2045: Will there be a Space Elevator?

Space Elevator Concept

There are certain parties on the world stage that believe there certainly will be. In “Leaving the Planet by Space Elevator“, Philip Ragan says that “The first country to deploy a space elevator will have a 95 per cent cost advantage and could potentially control all space activities.” No wonder the Japanese plan on building one for about $9 billion. Far-fetched? Perhaps. Real? Most definitely. I was disappointed when I found out Obama’s stimulus package didn’t have this attached too.

What is it?

It’s the idea of having two anchors and a cable running in between them with a vehicle attached to it traveling between anchors. One anchor is our rock of a home, Earth. The other is a space station anchored in geostationary orbit. So instead of circling our planet, it would hover above one place on Earth. The cable would most likely be a ribbon composed of carbon nanotubes. These carbon structures have an inclredible potential for tensile strength. They’re 180 times stronger than steel and have increased in strength about 100 times in the past with material production advances. If that strength can be increased only 4 more times and then put into mass production, then we would be well on our way to paying $100 per pound  instead of $5,000 per pound using conventional rocket technology that we are today. But how are we actually going to get up there? How is the elevator going to, well, move?! Currently, engineers believe it would be propelled by a solid state laser reflecting against specially designed mirrors and therefore photons would push the elevator cab all the way up into space.

Who is taking up the challenge?

Besides the Japanese, a few American companies are sprouting up claiming they’ll do it. Liftport Group has a 15,000 sq. ft. facility in Millville, NJ that is “gearing up to produce large quantities of mid-grade multi-walled carbon nanotubes for commercial and research use”. They have a countdown on their website to October 27, 2031, their proposed date for launch. There is also a NASA prize money program, Centennial Challenges, that helps fund the contest Elevator:2010 with the Spaceward Foundation.  Check out there website and the challenges here.

What does it all mean?

It means that the moon and Mars, maybe a space station casino or two will become the vacation spots in the future. With the cost of space dropping so much, it will allow more and more people to be able to afford it. Already we have Sir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan building vehicles to take tourists to zero gravity for 5 minutes with their Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo. Tickets for a ride with Virgin Galactic cost $200,000. Compare that with $20 million spent to stay on the International Space Station (ISS)for a week. A space elevator ride to stay a week maybe on a stanford torus would probably cost around $35,000 per person. We can only hope that people will become as involved in space as they were 40 years ago when we landed on the moon.