Monthly Archives: May 2025

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.

👉 Read the latest newsletter here
👉 Browse the full archive here

Want to get future issues delivered straight to your inbox? Visit the ISEC website, scroll to the bottom, and sign up using the newsletter form.

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!