[extropy-chat] Space elevator within 15 years?

[Damien Broderick]

http://www.sundayherald.com/42981

Space elevator set to be in operation within 15 years


Carbon technology could revolutionise future space travel
By Elizabeth McMeekin


A giant elevator capable of transporting astronauts into space could be 
operating within the next 15 years.

Bradley Edwards, director of research at the Institute for Scientific 
Research (ISR) in West Virginia, believes that developing carbon technology 
will make the construction of a space elevator possible within the next 
decade.

The lift would reach 62,000 miles into space and be able to carry a load of 
up to 13 tonnes, enabling astronauts and equipment to travel into space 
without the need for rockets.

“It’s not new physics – nothing new has to be discovered, nothing new has 
to be invented from scratch,” Edwards explained. “If there are delays in 
budget or delays in whatever, it could stretch, but 15 years is a realistic 
estimate for when we could have one up.”

The elevator would climb on a ribbon-like cable made of nanotubes – tiny 
bundles of carbon atoms many times stronger than steel – about a metre wide 
and thinner than a piece of paper.

Edwards believes that sections of cable could be launched into space on 
rockets and then secured to a satellite. A “climber” – his version of an 
elevator car – would then be attached to the cable and used to add more 
nanotubes until it stretched down to earth.

The cable would then be attached to a platform on the Equator, near the 
Pacific coast of South America, which would be mobile to allow the cable to 
be moved to get out of the path of orbiting satellites.

The elevator would be powered by a laser on the platform which would aim 
concentrated light at the lift’s photosensitive cells and create enough 
electricity to move the elevator between earth and the docking satellite 
above.

Edwards believes that space elevators will go further than nearby 
satellites in the future and eventually enable people to travel to the 
planets without the need for expensive, costly and dangerous rocket launches.

However, the space elevator is not a new idea. Indeed, the concept was 
first proposed by Russian astronomer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky a century ago 
and was later promoted by sci-fi author Arthur C Clark, who spoke of a 
24,000-mile-high space elevator in his 1979 novel The Fountains Of Paradise.

Edwards has pegged the initial cost of the elevator at $10 billion (£5.5bn 
) – far cheaper than most other space endeavours. Nasa has already given 
the ISR more than $500,000 (£274,000) to study the idea, and the US 
Congress has earmarked $2.5 million (£1.4m) for the project.

“A lot of people at Nasa are excited about the idea,” said Robert Casanova, 
director of the Nasa Institute of Advanced Concepts in Atlanta.

The ISR is holding a third annual conference on space elevators in 
Washington this week. Organisers say it will discuss technical challenges 
and solutions as well as the economic feasibility of the elevator proposal.

However, Dr Andrew Coates from University College London does not believe 
there will be any elevators into space for a very long time. “Putting this 
idea into practice with the materials that we use today would be almost 
impossible,” Dr Coates explained. “The idea of space elevators has been 
floating around for a long time and is lodged in sci-fi fantasy. But making 
this idea a reality would be a difficult thing to do.

“There are all sorts of problems that you would encounter when building a 
space elevator. You would have to find a suitable point on the earth that 
wouldn’t be at all disrupted by planes and other aircraft – which would be 
incredibly difficult in itself.”

Coates also believes that although new developments in carbon-atom 
technology would make carbon the right material with which to create the 
cable, he doubts it will be far enough advanced in the next 15 years to 
build such an elevator.

“Carbon fibre technology is certainly advancing and because of its 
properties one can imagine why some scientists believe that it may be the 
way to create a space elevator,” he added. “But thinking that the 
technology could be harnessed and used within the next 15 years is a bit 
too optimistic, I think.”

David Brin, a science-fiction writer who formerly taught physics at San 
Diego State University, also doubts that such an elevator could be 
operating by 2019.

“I have no doubt that our great-grandchildren will routinely use space 
elevators,” he said, “but it will take another generation to gather the 
technologies needed.”

However, Edwards said he only needed approximately two more years of 
development on the carbon nanotubes to obtain the strength of cable that 
would be needed to support the structure. After that, he believes work on 
the project could begin.

“The major obstacle is probably just politics or funding and those two are 
the same thing,” he added. “The technical side – I don’t think that’s 
really an issue any more.”

27 June 2004