{"id":579,"date":"2007-03-30T22:32:58","date_gmt":"2007-03-31T03:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=579"},"modified":"2007-03-30T22:39:18","modified_gmt":"2007-03-31T03:39:18","slug":"emerging-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=579","title":{"rendered":"Emerging Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the recently completed SESI2007 conference, I\u00a0gave a presentation on who, IMHO, would build the first earth-based Space Elevator.\u00a0 I\u00a0identified several likely candidates and then narrowed it down to two possibilities; a consortium of US businesses\u00a0which had struck a deal with the US Government or a Joint Venture between the governments of Dubai (part of the UAE) and India.\u00a0 Without going through the whole presentation, my reasons for this conclusion were this; while the Space Elevator is a source of enormous potential wealth, no government (Dubai\/India excepted) would take the risk to build it.\u00a0 Rather, I had identified American business entrepeneurs as people who might well take this risk, but also thought the same about the government of Dubai.\u00a0 This government\u00a0has much in common with corporations, being flexible, adaptable and able to make decisions without resorting to a myriad of committees.\u00a0 With them having the vision to drive the project (and the finances to pay for it), they need a partner.\u00a0 India struck me as the right one; they are an emerging country, possessing an increasingly well-trained and technological-savvy work force.\u00a0 They are a nuclear power and\u00a0have a real military and a real space program.\u00a0 They also have direct sea-lane access to two of the six potential Earth Port sites, including a favored one off the west coast of Australia.\u00a0 But I had one more reason for picking them, their long-standing rivalry with China.\u00a0 I think\u00a0India would do much to leapfrog China and participating in the building a Space Elevator would be a perfect project for them.<\/p>\n

I bring this all up now because of this blog posting<\/a> from Centauri Dreams.\u00a0 Scientist and Sci-Fi author Gregory Benford recently took a trip to the Asian subcontinent and wrote an absolutely fascinating account of his journey.\u00a0 It has several connections to the Space Elevator (though none are explicitly mentioned).\u00a0 First, he meets with Arthur C. Clarke, the person who is most responsible for the popularization of the idea.\u00a0 Second, he describes India as an awakening giant and has this to say about their rivalry with China;<\/p>\n

“Similarly, the Indian space program sees itself as a rival to China, not to the US or Europe. It will be amusing if audacious moves in space come from Asia as a regional competition, just as the US-USSR contest drove the first decades.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This strikes me as absolutely accurate,\u00a0though not very amusing.\u00a0 And, as an aside (and something I forgot to mention in my presentation), India will be hosting this years International Astronautical Congress<\/a> (for the second time), a convention that, in the past, has had a Space Elevator theme as one of its tracks.<\/p>\n

Finally, as I blogged<\/a> about many months ago, I attended a Skeptics conference last year, one where this same Gregory Benford was a speaker.\u00a0 In a Q&A session after his presentation (and in a private conversation after that), he and I talked about a Space Elevator.<\/p>\n

Just an interesting coincidence perhaps…<\/p>\n

Read the blog entry<\/a>; it truly is fascinating.\u00a0 And remember what I predict about Dubai (UAE)\u00a0and India – you heard it here first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the recently completed SESI2007 conference, I\u00a0gave a presentation on who, IMHO, would build the first earth-based Space Elevator.\u00a0 I\u00a0identified several likely candidates and then narrowed it down to two possibilities; a consortium of US businesses\u00a0which had struck a deal with the US Government or a Joint Venture between the governments of Dubai (part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-entries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579","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=579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}