The Space Elevator Reference

Liftport Tries to Stay Afloat Amid Continuing Problems

I made time a couple of days ago to listen to the excellent Space Show hosted by Dr. David Livingston as his guest was Michael Laine of Liftport. There is no doubt that Michael has poured his heart and soul into his company. And as he candidly admits he made some key mistakes along the way that put him in his current position.

So I was curious, as are so many other people, to hear where Liftport is at these days. After all, anyone interested in cheaper access to space, and what that would mean, should be interested in the Space Elevator concept.

As Michael had eluded to when he lost his building he needed to regroup and focus on what could be done between the time he lost the building, mid-April, up until September when his money runs out. And as Alan Boyle over at MSNBC reported on April 19th he and his team have decided to focus on tethered towers. Here's how his new company is described;

"Tethered Towers is a newly formed communications company. We specialize in the manufacture and deployment of high elevation towers that open a whole new realm of possibilities. Tethered Towers are flexible, quasi-permanent, portable, towers that can be deployed to considerable attitudes in minutes, with applications for which we provide development and deployment services of custom operational-service-packages (OSP’s)."

At the same time that Liftport was reinventing itself it had to deal with another new problem. On the Space Show Micheal was quite candid about talking about his problems and setting things straight but he did not mention one problem few people know about. On April 18 the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions, Division of Securities issued the following order with regard to Liftport;

"Liftport Inc. dba Liftport Group; Michael Laine - S-06-077-07-SC01 - Statement of Charges (PDF)

On April 18, 2007, the Securities Division entered a Statement of Charges and Notice of Intent to Enter an Order to Cease and Desist, Impose Fines and Charge Costs against Liftport Inc. dba Liftport Group and Michael Laine (“Respondents”). The Statement of Charges alleges that Respondents raised at least $117,000 from at least 85 investors, nine of whom are Washington residents, by offering and selling unregistered securities in Liftport, Inc., a company formed for the purpose of developing a space elevator. The Securities Division alleged that the Respondents acted as an unregistered broker-dealer and/or securities salesperson. The Division also alleged that the offer and sale of securities by the Respondents violated the anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Act of Washington. The Securities Division ordered the Respondents to cease and desist from violating the securities registration, broker-dealer and/or securities salesperson registration, and anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Act of Washington. The Securities Division gave notice of its intent to collect fines and charge costs. The Respondents have a right to request a hearing on the Statement of Charges. "

After reading the statement of charges above I was not surprised when Michael said in the show:

"It would be terribly unethical for me to ask for investors at this point because I don't the shape of this company, I don't know if it can, if it can stand on its own two feet. So if we don't generate revenue, there's not another source, and I'm not willing to go and ask for people for money right now, that's not a good plan for me."

I can understand why Michael would not want to ask investors for money with a cease and desist order out there.

For his newly formed entity Tethered Towers to survive he said he needed to generate $25,000 a month by September and that there was no backup plan. As well they are planning on a high visibility demo of their tethered tower system in the Seattle area around June 20th plus or minus 5 days if the FAA gives them approval. And if the demo fails or if they don't start generating revenue by September Michael said he would have to close shop.

Another new idea he mentioned was to use the open source model for developing a space elevator. A novel idea coming from a company that spent fours year as a closed company and hardly participated in the current community efforts.

I would certainly like to see Liftport succeed with its new venture but the odds, and more importantly, time are really against them. And they didn't get into this predicament through the actions of others. They spent fours years doing research and development (R&D) without the proper financial resources in place and did not produce a single product that was taken to market. If you have deep pockets or some serious financial backing you can spend fours years focusing solely on R&D, but Michael gambled everything he had on being able to do it his way and that gamble appears to be one he is about to lose.

Rutgers Symposium on Lunar Settlements

Rutgers University will be holding a conference on lunar settlements June 3-7, 2007. The conference will cover all aspects of developing a lunar program and how best to build and establish a manned presence on the moon. This is one of the ultimate applications of the space elevator and because of this Dr. Edwards will be presenting a scenario for development of a lunar outpost that utilizes a space elevator. This presentation is based on a proposal that was submitted by a diverse team in response to NASA's early call for concepts.

The proposing team included:

Dr. Hyam Benaroya, Rutgers University
Dr. Michael Duke, Colorado School of Mines
Mr. Ben Shelef, Spaceward Foundation
Dr. Paul Spudis, JHU - APL
Dr. Hermann Koelle, Berlin Technical University
Ms. Patricia Russell, NIAC
Dr. Bryan Laubscher, LANL
Ms. Pamela Luskin, Futron Corporation
Dr. David Raitt, ESA - ESTEC

The proposal was a detailed assessment of how a large lunar settlement (ave. 69 people) could be built in the coming years for approximately $68B. The unique features were the use of two Earth-based space elevators, mature lander and manned modules similar to those of the Apollo program and because of the large large capacity a large amount of redundant modules and supply depots. The risk associated with this proposal is all up front in the final development of the space elevator. At a final cost of half that estimated for the NASA program and a much larger capacity along with a strong self-sustaining business aspect the program should be considered (personal bias of course).

EuroSpaceward Climber and Tether Design Workshop

EuroSpaceward was just awarded funding by The National Research Fund of Luxembourg to hold a workshop on space elevator climber and tether design primarily focusing on systems for entry in the US and German competitions. The tentative dates are Nov. 14-16, 2007 and the workshop will be held in a yet to be announced venue in Luxembourg.

This workshop is the first of its kind and will bring together teams from the competitions, private entities and engineers to examine current and future designs of climbers and tethers. The entries at the US games have performed well and each year brought improvements in the designs and systems though problems have still been evident and the current performance is still far from what is possible. At this early stage in the design it is good to take a hard look at the challenges and work through possible solutions - this is the focus of the Luxembourg workshop.

The goal of this event is to assist teams in their designs such that in 2008 and beyond the best climbers and tethers will be competing. This will occur through detailed discussions of last year's competitors, presentation of innovative designs, discussions of the limiting components of the systems and how to cope with the challenges. In addition the organizers hope to bring in private entities that may be willing to sponsor teams for the competition.

More details on the workshop will be posted when the become available.

German Space Elevator Games

The following is an announcement sent out by Detlef Mache on the 2008 German Space Elevator games.

After the great success of the first German Space-Elevator team ("Max-Born-Team") - where the team placed third among 16 international teams from different universities and institutes at the NASA-sponsored Space Elevator competition 2006 in New Mexico - the growing interest become extremely popular in Europe.

After the great success of the first German Space-Elevator team ("Max-Born-Team") - where the team placed third among 16 international teams from different universities and institutes at the NASA-sponsored Space Elevator competition 2006 in New Mexico - the growing interest become extremely popular in Europe.
Now we will bring together in a special section of the

********************************************************************************
5th International Conference on Applied Sciences (2008)
("Innovation & Imagineering" in Constructive Approximation)

and The Space Elevator & Space Engineering & Mathematics Project
(Designs and Space Elevator Games 2008)
Ruhrarea - Germany
********************************************************************************

the leaders in the relevant fields, scientists, colleagues and the private industry to push engineering designs of future climbers and allow participants to form partnerships that are beneficial to the teams, industry promoting their products in general.

These Conferences have traditionally ranked as some of the best international applied science conferences over the past 13 years. They have been well attended by scientists, students and colleagues in mathematics and engineering from academia, industry, and
government and an excellent conference is expected in 2008 as well.

Participants and Topics

The participants that we will bring together include international teams (e.g. from the United States, Canada, Spain, Germany etc.) from local Universities and international scientific institutes, and experts from the industry in all aspects of the engineering.

The workshop will combine presentations and group discussions on the best climbers to date and designs for future climbing systems and components. No conference to date has addressed the climber designs in this detail and with the growing interest in these activities and the overall space elevator development we expect strong interest in attending by various groups. We have organized many conferences in the past but this is our first in Europe and would like to keep attendance to 100 individuals to insure a highly successful event.

Space Elevator Disigns & Space Engineering & Mathematics
In conjunction with the 5th International Conference on Applied Sciences a special session will be held to examine the new and growing area focusing on the development of a
viable space elevator. For such a unique engineering project it is necessary to
carefully and objectively examine the open questions, define the issues and find
practical solutions where possible. In this project one of the critical studies centers
on the influence of vibrations in the system, the numerical analysis of this issue and
understanding the behavior of various elevator constructions under different influences.

An additional objective of this 5th International Conference i s to provide a forum to
examine applications of space elevator technologies (i.e. the cable material - carbon
nanotubes) and the mathematical characteristics and dynamics of a space elevator cable.
Due to some of the unique aspects of the space elevator - a cable length between 70,000 km and 144,000 km for example - one has to investigate the mathematical, physical and engineering principles that govern the overall design. This includes development of mathematical models and studying the behaviour of the system via simulation and numerical methods combined with analytic approach es.

Space Elevator Games 2008 (Born-Project)

In October 2006 the first German Space-Elevator team ("Max-Born-Team") successfully participated and placed third among 16 international teams from different universities and institutes at the NASA-sponsored Space Elevator competition held near Las Cruces, New Mexico. This endeavor by the first german space elevator project was fantastic and positive experience for the engineering students. The organizers will continue and build upon the Space-Elevator project by initiating a competition in Germany in 2008 for international teams. Therefore the organizers invite international teams to participate in the German Space Elevator Games 2008 and thereby help develop prototypes systems for the Space Elevator.

Space Elevator teams wishing to compete should provide complete climber systems to scale the ribbon while carrying a specified payload - which we will be provided at the games.
The ascent must be made utilizing only beamed power - no stored energy or physical
connections to the climber are allowed.

Registration is open, and teams are encouraged to register at:

Space-Elevator2008 < AT > ing-math.net

Finally, to those of you asking about the specific location for the Space-Elevator games - we'll have some news on that in the next update.

Conference Proceedings will be published by Birkhäuser.

The conference proceedings containing survey papers by the invited speakers and
contributed papers will be published after the conference. It will be published by
Birkhäuser (member of the Bertelsmann Springer Publishing Group) as part of its
International Series.

If you are thinking of attending and have not yet done so, please preregister by sending an eMail to:
PINGUIM2008 < AT > ing-math.net

There is still time to submit a paper and even to organize a minisymposium if you like.
Send us e-mail if you have any questions at: PINGUIM2008 < AT > ing-math.net

We are looking forward to meeting you in 2008.

With friendly regards

Detlef H. Mache

EuroSpaceward formed in Luxembourg to promote SE Activities

In an effort to promote awareness and activities related to the space elevator in Europe, Markus Klettner has pulled together a team of European and American leaders in the SE development. The primary goal of the organization is to promote space and space elevator activities in Europe. The website, currently under construction, is at http://www.eurospaceward.org/.

The activities being pursued by EuroSpaceward include assisting in the German Space Elevator games to be held in 2008, organizing conferences related to the space elevator with the first one being this November in Luxembourg, publishing several books including The Space Elevator in Spanish and possibly French, and establishing a testing facility in Luxembourg for teams competing in the US or German games.

EuroSpaceward's official mission statement and general guidelines for its activities include:

• Promote participation in publicly accessible space programs in support of EuroSpaceward’s mission of the industrialization and settlement of space. (e.g. Elevator2010, NASA Beam Power and Tether Challenge, Mars Barn, Regolith Excavation Challenge, publicly open ESA projects etc.)
• Assist in the coordination, financing (advice in sponsorship efforts etc.), and project management of outreach and development teams.
• Organize technical and scientific events in Europe that support EuroSpaceward’s overall mission.
• Provide audio-visual material, papers and text relating to the mission.
• European partner of the Spaceward Foundation in the United States

The members of EuroSpaceward are:

• Markus Klettner, Luxembourg, General Secretary
  
• Bradley Edwards, Ph.D., USA, President
  
• Randy Liebermann, USA
  
• José Antonio Casas, Spain, Director of Spain
  
• Jörn Lutat, Germany, Director of Germany
  
• Detlef Mache, Ph.D., Germany, VP Europe
  
• Benoit Michel, France, Director of France and Treasurer
  
• Ben Shelef, USA VP USA
  
• Metzada Shelef, USA