{"id":19281,"date":"2016-08-19T22:54:54","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T14:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/space-elevator-fans-keep-looking-up-even-when-theyre-stuck-on-the-ground-floor\/"},"modified":"2016-08-19T22:54:54","modified_gmt":"2016-08-19T14:54:54","slug":"space-elevator-fans-keep-looking-up-even-when-theyre-stuck-on-the-ground-floor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/space-elevator-fans-keep-looking-up-even-when-theyre-stuck-on-the-ground-floor\/","title":{"rendered":"Space elevator fans keep looking up, even when they\u2019re stuck on the ground floor"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Space
An artist\u2019s conception shows a space elevator rising up from Earth\u2019s surface. (Credit: Pat Rawlings \/ NASA file)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once upon a time, entrepreneurs were counting down to a date in 2018 when the first space elevator would open for business. NASA was setting aside millions of dollars to promote the technologies required for building that elevator. And space elevator fans were looking forward to a breakthrough that would drive the cost of space travel down to mere hundreds of dollars.<\/p>\n

Today, the countdown is on indefinite hold. The NASA money is gone. And the dream of building the space elevator has been eclipsed by billionaire Elon Musk\u2019s dream of putting colonists on Mars by the mid-2020s.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the fans are still keeping the faith, and they\u2019re backing up that faith with research studies. About 35 of them gathered today at Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight to kick off the 2016 Space Elevator Conference, presented by the International Space Elevator Consortium.<\/p>\n

Some attendees came from as far away as Norway and Japan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal is not an unreal goal,\u201d Hugh Cook, a space systems engineer from the Los Angeles area, told GeekWire during one of the breaks. \u201cI think about the audacity of the transcontinental railroad. It was a crazy idea, but eventually the fire was lit, and it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

The analogy is apt: Like the transcontinental railroad, the concept behind the space elevator goes back to the 19th century, to Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky\u2019s musings in 1895.<\/p>\n

\"Space
This diagram shows one possible configuration for a space elevator. (Credit: Skyway \/ User:Booyabazooka via Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The basic idea is that if you put a counterweight far enough from Earth, you could theoretically attach one end of a super-strong tether to the weight, and the other end to an anchor point on the planet. Then you could send people or payloads up and down that tether, as if they were riding a vertical railway to the sky.<\/p>\n

Over the course of a century, engineers refined the concept and figured out that Earth\u2019s counterweight would have to be placed about 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) above the planet\u2019s surface. To handle the tension, the tether would have to be many times stronger than the strongest material available today.<\/p>\n

Lots of details remain to be filled in, including exactly how the system would be built. But if it could be built, and if there were beam-powered rail cars capable of trundling up and down the tether, the cost of access to orbit would plummet. It would mark the beginning of a new space age.<\/p>\n

To support technological development, NASA allocated prize money for a couple of challenges more than a decade ago. In 2009, Seattle-based LaserMotive won $900,000 of NASA\u2019s money in a Power Beaming Challenge. As much as $2 million was set aside for a Strong Tether Challenge, but no one won a prize.<\/p>\n

More recently, researchers have come up with reasons not<\/em> to try building a space elevator. In June, Chinese researchers reported that a single defect in a tether made of super-strong carbon nanotubes could cause the tether to fail. Other studies have questioned how a space elevator would cope with bad weather, or space debris, or terrorists.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people you know will tell you, forget about it,\u201d said Bryan Laubscher, the founder of a carbon nanotube startup called Odysseus Technologies and director of the International Space Elevator Consortium.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s what Pete Swan, the consortium\u2019s president, will tell you: \u201cLet\u2019s gain some funding to do some really hard engineering work.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Xskh7gn925A<\/p>\n

If Swan came across a billionaire who wanted to provide the funding, he would recommend spending $1 million to $5 million per year over the course of three to five years. \u201cThat would pay dividends for the whole project,\u201d Swan said.<\/p>\n

Swan acknowledged that the technology isn\u2019t yet ready to be put to the test, except in computer simulations. Studies suggest that it will take about 15 years for researchers to come up with suitably strong, sufficiently defect-free material for the tethers. It could be made of carbon nanotubes, diamond nanothreads or boron nitride nanotubes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the only thing that we\u2019re really waiting on,\u201d Swan said.<\/p>\n

Backers of the space elevator concept have done detailed studies on how much it would cost to build a space elevator once all the technological pieces are in place.<\/p>\n

Swan said one concept would require about $15 billion, the second one would cost between $5 billion and $8 billion, and the ones after that could be built for $4 billion each. Another, more ambitious concept carries a price tag of $100 billion.<\/p>\n

The consortium\u2019s advisers and allies are working on further studies. For example, one recently published report delves into the logistics for a space elevator\u2019s \u201cEarth Port.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"An
An artist\u2019s conception shows the STARS-C mother and daughter satellite connected by a tether in orbit, (Credit: Kagawa University)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meanwhile, Japan\u2019s Kagawa University has been conducting a series of satellite experiments known as Project STARS (Space Tethered Autonomous Robotic Satellite). Two test satellites were launched in 2009 and 2014, and the third spacecraft \u2013 STARS-C \u2013 is due to be deployed from the International Space Station as early as this year.<\/p>\n

Will the space elevator be built in 2035? Or will the timetable reflect a somewhat less precise prediction made 35 years ago by science-fiction master Arthur C. Clarke? \u201cThe space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people have stopped laughing,\u201d Swan told GeekWire. \u201cJust look at the crowd here. \u2026 The clock is running.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Space Elevator Conference will present the sixth annual Family Science Fest at the Museum of Flight from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. The event is included in the cost of museum admission, and features presentations on \u201cSpace Elevator 101\u201d and \u201cSpace Elevator 201.\u201d There\u2019s also a youth robotics competition called RoboClimb, plus exhibits sponsored by science organizations and clubs.<\/em><\/p>\n

For a deeper dive into the space elevator phenomenon, check out \u201cSky Line,\u201d a feature-length documentary that\u2019s available on DVD as well as streaming services such as VHX, Netflix and Amazon Video.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An artist\u2019s conception shows a space elevator rising up from Earth\u2019s surface. (Credit: Pat Rawlings \/ NASA file) Once upon a time, entrepreneurs were counting down to a date in 2018 when the first space elevator would open for business. NASA was setting aside millions of dollars to promote the technologies required for building that elevator. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5517,4450,5518],"class_list":["post-19281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-materials-science","tag-museum-of-flight","tag-space-elevator-conference"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19281"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}