{"id":1608,"date":"2014-04-01T16:28:37","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T21:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1608"},"modified":"2014-04-01T16:49:07","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T21:49:07","slug":"the-space-elevator-blog-celebrates-8-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1608","title":{"rendered":"The Space Elevator Blog celebrates 8 years!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, today this blog celebrates its 8th anniversary – it’s hard to believe that I’ve been doing this for such a long time…<\/p>\n

Much has happened in the Space Elevator field since I first began my missives.\u00a0 In no particular order they are:<\/p>\n

The Space Elevator Games<\/a> – this joint venture between NASA and the Spaceward Foundation created lots of interest in the power-beaming and strong-tether technologies over its many year run.\u00a0 Games were held in California (Mountain View and Mojave), New Mexico and Utah and produced a winner (Lasermotive<\/a>) that took home $900,000.\u00a0 It’s unfortunate that NASA didn’t renew the contract, but they have other ‘fish to fry’ these days. However, it’s good to know that there are still organizations and groups trying to push the boundary of power-beaming.\u00a0 For example, the Kansas City Space Pirates recently set an unofficial record<\/a> for beam-powered flight.<\/p>\n

The birth of the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC)<\/a>.\u00a0 This organization began in 2008 and, after a rough first year, has found its way.\u00a0 I was privileged to be its President for four years and it is now in the capable hands of Dr. Peter Swan.\u00a0 This organization has taken up sponsorship of the American Space Elevator Conference<\/a>, produces year-long studies<\/a> on various aspects of Space Elevator Technology and also CLIMB<\/a>, the Space Elevator Journal.\u00a0 Recently, ISEC created the Space Elevator Research and History Committees to further knowledge in this field.\u00a0 And hey, lets not forget the posters<\/a> ISEC creates too…<\/p>\n

The birth of the Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA)<\/a>.\u00a0 This very active group holds a conference every year and hosts multiple competitions too.\u00a0 They have an active website and lots of members and are group of very good, committed people.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The Space Elevator Conferences<\/a>.\u00a0 The American ones were originally hosted by the SESI organization and have now, as noted in a previous item, been taken over by ISEC.\u00a0 During the past few conferences, we’ve had luminaries such as Yuri Artsutanov and Jerome Pearson attend and give Keynote speeches and this year’s conference will be very exciting too, I’m sure.\u00a0 JSEA also hosts conferences in Japan each year and EuroSpaceward (apparently not active anymore, unfortunately) has hosted a few conferences in Europe where Space Elevator Technology and Research has played a central role.<\/p>\n

The International Academy of Astronautics released a report about Space Elevators (An Assessment of the Technological Feasibility and the Way Forward<\/a>), the first comprehensive study of Space Elevators since Brad Edwards and Eric Westling’s seminal publication in 2002.\u00a0 This report has been just recently published and has received a lot of Press coverage.<\/p>\n

We’ve seen the growth and demise and then subsequent rebirth of LiftPort<\/a>.\u00a0 They are now concentrating their efforts on building a Lunar space elevator.\u00a0 They were able to host a very successful Kickstarter campaign<\/a> and raised a lot of money for their efforts.<\/p>\n

While the Space Elevator is a familiar concept in Japan (Gundam<\/a> rocks!), publicity about this enterprise is growing in the western world too. \u00a0 There have been articles published about the Space Elevator in such world-wide publications as the National Geographic Magazine<\/a> (both online and in print) and a Google Search on “Space Elevator” will now turn up hundreds and hundreds of hits of articles about this concept.\u00a0 Also, several fictional and non-fictional books about the Space Elevator (or with the Space Elevator as a backdrop) have been published.\u00a0 The idea of a Space Elevator is no longer a strange concept and I’m hopeful that this blog has had some small part to play in that.<\/p>\n

There have been many other developments in the Space Elevator field over this past eight years, too numerous to list here.\u00a0 I’ve highlighted major ones (IMHO) in my previous anniversary blogs:\u00a0 Year 1<\/a>, Year 2<\/a>, Year 3<\/a>, Year 4<\/a>, Year 5<\/a> and Year 6<\/a>.\u00a0 No posting, sadly, for Year 7.<\/p>\n

While all of this is good and exciting, we continue to wait for science & engineering to come up with the material strong enough to construct an earth-based Space Elevator tether.\u00a0 Research in the Carbon Nanotube tensile-strength field has not made the progress that many of us had hoped for by now, but on the grand scale of things, we’re still in the ‘early innings’ of this project.\u00a0 And research is now proceeding with a second material theoretically strong enough to build an earth-based Space Elevator tether from, Boron Nitride nanotubes.\u00a0 Options are good things!<\/p>\n

My faithful readers over the past several years have noted, I’m sure, this blog’s change in focus from “all-things Space Elevator” to “all-things ISEC”.\u00a0 This wasn’t deliberate, but was rather a side-effect of my being president of that organization for four years.\u00a0 Now that I’m no longer president (but I’m still very much involved as a Director and being in charge of publicity), the focus of this blog is returning to “all-things Space Elevator”.<\/p>\n

So, thank you for reading and onward and upward!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, today this blog celebrates its 8th anniversary – it’s hard to believe that I’ve been doing this for such a long time… Much has happened in the Space Elevator field since I first began my missives.\u00a0 In no particular order they are: The Space Elevator Games – this joint venture between NASA and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}