schneiderism

One of the researchers investigating the possibilities of building a space elevator said that. It was an incredibly futuristic idea a decade ago. Not so much today. Getting to space with rockets is incredibly dangerous and increasingly expensive. Each Space Shuttle mission costs NASA (and by extension the American taxpayers) about $500 million, and in these constrained budgetary times that is verging on cost prohibitive. This lends credence to the space elevator concept, which is not by any means a new idea (Arthur C. Clark put forth the idea in his 1978 novel “The Fountains of Paradise” - though he was not the first). Developments in materials technologies, like carbon nanotubes, are giving the space elevator new momentum and urging NASA to perhaps consider it seriously as a future alternative to orbital access.

The concept is exceedingly simple:

• - Send up a satellite that maintains a geosynchronous orbit
• - Satellite deploys a ribbon or cable back to Earth
• - Cable is attached to an offshore station
• - Elevator rides the cable from the offshore station up to the orbiting satellite

The elevator could be powered by Earth based lasers or by powerful solar reflectors. Panels on the elevator would receive the light energy from the emitters on the ground and produce the electricity that would power the motors on the elevator. It’s sustainable.

Previously, we had been held back by the material realities of trying to build a several thousand mile (as long as 22,000 miles) elevator cable. The advent of carbon nanotube technology, still in its infancy, could be the lightweight but incredibly strong materials breakthrough that makes this possible. If completed, the space elevator would be the largest structure ever built.

More on space elevators in an excellent entry at Wikipedia, at NASA, and a short video from PBS’s NOVA.