While reviewing some of the older Space Elevator Conference programs and trying to see if some of the presenters were still active in the SE arena, I ran across this 2007 paper by Major Jason Kent.
This paper, entitled “Getting to Space on a Thread – Space Elevator as an Alternative Access to Space” was a “Blue Horizons paper” written for the Center for Strategy and Technology for the Air War College.
Major Kent presented a couple of papers at the 2008 Space Elevator Conference and I remember having some very interesting discussions with him during one of the lunches.
Because a Space Elevator will allow such scalable, reliable (and relatively inexpensive) access to space, there is no question that it will be a very significant military asset to whoever controls it. There is a viewpoint that if the world cooperatively builds a Space Elevator, then, perhaps, we can make it a ‘universal good’, much like, say, the Internet is. Others (including me) are not so optimistic.
Regardless, it is very interesting to see a military evaluation of the Space Elevator and the article is (IMHO) well worth the read.
when You say that you “aren’t so optemistic” are you refering to the idea of it’s existance, or the idea of it being a global co-operative effortt
My pessimism is about it being a global effort. I think that it will be built by one nation, or perhaps a couple working jointly together. I don’t see a UN aspect to this…