From the New York Times comes a story on Google's X lab where top secret Google projects of the future are being researched. These are blue sky ideas that might some day pan out. One of the ideas being bandied about? The Space Elevator.
NEW-GEN™ a new cross-platform brand with a comic book distribution deal with Marvel has published it's first spotlight interview with Dr. Brad Edwards. This comes right after the Space Elevator Conference in Redmond, WA .
It is with a heavy heart I write that Sir Arthur C. Clarke has died. He died early Wednesday at a hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
I had the privilege to meet Sir Arthur in 1997 in Sri Lanka, his home of 52 years. His creative mind inspired many people including myself. He will be missed but his creativity will live on through the people he inspired.
When I met him in 1997 it was for a variety of reason. One of them was to talk about the space elevator. He was so excited to talk about it. We met the at Colombo Swimming Club, he was just finishing up a swim and we had lunch. He was 79 at the time and his mind was as sharp as ever. When we sat down for lunch he presented me with a stack of material he had collected for me on the space elevator. I was astounded that he should do this for me. But this was the nature of Sir Arthur. He was a kind and giving man who would regale you with stories at every opportunity. I enjoyed my brief visit with him.
In 2002 through my work in the high arctic at the Haughton-Mars Project my SpaceRef business partner and I donated a greenhouse and I, with Sir Arthur's permission, named it the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse. The greenhouse now hosts a variety of research which will help future space explorers.
He was widely known as a premier science fiction writer and famous for his collaboration with Stanley Kubrick in taking his book 2001: A Space Odyssey to Hollywood. But he had many other accomplishments as well including a 1945 technical paper setting out the principles of satellite communication with satellites in geostationary orbits, something which would become a reality 25 years later.
But for those his read this blog Sir Arthur is best known for his book The Fountains of Paradise where popularized the concept of the Space Elevator and his 1981 technical paper The Space Elevator: 'Thought Experiment', or Key to the Universe?.
Today teams of scientists and engineers are working on making the Space Elevator a reality. Should this dream be realized it will mostly be attributed to Sir Arthur, and rightly so.
Marc Boucher
The IEEE Spectrum magazine has a good Q&A looking back at the first 50 years in space with Sir Arthur C. Clarke including the following on the Space Elevator.
SPECTRUM: You have lived to see one of your key ideas—geosynchronous satellites—come to fruition. Another idea of yours—the Space Elevator—is coming closer to reality. Do you have any further thoughts on the Space Elevator?CLARKE: I am very encouraged by the widespread acceptance of the Space Elevator, which can make space transport cheap and affordable to ordinary people. This concept, which I popularised in The Fountains of Paradise (1978), is now taken very seriously, with space agencies and entrepreneurs investing money and effort in developing prototypes. A dozen of these parties competed for the NASA-sponsored, US $150 000 X Prize Cup which took place in October 2006 at the Las Cruces International Airport, New Mexico.
What makes the Space Elevator such an attractive idea is its cost-effectiveness. A ticket to orbit now costs tens of millions of dollars (as the millionaire space tourists have paid). But the actual energy required, if you purchased it from your friendly local utility, would only add about hundred dollars to your electricity bill. And a round-trip would cost only about one tenth of that, as most of the energy could be recovered on the way back!
Once it is built, the Space Elevator could be used to lift payloads, passengers, pre-fabricated components of spacecraft, as well as rocket fuel up to Earth orbit. In this way, more than 90 per cent of the energy needed for the exploration of the Solar System could be provided by Earth-based energy sources. When the Space Elevator becomes a reality in the coming decades, the most expensive components of orbital travel will be in-flight movies and catering.
In case you missed it, Ben Shelef of the Spaceward Foundation was on the Space Show in late August to talk about the Space Elevator and Spaceward. Here's the background on the show:
"Ben Shelef, co-founder of Spaceward Foundation (www.spaceward.org), was the guest for this show. Spaceward is sponsoring the 2007 climber and space elevator games in Salt Lake City this year, Oct. 19-21, 2007. Check it out at the Spaceward Foundation website. Not only did Ben tell us about the climber contest and also the tether contest, he noted that for winners there is a million dollars to give away courtesy our favorite NASA! Its $500K for the winner of each contest but Ben explains this and the rules so read up on it, plus the other events to be held at this competition. After discussing the coming Salt Lake City competition, the facilities, hotel, etc, Ben got lots of good space elevator questions. We talked about a lunar elevator and an elevator for Mars. We even discussed the Martian moons and an elevator. You will not want to miss this discussion as its most informative. As for the competition, there are more than 20 teams from the US, Canada and Japan. Listen to how Ben describes their technology. Its certainly going to be exciting this year. If you have questions for Ben Shelef about the upcoming Salt Lake City competition, the space elevator, the Spaceward Foundation, please email him at Ben@spaceward.org or as always, you can forward your comments and questions to him through me at drspace@thespaceshow.com. And check the Spaceward website for more information and announcements about the coming games and the results."
Over at the Space Review Sam Dinkin ask's whether a space elevator worth its weight in diamonds?
"Diamonds have a big advantage over carbon nanotubes. They are currently being produced in commercial quantities. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is being used to flood the jewelry market with extremely high quality diamonds at 10-30 percent below wholesale prices of natural diamonds. Substrates as wide as 15 centimeters have been reported as a base for diamond growth. That’s hundreds of times the area that’s needed for a space elevator cable."
Your thoughts?
Update: The link has been fixed, sorry about that.
Kristin Ohlson at Entrepreneur magazine published a short article on the Space Elevator, Black Line Ascension and the Space Elevator Games.
"Visionaries like Shelef predict that when--not if--the space elevator is built, it will be the most significant structure on Earth. In the meantime, the race to develop its components is encouraging innovation among researchers and entrepreneurs alike."
The recent New Scientist article with the ominous title 'First floor, deadly radiation!’ has been floating around the net and causing some discussions. I have been asked by a couple people for my take on it.
This is an old issue, nothing new. Anders, I and others have been discussing it for a few years and there are some very critical aspects of this that the article neglected to mention. The new report referred to in the article by Anders and Blaise is about a year old and the issue has been reported several times over the last couple years. Anders himself was surprised by the negativity of the article and how dramatic they made the entire issue.
First, let’s start this discussion with a little perspective. Space is dangerous. It is a vacuum with radiation, meteors, and extreme temperature swings. If you go to space without protection the lack of air will kill you, thermal differences will kill you and, yes, as the article states – without shielding radiation will kill you. The limits set for radiation exposure for astronauts is 50 rems. Below this level there is no expected radiation sickness but you do run a slight chance of getting cancer later in life. No astronauts have been exposed to this but in one case a near miss of a solar storm almost gave a set of Apollo astronauts a much higher and deadlier dose.
With the Space Elevator Games only a week away the media frenzy has begun. This bodes well for the community as we should see some excellent coverage the next week and half which will help further the message that building a space elevator is a viable option for access to space.
Being from Vancouver, Canada I could not help but notice that the Snowstar team from the University of British Columbia got a prominent article in today's Vancouver Sun and was also featured over at the CBC along with Canadian rivals Punkworks from Toronto and the University of Saskatchewan.
I've also received several media requests from Europe. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend the games next week but both Brad and Bryan will be there. If you are there and want to submit some pictures, video and your thoughts just send them to me and I'll be happy to post them and that includes all you bloggers who can blog using your Blackberry's or smart phones.
This is getting exciting.
Marc Boucher
{mb.editor AT spaceelevator.com}
Over at Space.com (SpaceRef's primary online news competition), Leonard David, a good writer and guy, has an article up today about the upcoming Space Elevator competition titled Space Elevator: Hoist to the Heavens. Here's an excerpt.
"Admittedly, at least for now, the idea of a beanstalk-like space elevator connecting Earth and space is a stretch.But next month’s X Prize Cup will host the Space Elevator Games, an unprecedented challenge for today’s engineers looking at ways to alter the future of access to space.
No matter how you look at it—from the top down or bottom up—building a full-scale space elevator is an uphill battle. But at least physics is in your favor."
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