Daily Archives: May 27, 2007

Space Odyssey

Kristin Ohlson wrote a short piece on the Space Elevator for Entreprenuer.com.  You can find it here.  She’s also doing a piece for an upcoming issue of the Inflight magazine for US Airways (which I, among others, have been working with her on).  When it’s published, I’ll link to it also (assuming it’s available online).

One note on this Entreprenuer.com article; she writes that this year’s Space Elevator Games will be held in October.  Others have written the same thing.  Some have written it would be in conjunction with the Space Elevator Games and still others have written that it would be held in Las Vegas.

THIS HAS NOT BEEN FINALIZED YET!!

Ben Shelef of Spaceward.org and Elevator2010.org, the organizer of these games, has been hard at work setting up the venue.  But at the moment nothing has been finalized.  Anything you read about the when and where of these games at this point is sheer speculation.  When an agreement has been reached and signed, you’ll be able to read about it on the Spaceward.org and Elevator2010.org websites, and on this blog. 

Space-Elevator solution for building a Lunar colony to be proposed

At the Space Elevator Reference, Dr. Brad Edwards writes about a proposal he is going to present to the Rutgers Symposium on Lunar Settlements, to be held in New Brunswick, NJ, on June 3-8 (of this year!).  Dr. Edwards will be presenting a proposal on how NASA can build and supply a lunar base for about half the cost, and with much greater capacity, than the current NASA program.

The backbone of this proposal will be the development of two, earth-based Space Elevators.

This really and truly rocks.  And, reading between the lines here, I’ve got to think that someone, somewhere must be close to announcing a breakthrough in the development of carbon nanotubes of the quality and quantity which are needed.  Either that, or else Dr. Edwards believes he can convince NASA that a big check can solve the problem quickly.

Of course, if this happens, and NASA is the lead developer, then it would prove my prediction of a private US consortium (or a joint venture between Dubai and India) as being the first developers of a Space Elevator as being wrong.  Gee, I’d sure hate that 🙂

I’d love to go to this symposium, but don’t think I can.  From the symposium program, it appears that Dr. Edwards is scheduled to speak from 8:30-9:15am on Thursday, June 7th.  Let’s hope Dr. Edwards will make the details of this proposal available soon to all of us.  This is the kind of project which the entire space community can and should get behind.  Not only would it be beneficial for Lunar colonization, but for Martian colonization as well.  And once a Space Elevator (or two) is in place, it changes the entire ballgame regarding space exploration.

I say again, this rocks, this well and truly rocks…

(Lunar base drawing courtesy of Ana Benaroya.  Click on the thumbnail for a larger version)

The Space Elevator & Space Engineering & Mathematics Project

At the Space Elevator Reference, they are reporting that during the 5th International Conference on Applied Sciences (to be held sometime in 2008), there will also be a track devoted to “The Space Elevator & Space Engineering & Mathematics Project”.  This is intended to;

“Now we will bring together in a special section of the the leaders in the relevant fields, scientists, colleagues and the private industry to push engineering designs of future climbers and allow participants to form partnerships that are beneficial to the teams, industry promoting their products in general.” 

Read the full posting here.

In the same posting, the Space Elevator Reference also discusses the upcoming German Space Elevator Games, also to be held in 2008.  It’s not clear from the posting whether or not they will be held in conjunction with the Conference, but looking at the logo, I would guess “yes”.  Thanks to a tip from Team Zero G’s Arthur Shay, I reported in early March about these same Games.  You can read that post here.