEC website and then accessing the Resources -> ISEC eNewsletters tab.

Finally, you can sign up to be on the ISEC mailing list, ensuring that you’ll be among the first to be “in the know” about all the goings-on at ISEC.

IAC2015 Updates

Back in the saddle again…

In November, I posted about the upcoming IAC2015 Conference to be held in Jerusalem, Israel, in October of 2015. There are a couple of updates worth noting:

First, Dr. Peter Swan, the President of the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) has sent out a reminder that Abstracts for papers/presentations that anyone might wish to submit are due soon – February 23rd, to be exact. Papers/presentations related to the Space Elevator will occur in Session Three:

SESSION 3

Title – Technology Assessment and Space Elevators Components

Description – The recently completed IAA study, “Space Elevators – Feasibility and Next Steps” looked at engineering, operational, and funding steps towards an operational capability. This session will evaluate the current and near-term potential of the necessary technologies. They will be evaluated with respect to the NASA TRL’s and identify risks associated. In addition, the session can accept the analysis of other issues leveraging this remarkable transportation capability of routine, inexpensive and safe access to our solar system.

IPC members
Co-Chair: Dr. Peter Swan, tel.: 480 443 5698, SouthWest Analytic Network, United States;
Co-Chair: Mr. Robert E Penny, tel.: 480 892-9755, Cholla Space Systems, United States;
Rapporteur: Mr. Akira Tsuchida, Earth-Track Corporation, Japan;

So, if you want to be a presenter at this conference and have not already submitted your Abstract, you’ll want to do so soon.

And second, there has just been a promotional video released about the upcoming conference.

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).

Weekend Walkabout – Exploring the Solar System

In this Weekend Walkabout, we keep it simple but definitely not local.

But first a programming note: as many of you know, I recently updated this blog to the current version (4.0, now 4.0.1) of WordPress.  Since that time, I’ve been playing around with the features of this release and decided to turn on the “Subscriber” option, thinking that might be a good way to let people more easily follow my posts.  It turns out to be far more trouble than it’s worth (if it’s worth anything at all).  I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of “users” subscribe – but they turn out to be either not users at all (they don’t answer any confirming emails I’ve sent them) or users who are unhappy with this and who have emailed me to let me know they were now getting unsolicited emails.  There are some other issues I’ve found, but the long and short of it is that I have decided to turn this feature off and delete all of the email addresses that had been signed up as a Subscriber.  So, if you were adversely affected by this, I sincerely apologize…

And now to this weekend’s musings.  I have only one item for you, but it is MOST awesome.  This is a new short film by Erik Wernquist entitled WANDERERS.  It’s a paean to exploring the solar system and is accompanied by the voice of Carl Sagan.  The images in it all exist or could exist.  And yes, there is a space elevator in it (albeit on Mars) about 1 minute, 20 seconds into the video.

From the description:

Wanderers is a vision of humanity’s expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. The locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where available.  Without any apparent story, other than what you may fill in by yourself, the idea with the film is primarily to show a glimpse of the fantastic and beautiful nature that surrounds us on our neighboring worlds – and above all, how it might appear to us if we were there.

It’s in HD with great sound, so go full-screen, crank up your speakers and enjoy.

The website also contains a Gallery of photo-realistic images, including several of the aforementioned Martian Space Elevator.  These are also high-resolution images and the following is now my Desktop Background:

Truly worth the visit – enjoy!

(30NOV2014 Update – Gizmodo has a most excellent review of the video here)

Space Elevator Competitions

This is cool…   Reader Chris Hibbert has pointed me to a Wikipedia page I didn’t know about, one summarizing the various Space Elevator competitions that have been held world-wide over the past several years.  Based on translations obtained via Chrome, he has updated much of the information on the Japanese competitions – thanks Chris!

This webpage shows competitions in the USA, Japan, Europe and Israel.  I am unaware of any other competitions which have been held – if I am in error, please email me and let me know.

I am in contact with the organizers of these various contests and will be checking with them to ensure that the data presented here is complete and correct (I think I see a few minor errors, but will want to double-check before correcting them myself or having the organizers correct them).

 

Hat Tip to Chris Hibbert – thanks Chris!

SPEC2014

Each year, the Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA) holds a Climber competition acronymed SPEC (SPace Elevator Challenge) and each year they get more and more ambitious in their goals.  This year they had a 1,200 m long tether held up by balloons.  Climbers are powered by batteries and scores are awarded based on speed, payload, etc.

I had blogged about this previously, but said that videos/pictures/results had not yet been posted.  Now they have.

This video of the competition is very well done.  About 6 minutes and 50 seconds in, there is the rather astonishing segment of 100kg of payload for one of the climbers and then subsequently watching that climber carry it part-way up the competition tether.

Don’t worry if you don’t understand Japanese, you’ll understand everything going on in the video.  It’s in HD, so if you have a big screen monitor, flip the video into full-screen mode, crank up your speakers and enjoy…

The results of the competition can be found here (it’s in Japanese – if that’s not something you can read, open the page up in Chrome and let it auto-translate for you).

Finally, you can see all of the results of the various Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA) SPEC (JSETEC) competitions here (again in Japanese).

Something I had also mentioned in the previous post on SPEC2014 was the desire by the JSEA to turn this competition into an International one.  The International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) is now trying to recruit individuals to be on a committee to help organize the “American chapter” of this competition.  If you’re interested in participating (and, based on my participation in the Space Elevator Games, I can guarantee you an exciting learning experience if you do), please contact the President of ISEC, Dr. Peter Swan at pete.swan@isec.org.