{"id":2269,"date":"2015-03-31T17:15:10","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T23:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=2269"},"modified":"2019-04-07T23:37:23","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T05:37:23","slug":"nine-years-and-thats-enough-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=2269","title":{"rendered":"Nine years – and that’s enough for now…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>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.\u00a0 I have several other projects on my plate and I’m not getting any younger…<\/p>\n

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<\/a> topping the list.\u00a0 This competition was held over several years and in several venues and was a joy to participate in.\u00a0 Spending several days at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (now known as the Armstrong Flight Research Center)<\/a> 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<\/a> and, of course, NASA for allowing me to be a part of it.\u00a0 It was truly special.\u00a0 A close number two was the formation of the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC)<\/a>, an organization that I was very proud to be the president of for four years.<\/p>\n

What is the status of an earth-based space elevator?\u00a0 In the most important area, tether strength, we’re still where we were nine years ago.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But research continues, and perhaps someday material like this will become a reality.\u00a0 If and when it does, then perhaps I’ll restart this blog.\u00a0 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…<\/p>\n

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)<\/a>.\u00a0 ISEC, under the current leadership of Dr. Peter Swan, is in very capable hands.\u00a0 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<\/em>“.<\/p>\n

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

So, goodbye for now and thanks for reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 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 […]<\/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-2269","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\/2269","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=2269"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2334,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions\/2334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}