{"id":496,"date":"2007-01-17T02:48:25","date_gmt":"2007-01-17T07:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=496"},"modified":"2007-01-17T02:52:44","modified_gmt":"2007-01-17T07:52:44","slug":"who-will-build-the-first-space-elevator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=496","title":{"rendered":"Who will build the first Space Elevator?"},"content":{"rendered":"

To paraphrase Robert Heinlein (I don’t remember which novel this was in), “The laws of Physics work for everyone, not just Americans.”\u00a0 I’m sure I have the\u00a0specific quote\u00a0wrong, but I think I’m\u00a0accurately capturing the sentiment he was expressing – if we don’t build it, someone else can (and will).<\/p>\n

Once the\u00a0cable can actually be created, the limiting factor\u00a0will be\u00a0the heavy-lift capability to get it into geosynchronous orbit.\u00a0 Right now, only the American and Russian\u00a0space programs can do this.\u00a0 But others, most notably the Chinese, Indians and Japanese\u00a0may have this capability in the near future.<\/p>\n

This<\/a> is an interesting article about our future space partners\/competitors.\u00a0 It has nothing to do, explicitly, with building a Space Elevator, but the issues it brings up are, IMHO, very relevant to who will actually build the first Space Elevator.<\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking about this for some time now.\u00a0\u00a0We promote the\u00a0Space Elevator as a tool for opening up space to everyone, not just “government employees and rich tourists”.\u00a0 The idea sounds great, and, certainly, I’m all for it if it means that I might be able to get to space one day.\u00a0 But its easy to imagine some (paranoid) scenarios where another country or consortium\u00a0builds the Space Elevator and then sells lift capacity to people\/groups who we do not agree with.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0certainly don’t propose NOT building a\u00a0Space Elevator.\u00a0 I just want to make sure that its we Americans who are the ones who\u00a0build it and operate it…\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To paraphrase Robert Heinlein (I don’t remember which novel this was in), “The laws of Physics work for everyone, not just Americans.”\u00a0 I’m sure I have the\u00a0specific quote\u00a0wrong, but I think I’m\u00a0accurately capturing the sentiment he was expressing – if we don’t build it, someone else can (and will). Once the\u00a0cable can actually be created, […]<\/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-496","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\/496","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=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}