A Perspective on the Controversy Concerning Liftport's Space Elevator Roadmap
The current controversy over Liftport’s release of a roadmap for the Space Elevator is important because it is allowing for a larger set of issues to be considered. In my opinion, the root of the action by Liftport and the contention to the release of its roadmap point to what is missing in the Space Elevator community.
Because we are in the “infancy” of the Space Elevator, it is not clear what it will grow into in its maturity. Therefore, we have a broad range of work that is valid, ranging from speculative visions to detailed scientific and engineering research. Unfortunately, not all of it is of high quality nor does all of it further the Space Elevator. In short, we have exuberant individuals and small teams working independently and in concert, some for the positive and some for the negative! There has been no oversight, criticism or acclimation of effort, no matter how well carried out or how shabbily executed. This must change!
As a community we need to work more closely together to encourage and support good work while discouraging shoddy work. And we need to do this out of the public eye. All of us need to be willing to have our work reviewed. Indeed, my most talented scientific colleagues insist on having their work reviewed by peers because they know the importance of their work and they honor their reputations! This level of activity is for adults with serious intentions. It is not for the insincere or insecure. Through this process we will all be called to a higher standard of work.
Moreover, the release by Liftport of a roadmap, does an important service by, in fact, pointing toward the need for a roadmap for the Space Elevator effort. I am taking a stand that a roadmap must be generated by the community, be of appropriate depth and call out milestones. In this way, our now separate efforts can be focused to produce a greater, cumulative effect. This will not be easy or without dissent, but it is important and necessary.
I call upon the Space Elevator community to attend the 2nd Biennial Space Elevator Workshop (which is a part of the Space Exploration 2007 Conference sesinstitute.org). If the community responds, we will set aside an afternoon to have first a structured discussion and then a more free-ranging session concerning a roadmap outline. We must quickly and efficiently determine the intent, timescale, scope and depth of the document. Then we can select the major milestones and finally elect a small group to draft a first draft for posting on spaceelevator.com for review.
In the meantime and as preparation for the workshop, I call upon every space elevator group to discuss the roadmap concept and to distill the most important milestones they see as necessary for Space Elevator development. As a guide, I refer everyone to NASA’s roadmaps a few examples of which are:
These are available on line and usually are the result of a process in which the interested scientific and engineering community was heavily involved in the development of the roadmap.
When you come to the workshop, be prepared to roll up your sleeves and get to work.
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Comments
Bryan,
I agree that more needs to be done throughout the space elevator community. Part of the problem, of course, is that the community is so small.
I tried to make clear that the "roadmap" we published (and yes, given that it's a relatively short document, "roadmap" may not be quite the right word) is not the final word. (I suggested it be called version 0.2, not 1.0beta, but the naming might have been more confusing.) There is so much more that I would have loved to put into it, but honestly we were limited by lack of time and resources. What many people don't seem to understand is that the document we produced isn't even very much about LiftPort's commercial nature; it was aimed as a more general answer to the question, "What needs to happen before ANYONE can build a space elevator?"
There's a lot of reasoning that went into each element of our roadmap, and I would be happy to explain that reasoning at the SE conference next March, to help kickstart a community discussion of what the path from here to a world with space elevators would look like.
BTW, another kind of roadmap to think about as a model is the one produced by the semiconductor industry. ITRS publishes annual reports that are extremely detailed, looking at the challenges facing their industry and laying out what needs to happen in order to stay on their desired path (i.e., following Moore's Law). Of course, they have a few hundred (well-paid) people working on their roadmap. The space elevator community is nowhere close to that size yet - we are still a community, and not an industry.
Let's talk more about March 2007 and what we can do as a community.
Posted by: Tom Nugent | October 12, 2006 11:04 PM
It might be worth testing the space elevator on the moon or an asteroid first.
Posted by: jonny | October 18, 2006 10:20 PM