Space Elevator Journal

Space Elevator Documentary Video a work-in-progress

2011-01-30T15:15:00.000-05:00

Long time no post. Certain practical realities interrupted the post stream and I just never got back to posting (or, more precisely, the hours of interviews, research, composition, and editing of words, graphics and HTML that precedes a quality post). Until today that is. Hopefully I can find the rhythm again.

The web site of Chicago media company Bitter Jester Creative (BJC) features several short video elements intended as part of a "(a feature-length documentary) [that] is a work-in-progress" explains BJC Creative Director Nicolas DeGrazia. "We have [been] following the games from 2007-2011 and have over 300 hours of footage going back to 2005."

In the first one Ben Shelef explains concisely how an SE works. I particularly liked the 'character introduction' because it speaks more to the 'why?' of the SE and, well, these people are real characters.

The pieces are variously entitled;

What Is A Space Elevator?!
(featuring Ben Shelef of the Spaceward Foundation)
Space Elevator Documentary - Project Overview
Space Elevator Documentary - Character Introduction
with Michael Laine of Liftport Group among others. This has a common thread of sacrifice I found inspiring.
Space Elevator Documentary - Building The Crane (2007)
Space Elevator Documentary - UBC Qualification Run (2007)

There's an opportunity for film/video interns here. BJC needs help logging the material to prepare it for editing. Anyone who is interested can contact them through their web site.

How Arthur C. Clarke Defined the 20th Century

2008-03-21T09:48:00.000-04:00

Kudo's for Clarke continue to pour in;

By Saswato R. Das
Published: March 20, 2008- International Herald Tribune

More than anyone else in the 20th century, Arthur C. Clarke, who died Wednesday, had a track record of being proven right.

"I don't know if the Wright brothers realized how quickly aircraft would pay for themselves," Clarke told me a couple of months ago when I visited him in Colombo, Sri Lanka. We were talking about space exploration and his belief that commercial spacecraft would soon become a reality, now that private entrepreneurs are getting involved. Over the next 50 years, he predicted, thousands would travel into orbit - and then, to the Moon and beyond.

Man may not have set foot on the Moon had it not been for Clarke. His 1952 book, "The Exploration of Space," was used by the rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun to convince President John F. Kennedy that it was possible to go to the Moon.

As is widely recognized, Clarke is a colossus of science fiction - the author of "2001: A Space Odyssey," and many other famous works. It is less well-known that Clarke was also one of the 20th century's pre-eminent visionaries. Without him, it's safe to say that there would be no direct TV, no satellite-routed ship-to-shore phone calls, and no global navigation systems. Our weather forecasts would be far less reliable.

We benefit from Clarke's contributions whenever we dress based on the weather forecast or use a GPS device to navigate our way. During World War II, when he was a young officer in the Royal Air Force in Britain, Clarke first thought of geostationary satellites as communications tools. Geostationary satellites are satellites whose orbital periods match the Earth's rotation. In 1945, Clarke proposed that geostationary satellites would be ideal telecommunications relays. They have since revolutionized communications and weather forecasting.

"I'm often asked why I didn't try to patent the idea of communications satellite," he said. "My answer is always, 'A patent is really a license to be sued.' "

"It's definitely my most important contribution," he told me, adding, "And maybe in a generation or so the space elevator will be considered equally important."

The space elevator - basically a huge cable connecting the Earth to space, along which payloads can be launched using electromagnetic vehicles - is another thing that Clarke has championed. He first wrote about it in 1978. Current plans call for a cable about 50,000 kilometers long.

"The chief expense of space travel when you build the space elevator is entertainment and in-flight movies," he joked.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke Dies

2008-03-18T22:17:00.000-04:00

The father of the space elevator has passed on with out seeing his creation built. Let's hope some of us will.

The announcement from his web site said;

"Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the epic film '2001: A Space Odyssey' and raised the idea of communications satellites in the 1940s, died Wednesday at age 90, an associate confirmed. Clarke died early Wednesday at a hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since the 1950s, said Scott Chase, the secretary of the nonprofit Arthur C. Clarke Foundation. 'He had been taken to hospital in what we had hoped was one of the slings and arrows of being 90, but in this case it was his final visit,' Chase said."

Clarke had a rich relationship with Wired Magazine which had this to say;

His writing, both fiction and nonfiction, established Clarke as a visionary. In a paper titled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?" published in 1945 , Clarke floated the idea of using geosynchronous satellites for communications long before such technology changed our world. As a result, geostationary orbit is now sometimes known as the Clarke orbit.
That's just one of the many innovative concepts Clark is credited with unleashing. From the electrosecretary transcription machine to the space elevator, Clarke laid out his visionary ideas in more than 100 fiction and nonfiction books.

Despite his track record as a futurist, Clarke remained humble about his work when he was interviewed for a 1993 Q&A with Wired magazine.

"I've never predicted the future," Clarke said. "Or hardly ever. I extrapolate. Look, I've written six stories about the end of the Earth; they can't all be true!"

Clarke picked his book The Songs of Distant Earth as his favorite personal writing, saying, "It's got everything in it that I ever wanted to say."

I was privileged to share a publication with him in The Liftport Book

Sovereignty for Sale

2008-03-10T12:14:00.001-04:00

Part one of a two-part series on the sale of MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates taxpayer-funded space assets to the world's largest maker of ammunition (including cluster bombs) to the benefit of the Ontario Teacher's Pension Fund among others.

A link to Part two is available on The Space Commerce Blog

--PB--

"The project to build Radarsat-2 -- 'R2,' as it is commonly called -- had started nine years ago and was now in its final stages before the system would be packaged and shipped to Kazakhstan for launch.

Quite simply, this made-in-Canada satellite is the most advanced of its kind in the world. It was designed to allow Canadian scientists to view objects on the earth three metres wide from an altitude of around 800 kilometres. It would also be able to spot ships moving through Canadian waters, monitor environmental problems such as oil spills, measure crop conditions and map the extent of the country's forest resources.

As a mark of its imminent commercial success, dozens of customers in various nations had lined up for its services before it was even launched.

R2 was Canada's ace in the hole when it came to protecting the country's sovereignty in the Arctic. With climate change reducing the amount of ice in the North, Canada is facing challenges to its claims of ownership of key parts of its territory, mainly from the United States but also from nations such as Russia and Denmark.

Just months earlier, Prime Minister Stephen Harper had made one of his strongest speeches yet on Canada's plans to assert its sovereignty in the North.

"Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty in the Arctic: either we use it or we lose it," Mr. Harper said. "Make no mistake; this government intends to use it."

And Radarsat-2, built by MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates of Richmond, B.C., was the route to that goal, according to government and military officials.

"This satellite will help us vigorously protect our Arctic sovereignty as international interest in the region increases," Mr. Prentice told reporters during the October gathering, following up on the prime minister's earlier speech.

Yet five months later, the Conservative government's leadership is being called into question, along with the very future of the country's space industry.

U.S. aerospace giant Alliant Techsystems announced in January that it was buying MacDonald Dettwiler's information and geospatial division. And with that $1.325-billion deal comes ownership of Radarsat-2 and most of Canada's space capabilities."

'Successful' Destruction of Rogue Spy Satellite

2008-02-27T08:54:00.007-05:00

February 21, 2008: Satellite Explodes over Pacific Ocean

"More than 100 metric tons of man-made objects reenter in an uncontrolled fashion each year. Of satellites that reenter, approximately 10-40% of the mass of the object is likely to reach the surface of the Earth.^[17] On average, about one catalogued object reenters per day. Approximately a quarter of all objects are of U.S. origin.

Due to the Earth's surface being primarily water, most objects that survive reentry land in one of the world's oceans. The estimated chances that a person will get hit and injured is around 1 in a trillion." Source: Wikipedia - Atomospheric Re-entry

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon declared on Monday that its mission to blast apart a defunct spy satellite with a missile fired from a Navy warship had been a success.

The strike took place 247 km (153.5 miles) above the Pacific Ocean last Wednesday as the satellite sped through space at more than 17,000 mph (27,000 kph), according to U.S. officials.

Missile Launches Towards Rogue Spy Satellite

"By all accounts this was a successful mission," Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a statement.

Cartwright said analysis of debris supported the initial conclusion that the missile had most probably destroyed the satellite's tank of hazardous hydrazine fuel as intended.

"From the debris analysis, we have a high degree of confidence the satellite's fuel tank was destroyed and the hydrazine has been dissipated," he said.

Experts were tracking less than 3,000 pieces of debris, all smaller than a football. "The vast majority of debris has already reentered or will shortly reenter the Earth's atmosphere in the coming days and weeks," Cartwright said."

"The Kessler Syndrome is a scenario, proposed by NASA consultant Donald J. Kessler, in which the volume of space debris in Low Earth Orbit is so high that objects in orbit are frequently struck by debris, creating even more debris and a greater risk of further impacts. The implication of this scenario is that the escalating amount of debris in orbit could eventually render space exploration, and even the use of satellites, too prone to loss to be feasible for many generations.

The Kessler Syndrome is especially insidious because of the "domino effect and Feedback runaway." Any impact between two objects of sizable mass will create additional shrapnel debris from the force of collision. Each piece of shrapnel now has the potential to cause further damage, creating even more space debris. With a large enough collision (such as one between a space station and a defunct satellite), the amount of cascading debris could be enough to render Low Earth Orbit essentially impassable."

Movie of Satellite Destruction Source: YouTube:WiredNews

We All Need the Qualities of Hero ...

2008-02-25T12:45:00.004-05:00

Image Courtesy: CarbonHero.net

... but if you weren't born with them and don't expect any close encounters with mutant spiders or toxic waste any time soon you can still save the planet (or at least reduce your personal carbon footprint) using Carbon Hero.

The little foot-shaped sensor "identifies and evaluates the different forms of transport, ... the custom Carbon Hero (CH) application processes the data stream by way of an algorithm and database ... then outputs this to the user [via a Java application running on their mobile device]."

Carbon Hero computes the carbon footprint using values from the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to evaluate each trip's environmental impact.

According to the European Space Agency's (ESA) News Portal CH was a "regional prize winner in the 2007 European Satellite Navigation Competition, sponsored by ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme, the device uses [GPS] satellite navigation technology to track journeys."

The CH web site explains that "adoption of a new technology or system is more successful when it involves the minimum of interference or learning by the user. Using sophisticated sensors and programming, Carbon Hero does the learning and deduces modes of transport being used, with almost no user input required."

Carbon Hero's story is just beginning and Andreas Zachariah and Nick Burch are looking for a "visionary investor with integrity and appetite to unlock full potential via a mobile provider/manufacturer alliance."

Finding investment should be a lock if CH keeps winning battles the way it has been.

The ESA news says "in addition to winning a regional prize in the 2007 European Satellite Navigation Competition, Carbon Hero was awarded the British Standards Institute (BSI) prize for Sustainability Design in July last year. It was a finalist in the 2007 Oxygen Awards and Deutsche Bank Pyramid Awards, and also invited to enter the Saatchi & Saatchi World-Changing Ideas Awards. It is now in the closing rounds of the 2008 St. Andrews Environmental Prize."

The dynamic duo envision several future projects including a stand-alone CH unit, a tracker-style CH post-processing unit, auto-related products for driver safety and vehicle fuel efficiency/environmental impact, a mass-transit climate control device and a water-saving aid.

Carbon Hero Demo Application

Andreas Zachariah talks about CarbonHero on the BBC World Service: Culture Shock with Philip Dodd

Only 50 More Days

2008-02-22T06:16:00.007-05:00

"Poyekhali! (Let's Go!)"

Image Courtesy: Yuri's Night

These were the words spoken by Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin as he embarked on the historic first manned space flight on 12 April 1961. Twenty years later on 12 April 1981, the US launched the first space shuttle flight. We think that's something worth celebrating – so we do!

Every year on April 12th Yuri's Night is celebrated all around the world – last year there were over 90 events or parties held in over 30 countries worldwide - and this year looks set to be even bigger. The range of events is as diverse as the people who hold them – even the residents of the International Space Station have been known to join in the fun!

Whether in someone’s living room, a swinging nightclub or a world-class science museum, Yuri’s Night events all have one thing in common - people who are excited about space exploration and who want to join together to celebrate it.

[Find a Yuri's Night party near you (Map)]

[Find a Yuri's Night party near you (List)]

[Throw Your Own Yuri's Night Party]

PlanetSpace still plans to blast-off from Cape Breton

2008-02-21T09:56:00.002-05:00

"PlanetSpace Inc. says it's still in the space race, even though it was passed over for a $170 million NASA [COTS] contract earlier this week.

Chairman Chirinjeev Kathuria said Wednesday that his company is still going ahead with plans to develop space tourism and a low orbit courier service from Cape Breton."

"We're going to continue on building the Silver Dart, which we're going to use for point-to-point travel or what we call international fast freight or global express, taking packages around the world in 40 minutes," he said.

"And, eventually, human transport in 40 minutes. Also, small- and medium- size satellite launches, and, you know, the space tourism part of it."

[Word is PlanetSpace is still vying for COTS2 contracts - PB-]

The Story Can Now Be Told

2007-06-02T08:02:00.000-04:00

It's been a crazy time and it's just ending.

I got back from SESI and was working on the 60GB. of digital media I got from there and Hofstadter's Law was in full effect. I realised that if I was going to put in the kind of effort it's going to take to present it well (I'm fussy about that - maybe too fussy) then I wanted it to come out on the new web site I'm planning for the Space Elevator Journal (SEJ).

Before I could get anything done on that my life took a left turn. As you may remember, I was working private security so I could work on the SEJ which pays me about $1/month (Canadian no less). Anyway some headhunter found my C.V. on Workopolis (which reveals my dark secret - that I spent 20 years in IT before journalism) and I ended up getting an excellent offer to work doing tech support for a large software company that I could not refuse if I wanted to be able to sleep (without worrying whether my wife Keiko was going to kill me in my bed ;> ).

She's been incredibly supportive while I went to school and worked on various journalistic endeavours including the SEJ. She's returning to university in the fall to start working on a CGA and it's my turn to support her (and I need money to start the new web site) so the timing of the new position was fortuitous.

The crazy part was that the new company wanted me to start right away and I didn't want to leave my former employer in the lurch (responsibility sucks sometimes) so I worked off the 2-week notice while training for the new position. So I had no time off for the better part of a month. This, plus several events in my personal life conspired to keep me away from the keyboard for much too long. (Ancient Chinese Curse: May you live in interesting times)
Anyway, the medium-term plan is get her through school and launched on the new phase of her career so she can keep me in the style to which I'd like to grow accustomed then put journalism back on the front burner. That's not to say the SEJ is dead by any means. I just became my own angel investor and, based on the successful stats the SEJ put up as a blog, the plan is to re-launch it as a full-blown (and hopefully financially viable) web site that grows with the space elevator(s?).

Along with the SESI material there are a couple of big stories in the offing and, just a couple of days ago, an inspired Google search turned up a whole rich vein of material that will refine into some fine articles. In the meantime I will have find time to squeeze out a post or two every week.

Like those annoying announcements say when you're holding on the phone or finding out you're trapped in your plane on the tarmac for a while, your patience is appreciated.

--PB--

A Heated (and Premature?) Post-Mortem

2007-04-18T12:58:00.000-04:00

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again ....

Bob Dylan: Times They Are A-Changin'

Beset by lawsuits and financial problems Liftport Group is taking a standing eight count and trying to figure out whether to throw in the towel or come out swinging. Some of those sitting ringside are already calling it a TKO.

Marc Boucher of SpaceElevator.com wrote this yesterday morning;

"Building a Space Elevator will not be an easy endeavour. The hurdles to overcome are numerous. ... No one company today will start from scratch with the stated business aim of building a space elevator and succeed, it’s too soon." [!!!? --PB--]

"Companies today interested in the space elevator need to focus on technologies, materials needed for the space elevator and produce tangible spin-off products that can be made the foundation of a business. The space elevator is no ordinary product, so applying traditional business models and fundraising techniques won't work.

"Liftport created their own roadmap, one in which they stated that in 25 years they would start sending cargo up an elevator. What investor today who is thinking about a return on investment would consider such a long term investment? None who have the funds to get such an endeavour off the ground. And in applying traditional business models this is in part where Liftport went wrong. And I feel for those who made emotional decisions to invest in the Liftport Group. In fours years Liftport went from one company to a group of four companies. This was all part of the fundraising strategy. And while they got a lot of people excited, raised expectations and did do some work, for the most part what was produced was hype. And hype is not a product, and without a product and with your expenses mounting the day will come when your business fails."

And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'....

Bob Dylan: Times They Are A-Changin'

Michael Laine of Liftport took exception and replied in the comments section;

"Marc, you have gone way over the top with this post. [Liftport] is NOT dead. please re-read Brian's post. yes, I -personally- have a pretty big problem. And it changes our company - a lot. that said, we are still here, hurt, and fighting, but don't count us out just yet!

"The business model has not failed. It's perfectly intact. My -personal- ability to fund this project from my own checkbook is damaged. To date I have put in well over $400,000 of my own damn money into this project. Don't you dare start slandering me and my team by implying that the only thing we ever produced was 'hype'. We produced a realistic, working roadmap, (which was a catalyst for Bryan's effort) a small amount of carbon nanotubes on our own furnace, and robotic lifter systems that actually work - they have climbed into the sky...

"What have you and your 'buddies' done? What skin have you put into the game? What risk have you taken to further this elevator to space?

"This sort of mudslinging is unacceptable."

For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Bob Dylan Times They Are A-Changin'

LiftPort April General Newsletter Updates Lawsuit Situation

2007-04-18T00:35:00.000-04:00

In late 2005 Liftport Group, arguably the most visible corporate entity in the space elevator community, seemed to be on a roll. They had a line on the Space Elevator (SE) version of the holy grail - continuous production of carbon nanotubes (CNT's).

CNT production is still done in batches. Liftport's April General Newsletter describes their "continuous flow process" as "a huge leap forward in the production quantities that will be required for supplying the growing [demand for CNT's] across a vast array of industries."

Not necessarily CNT's strong enough to make the tether for the SE but any supply of CNT's is likely to find a buyer in a market that projects growth in individual sectors in billions of dollars. Profits from a successful CNT plant would provide research money to take Liftport's SE research to the next level.

Liftport found willing partners in the City of Millville, NJ and the federally-funded Cumberland Empowerment zone named for the surrounding county. Each loaned Liftport $50K. Liftport's newsletter picks up the story from here.

"Unfortunately, our contractor did not fulfill their end of the contract and slipped over schedule and over budget. We assured the city and county that we were still committed and continued development. Once again the time table slipped, and promises were broken. We again went to the city and county to reassure them and make promises based on assurances from our contractor that results were imminent.

"At the end of March [2007], we read an article in the news that claimed we were being sued. We followed up by calling various contacts and ended up leaving several messages but getting no new information. We had not received any mail, email, or voice messages about this.

"Patrick Boake emailed us asking about it and mentioned it in his Space Elevator Journal. Further digging by Patrick yielded assurances by city and county officials that though they were indeed moving forward with filing a civil suit to defend their taxpayer's interests, they are still hoping that we'll be successful and that they'll be able to settle the suit with a mutually beneficial outcome.

"Our contractor has chosen to default on the contract and we will be bringing the furnace home to Bremerton where there has been a growing interest by University of Washington researchers in working on this project. Our furnace as it exists now does indeed produce carbon nanotubes, and has for about four months. The process, however, does not sustain as intended and is therefore not yet ready for installation. The news article suggests that after the suit is filed and LiftPort is served, we'll have ninety days to respond (we finally received notice on April, 5. It is being reviewed by our attorney). We're fairly confident that we will be able to install CNT production in Millville within that time frame, but will only do so if the ROI can justify it."

The Demise of Liftport?

2007-04-16T08:07:00.000-04:00

Erik a blogger listened to Michael Laine of Liftport at a panel on Infosnacking and Infobingeing: A Guide to Being Well-Informed at the recent Conference on World Affairs and put a partial transcript in his blog Pikamac;

"I've got a scoop for all the all the bloggers in the room. Other than the X Prize, if you're on the cover of Popular Science or Popular Mechanics then your project is not going to go anywhere. But failure is a critical component of growth.

"Two hours ago I lost a three million dollar building. I'd rather pay for this space elevator then pay my mortgage. I'd rather talk to schoolchildren about the project than pay my phone bill. I've been in foreclosure seven times in the last five years. And now I don't have a place to live. I don't have a place to for my staff to go to. I don't have a place to put my cat.

"Is this the straw that breaks the camels back? Not quite, I'm pretty tough. I've got to go get a job... I'm not a very good employee. How do you build an elevator into space on the evenings and weekends? I'm counting on the two million people on the network who have referenced the project to make a difference... to put some skin in the game.

"I thought I had this fucking problem solved on Wednesday, but I'm not going to let this stop me."

Julie Fredrickson AKA Almost Girl was also there and had this to say about it. "a space elevator is clearly one of the first steps towards our future off this planet.

In fact, NASA and its funding is one of the few places where I find my libertarian mindset in a quandary. Individuals clearly cannot fund research, corporations taking control of space has some vivid problems, and rarely do people come together to fund purely exploratory ventures. Space, at this point, is a nonprofit world and it is generally governments with the resources and longevity to fund that which will not return a profit for decades if not centuries.

And today, with an audience of people held rapt, Michael Laine demonstrated today just how true this problem rings. And it broke my heart. During the panel [on] Infosnacking and Infobingeing: A Guide to Being Well-Informed, a composed but clearly emotional Mr. Laine began to wax poetic about network effects and the blogosphere. He talked about information flow and the power of many people coming together to discuss and influence topics.

The blogosphere has been good to Lifport, bringing to light their smaller victories. Blogs have helped keep the spirit alive even as progress is slow and the victories are hard won in this type of work. Networks of people have in some sense replaced the support of governments and big money. And that support has allowed Michael and his team of merry twentysomethings to forge on.

But today, roughly two hours before the panel, an obstacle was placed in Michael and Liftport’s path. Zealot that he is, even his belief and passion could not hold against this reality of finance. They lost their office space. The money ran out. And on Monday they will announce this fact.

I almost cried in sympathy as Michael described how this would impact not only Liftport but his personal life. He had no home, no place for his animals, no job, no source of income, and no place for his staff. A three million dollar building that held the hopes and dreams of more than just a few space crazies was taken away from a project that for better or worse is attempting to bring about a future I was weaned on. And a future I don’t often get to remember in a day to day way and now perhaps will not see even in dreams anymore"

Doors Still Open to Liftport in Millville

2007-04-04T22:36:00.000-04:00

Despite launching a lawsuit to collect almost $50K from Liftport, Donald Ayres, the City of Millville's director of economic development, is still looking for ways to get Liftport's nanotube production facility working in New Jersey's Cumberland County.

"We'd love to work with Mr. Laine and keep moving forward," Ayres explains, "however, we had arrangements with him to make some payments on our loan and as a a public agency we have to protect ourselves and protect our taxpayers."

Ayres is not unsympathetic to Liftport's plight.

"I know there have been problems and I expect problems when you're trying to commercially produce carbon nanotubes en masse and work with universities to try and create something new.

"I have a lot of admiration for the tremendous task they've undertaken. I realize it's a very daunting challenge for them, it's fraught with hurdles and there will be delays. At a certain point in time we have a responsibility to the people who ultimately provide the economic development fund."

For his part, Michael Laine of Liftport is forthright about the situation if a somewhat unhappy about the way it has played out.

"It's no secret. I'm not trying to dodge that. I'm $15K behind on my obligations," Mr. Laine states.

"[There's an email] I sent two weeks ago saying we're going to do our balloon test in Millville because we're committed to Millville. .... There's been plenty of opportunity to communicate with me directly and say 'we're thinking of seeking legal action.' The first thing I hear about it is in The Daily Journal."

The technical issue stymying Liftport is converting their Carbon NanoTube (CNT) furnace from a batch process to a continuous production process that can turn out commercial volumes of CNT's.

"We've been making nanotubes for four months," Laine reveals. "It's no different than anyone else is doing it's just not at volume. They're Single-walled CNT's ... the quality's fine there's just not much of it. That's the problem - nobody can produce substantial quantities of CNT's – yet.

"We're tackling something that's never been done before in the history of mankind and - Don's right - we expected problems and there were problems. But we never would have entered into this agreement with them in the first place has we not fundamentally believed that we have access to a key technology."

Liftport's legal troubles don't end there. The company has a matching loan from Cumberland Empowerment Zone (CEZ), the county organisation that, according to its web site, "provides financing for economic and community development initiatives as well as business and industrial expansion in the Empowerment Zone target areas" using federal funds.

"Our board did authorize us to go the same route," says Jeannine MacDonald, CEZ's executive director who is also open to resolving the situation outside the courtroom.

"It's definitely imminent and we will be unfortunately filing suit. We're not closing the door. We're just doing what we have to do to protect our interests. We certainly remain willing to speak with Liftport and work with them."

Laine declined to disclose what the next steps will be but remains undaunted.

"I still think we have a key technology Laine contends. "There's a technique we have helped pioneer that's part of that key mass-production process."

Paraphrasing Edison, Laine says “We haven't failed, we've just discovered four years of how not to do it.”

Liftport Suffers Technical - and Legal - Setback

2007-03-31T16:16:00.000-04:00

Normally I don't copy a (nearly) complete article into a blog entry but because this is a bit of a black eye for the nascent space elevator industry (and about a company I have high hopes for) I wanted to be as thorough as possible.

"[City of] Millville Sues Company Over $50,000 Loan" - The Daily Journal

By JOSEPH P. SMITH - Staff Writer

MILLVILLE, NJ -- The city filed a civil lawsuit this week to recover a $50,000 loan to a company hoping to open a carbon nanotube factory here.

LiftPort Nanotech, a subsidiary of LiftPort Group of Bremerton, Wash., has not made a loan repayment in 90 days, the suit alleges. LiftPort also has a matching loan from Cumberland County's Empowerment Zone. Both loans date to late 2005.

Donald Ayres, the city's Economic Development director, said Friday technical problems kept the company from starting production.

...

LiftPort counted on experimental custom furnaces to produce the nanotubes. It received two models of furnaces in succession. Neither performed as hoped.

...

'We had to do what we had to do,' Ayres said. The city still is interested in the project."

Responding via e-mail Joe Julian, Liftport's Executive Vice-President/Media, said "We read the article in the Millville news but haven't received anything from either the city or the county. According to the article, we're supposed to be given 90 days [to respond once being served], which if things keep progressing the way they are, should be a non-issue."

Due to the timing of this post Millville officials were unavailable for comment. Watch this space for updates.

--PB--

Astronomers Launch Space Exploration 2007

2007-03-30T15:35:00.000-04:00

The Albuquerque Astronomical Society (TAAS) showed a large, diverse crowd of conference attendees what astronomers see, an alternative technique for seeing it and then Alan Hale caught us up on what's been happening in his personal and professional life in the 10 years since

Hale-Bopp to launch the Space Engineering and Science Institute's 2007 edition of its International Conference and Exposition on Science, Engineering and Habitation in Space.

TAAS's Bruce Levin showed why amateur astronomers go to great trouble and expense to practice their hobby/profession by taking us billions of light years into space via a series of photos from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. Next, Dale Murray, another TAAS member explained the ins and outs and whys and wherefores of backyard astronomy with binoculars.

The evening ended with audience and TAAS members gathering behind the hotel for some stargazing with the kind assistance of several TAAS members like local mechanic Ric Thiem who brought the giant scope seen at the left that provided gorgeous views of the moon like the one seen below.

More pictures from the conference kick-off are available at my Picassa web gallery.

Laser Power Beaming article on MachineDesign.com

2007-03-23T09:13:00.000-04:00

One of several images from Hoffman's article showing different power beaming applications

There will be no space elevator without practical laser power beaming.

MachineDesign.com's Senior Editor Jean M. Hoffman put together an excellent article on laser power beaming for the March 8, 2007 issue the magazine explaining how "a range of experimental efforts give promise that lasers may, in the not too distant future, provide cheap, safe, and reliable access to space."

The article covers the history of laser power beaming, its current status, the way forward and provides a list of contacts for the researchers and companies in the field.

[And, yes, I DO read the whole Internet each morning over breakfast while discussing the day's plans with my family. ADD does have its advantages. --PB--]

NASA Kills Funding for the Home of Space Elevator Plan

2007-03-22T09:01:00.000-04:00

Collateral Damage

Student Fellows Prize Canceled

"Due to funding constraints beyond NIAC's control, the 2007-2008 Call for the NIAC Student Fellows Prize (original due date April 16, 2007) has been canceled."

NIAC's Student Program awarded $9000 fellowships to several students every year allowing them "to investigate revolutionary ideas for space exploration."

The 2006 - 2007 winners were searching for answer to questions like; "Will we be able to identify water on other planets using neutron physics? Can space travelers rely on asteroids to protect them from dangerous radiation? Can near-earth objects like asteroids be harnessed and combined with space tethers to allow for faster travel to the Moon, Mars and beyond? Would large orbiting mirrors bring a small part of the Martian surface closer to Earth-like temperatures? Is it possible to develop tiny, bug-like flying robots to explore planetary surfaces?"

Now this stream of knowledge will fall silent.

While there's no official announcement yet, the word is out that NASA is killing the budget for the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) the organization that funded Dr. Brad Edwards' study to "produce an initial design for a space elevator using current or near-term technology and evaluate the effort yet required prior to construction of the first space elevator." (Source: The Space Elevator - NIAC Phase II Final Report)

"The closure of NIAC is extremely disappointing," comments Dr. Brad Edwards by email. "As many of us know and was stated in the presidential commission report a few years back, NIAC is one of the bright lights of NASA.

"Over the years though I have realized that such things like the closure of an excellent program are to be expected.

"NASA is a large federal institution driven more by political forces than by an interest to create the best space program. I think we need to stop looking to NASA for space-related activities and focus on independent programs."

The Futures Channel has an excellent video on NIAC that shows the excellent value that can be had for a few million dollars when the right people are given the resources to think freely. NIAC's funding (~$4m/year) is a minuscule percentage of the total NASA budget (~$16B/year) and the institute historically applies well over 70% of that budget to research.

The credit for breaking this story goes to Keith Cowing, writer and editor of NASA Watch (and astrobiologist, journalist, former rocket scientist, and recovering ex-civil servant) who was unreserved in his judgement of this move "This is just plain stupid. Let me repeat this for clarity's sake, Mike, ([or] whoever made it) this is A STUPID DECISION."

NIAC Director Robert Cassanova, PhD was somewhat more circumspect in his email response but no less heartfelt.

"We were very disappointed to hear that NASA will not be continuing the NIAC due to constraints on the NASA budget. However, NIAC has generated a legacy of advanced concepts that may have a significant impact on future activities in aeronautics and space.

"Possibly more importantly, NIAC will leave a legacy of a process which encourages creative
scientists and engineers to intellectually venture beyond the evolutionary concepts the dominate the near term and to creatively explore potentially revolutionary concepts. These concepts may be the genesis of emerging technologies that enable these and other revolutionary concepts.

"The NIAC process has inspired the technical community to reach for the stars with credibility and integrity.

"We appreciate the opportunity that NASA has given us for the past nine years to explore the possibilities for future space exploration that are limited only by our imagination."

The NIAC Timeline that laid out its "vision for space exploration" and the integration of those ideas into NASA's future programs has four streams. The space elevator was the only one common to them all.

Space Elevator Journal Covers Space Exploration 2007

2007-03-21T12:13:00.000-04:00

Although this has been in the works for some time, I can only now reveal the exciting news that the Space Elevator Journal will be covering Space Exploration 2007, including the Second Biennial Space Elevator Workshop live and in person. The plan is to provide as much live coverage as time permits and record as much of the proceedings as possible and make it available in various forms afterwards.

Feedback from you, the reader, will help shape the coverage. Tell me what most interests you by clicking the 'Leave a Comment' link in the footer below.

I also need to know if people are interested in a CD or DVD with audio and video of the proceedings and PDF copies of the papers presented.

Your intrepid scribe also plans to get one-on-one interviews with as many of the space elevator pioneers present as time and scheduling will permit. I just won't sleep is all. :)

Many thanks to Phil Richter, President of conference hosts Space Engineering and Science Institute and Administrative Chair, Space Exploration 2007 for making this possible.

Cassini Spacecraft Images Seas of Fuel on Saturn's Moon Titan

2007-03-14T14:13:00.000-04:00

Titan's lake compared to Lake Superior

Source: NASA JPL

In keeping with the Space Elevator Journal's mission of showing what a post space elevator reality might look like I search out stories about resources in space that will be even more accessible and better researched after the space elevator is built.

"Instruments on NASA's Cassini spacecraft have found evidence [of] seas, likely filled with liquid methane or ethane, in the high northern latitudes of Saturn's moon Titan. One such feature is larger than any of the Great Lakes of North America and is about the same size as several seas on Earth."

Even after doing article after article on this I still get blown away by what's out there. The science fiction writer in me envisions convoys of robot tankers flying to Titan and filling up with fuel for a thirsty space community. Is it possible space elevator economics will make it profitable to return the fuel to Earth and we can stop draining our own planet?

I wonder how long it will be before there's a Dunkin' Donuts and a convenience store in orbit around Titan? "Thank you very much. Come again." --PB--

View Full News Release

"Source: NASA JPL - [These movies], comprised of several detailed images taken by Cassini's radar instrument, shows bodies of liquid near Titan's north pole. [They] show many of the features commonly associated with lakes on Earth, such as islands, bays, inlets and channels, are also present on this cold Saturnian moon. ... Strong evidence that larger bodies seen in infrared images are, in fact, seas [that] are most likely liquid methane and ethane."

View QuickTime Video (lg, no audio) (70.9 MB)

View QuickTime Video (sm, no audio) (56.1 MB)

How will space chickens sit on their eggs?

2007-03-09T08:54:00.000-05:00

Space food has come a long way since John Glenn choked down bite-sized cubes, freeze dried foods, and semi-liquids in aluminum toothpaste-type tubes to become the first human to eat a meal in space*. Hopefully, by the time the space elevator is built, there will be space farms and zero-gravity food preparation technology that better approximate eating on Earth (except for that floating thing).

A recent European Space Agency (Quicktime/WMP) video "gives an overview of the meals served on the ISS on normal days and at special occasions [and] also outlines the underlying nutritional and psychological factors that determine what astronauts [eat] in orbit."

These guys are eating "a Sicilian starter followed by roast quail in a wine sauce and rice pudding with dried fruit." It sounds better than my menu for today but, due to the stress of the small environment and work they do, food is the main source of relaxation and joy for International Space Station crew according to ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter who moderates a report about food for some experts on the ground in this video.

Oh, and the answer to the question posed in the headline? Velcro, baby, Velcro.

--PB--

*Yuri Gagarin did test food and water samples experimentally but his single-orbit flight did not require a meal.

Space Exploration 2007 on The Space Show

2007-03-06T12:59:00.000-05:00

Dr. Livingston

Phil Richter, the conference coordinator for the Space Exploration 2007 Conference and Second Space Elevator Conference taking place in Albuquerque, NM March 25-28, 2007, was a guest on the February 20th edition of The Space Show™.

Hosted by Dr. David Livingston, The Space Show™ focuses on timely and important issues influencing the development of outer-space commerce and space tourism, as well as other related subjects of interest to us all.

I didn't catch it live but it ended up on the media stack I go through to find stories for the SEJ and listened to it from the show archives. One of the most interesting things to come out of the show for me was the educational experience available to the general public.

Anyone interested in space will be able to talk to the various presenters (see the conference schedule for details) about the progress in space exploration and the space elevator and there will be two open sessions, both moderated by Dr. Bryan Laubscher.

One is called Shotgun Science where any attendee can give a 5-minute talk on any space-related topic, concept or observation they have.

The other is the Global Space Elevator Road Map Workshop a three-hour brainstorming session where everyone can contribute ideas.

Students have not been forgotten. SEC2007 has a special rate for full-time students of $50 (vs. $300) + $25 for optional banquet. Course credit is not available from the conference but SEC2007 is a 501 (3C) non-profit educational organisation so students should speak to their teachers about getting credit for attending.

The point is the open sessions won't work if you don't come. If you were thinking about attending stop thinking and register. Unfortunately the hotel discount officially ended on February 28th but there's no harm in asking for it anyway.

Please be sure to mention you heard about the conference on the Space Elevator Journal.

Liftport Opens Space Elevator Ticket Window

2007-02-25T19:27:00.000-05:00

LiftPort Group's ongoing efforts to improve public awareness of the lower costs of future access to space provided by the space elevator continue with the production and sale of replica 1-Ounce Space Elevator Tickets.

The tickets are done up in an old-fashioned train ticket motif evoking past frontiers and carry an image of the Mir Space Station commemorating both Mir's record for the longest continuous human presence in space and its place in history as the first space tourism destination.

The tickets are numbered in gold foil, printed on secure paper using several patented anti-counterfeiting methods and come mounted in a protective collectible-quality frame. They can be purchased at the Liftport Store for US$25.

The 1st Ticket in the series is available on E-bay paired with a stunning image depicting a futuristic cargo lifter custom designed by Nyein Aung protected by museum-quality frame and glass.

Lift Port Group Out There Pitching the Space Elevator Concept

2007-02-22T11:47:00.000-05:00

I love to see this because, where participation in rocketry is somewhat elitist by necessity, the space elevator will open space to a much larger segment of businesses and allow individual participation at a grassroots level. Space elevators hold the potential for the average person to get to space.

LiftPort Group (LPG) founder and President Michael Laine recently told the Kiwanis Club of Seattle how "the Space Elevator will be at the heart of [a] revolutionary transportation service, ... opening up broad-based access to Earth orbits and the inner solar system, LPG will help bring about the creation of entire new [space commerce] markets[that] can only become viable through safe, inexpensive, routine access to the inner solar system.

"In short, we at LiftPort Group believe that development of the space elevator is a crucial step in the future of Earth and space."

Open Source Radio - What to Do in Space?

2007-02-15T12:43:00.000-05:00

"You’ve probably heard about the Mars Rover and space weapons a la China, but do you know about plans to build a space elevator? Or to mine asteroids? Do you know about the 181 things scientists hope we can accomplish by returning to the moon?"

Today's Open Source Radio show will "deal largely with the new frontiers of what some people call alt.space - private enterprise trailblazing the way forward. So adjust your antennae to think about the role of the market in space exploration."

Open Source Radio streams live at 7 PM EST, Monday-Thursday through WGBH and on XM Public Radio, channel 133. It is available via RSS or iTunes and is carried by various public radio stations around the USA. Details and links available here.

There are 39 comments in the pre-show listener discussion and no shortage of passion about space issues.

--PB--

NASA not interested in Space Elevators

2007-02-15T11:21:00.000-05:00

As covered on the Space Elevator Blog, NASA Centennial Challenges staffer Ken Davidian stated on the February 11th edition of Dr. David Livingston's podcast The Space Show, "NASA's not interested in space elevators" and only sees the Space Elevator Games as a means to develop technologies.

Personally I'm disappointed to hear this but not surprised. NASA's a rocket culture and, barring some cataclysmic culture shock, always will be (IMHO).

I think the SE will be to space what the PC was/is to computing. IBM only released the design for the PC after they decided it was a 'toy'. The 'big iron' culture (of the time) led them astray. Sound familiar?

Liftport's Brian ("Kilroy") Dunbar comments to the effect that this is as it should be and NASA should leapfrog space elevator development efforts by stepping out of the "Space Truck business and worry about exploration and R&D" is a sensible and plausible sentiment. My problem with that is that NASA is the big money pipeline.

You heard it here first. Carbon nanotubes won't be the factor delaying SE construction - it will be money, money and more money. The kind of money only governments can afford to invest.

The purse-string holders in the world's various governments are using to listening to presentations they don't understand then doling out galaxy-sized budgets to their respective space agencies. Everyone's comfortable with this.

If the space agencies a) don't take the space elevator seriously and b) fear SE projects will undercut their funding they will not only not support SE's, they will actively undermine them.

Setting up a new funding infrastructure may take longer than actually building the space elevator itself. Especially since there's likely to be more than one country involved.

Winning the hearts and minds of both the public and their governments is going to take longer and be harder than developing working carbon nanotube tethers or power-beaming systems. The scientists and engineers have it relatively easy because they will know when they are done.

The entrepreneurs, lawyers and lobbyists advocating for the space elevator will not only have to build the supporting legal and political infrastructure that will have to be in place before the money starts to flow, they will have to maintain it even after the space elevator is working.

--PB--

Space Exploration 2007: Program Highlights

2007-02-13T10:08:00.000-05:00

Space Exploration 2007 (SEC 2007) is the place for space elevator professionals, academics and enthusiasts to be Sunday, March 25 to Wednesday, March 28.

The program (in MS-Word format) for the Second International Conference and Exposition on Science, Engineering and Habitation in Space and the Second Biennial Space Elevator Workshop on the Space Engineering and Science Institute site includes three (out of a total of 8) keynote speakers on topics related to the space elevator.

Dr. Brad Edwards speaking on The Space Elevator: Problems, Progress, and Plans.

Dr. Bryan Laubscher gives a talk on the conceptual design of and benefits to mankind from the space elevator.

The history and current state of the Space Elevator Games will be covered by Ben Shelef of the Spaceward Foundation.

In another part of the program Dr. Laubscher returns to moderate a three-hour panel 'brainstorming session' in which the audience is welcome to participate entitled Global Space Elevator Road Map Workshop.

SEC2007, which is cosponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers' Aerospace Division, is taking place in the Albuquerque Marriott Pyramid North Hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.

Please mention you heard about the conference on the Space Elevator Journal when you either register for SEC2007 via the online registration form or mail in your payment and registration form to:

SES Institute
91 Mira Mesa
Rancho Santa Margarita, CA
92688

Exobiology - Admit It - You Want to Know

2007-02-09T21:58:00.000-05:00

Anyone with a mind creative enough to think about space elevators has probably asked themselves the big question. The one that smart people don't bring up because it often degenerates into a conversation that sounds like a rejected Twilight Zone script.

IS THERE LIFE ELSEWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE?

The Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie and CNES, France's National Centre for Space Studies put together an excellent and fun web collection of videos and texts examining the question.

This post started out to be a humorous one about the but, as often happens, a question posed by one of the presenters stopped me in my tracks. If the building blocks of life on Earth came from space what was the starting point?

I hope the Space Elevator Journal is there to cover it when we find out.

Music for the Space Elevator Ride

2007-02-03T09:32:00.000-05:00

The space elevator entered the collective consciousness over 110 years ago through the mind of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and remained largely hidden behind the Iron Curtain until it entered pop culture in Sir Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise in 1979.

A portal to a new dimension of the shared mind opened up in mid-2006 with the release of Inquisitor Betrayer's CD Space Elevator four years after an electronics engineer with a synthesizer fixation (and closet alien) named Dale Kay, and multi-instrumentalist/keyboardist Wes Antczak started putting out symphonic electronica on their particular wavelength.

Along the way, the duo was augmented by a maiden named Lorraine who liked Dale's last name so much she took it as her own when they married.

Speaking to the Space Elevator Journal in their collective e-mail voice the band explains what attracted them to the space elevator as an album concept.

Dale and Wes are in harmony on the concept's genesis in the excitement of watching sci-fi influences from Arthur C. Clarke, Stanislaw Lem and "favorite TV shows such as Star Trek, Space 1999, and later Babylon 5, and movies such as (of course) the Star Wars saga" become reality.

"Man's journey into space is at hand," adds Wes. "It's real, it's complex, it's frightening, It's also the greatest ride we can ever imagine. It's all of these things rolled up into one fantastic and unbelievably intense experience."

"The music goes beyond anything earthly and current – to connect with something so into the future," Lorraine explains. "I wasn’t actually in on selecting the concept. It was something decided before I joined the band. Both Dale and Wes are heavily into sci-fi [and] I too am a big sci-fi fan going back as far as the old Buck Rogers serials, Jules Verne books and the 'Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity' series of books (and no, I am not that old)."

Once the SE is built and the world is "busy with a mission other than self-destruction" Dale opines SE passengers (and listeners) will be able to "relax, sit back, enjoy the music. The ride is all about you now."

Offered a free ticket to space on the SE Wes would simply "go for a quick spin around the solar system and then probably come back home and get back to making more music."

Lorraine "would probably just give my free ride to someone else [because] I don’t even like to fly in an airplane" [but thinks] "it would work for Dale [because he] is an alien you know ... and lately I’ve been beginning to wonder about Wes. How else could [Dale] come up with all the stuff he puts in our music?"

"I would like to take a look around with my camera in hand," agrees Dale the newly-outed alien. "Maybe park up next to one of the new telescopes that would be in place by the time I could go for a ride. Hook my camera up and just take some pictures [and then]- home ... it's been a while since I been there."

Listen to samples here at Inquisitor Betrayer's web site or just Buy the Disc

--SEJ--

McGill Space Elevator Team

2007-02-01T14:30:00.000-05:00

Andrew J.Higgins

The McGill Space Elevator Team (MSET), led by Associate Professor Andrew Higgins and team captain Cyrus Foster MSET has already made significant progress towards their goal of claiming the US$500K first prize in the Climber (Power Beaming) segment of the Spaceward Foundation's 2007 Space Elevator Competition (SEC2K7)

"Our design philosophy is to make something small,simplistic and lightweight. Ideally we want our climber to weigh 10kg, the minimum weight allowed by the rules," explains Foster via email.

MSET Climber Prototype

"We are indeed a first-year team [but] we studied photos and videos of the 2006 competition as we were designing our climber. The biggest pointer we picked up was to account for wind drag. We're going to have a cone over the flat photo-voltaic array to minimize drag."

MSET's 22-person roster is made up of students from the venerable Montreal university's mechanical, electrical and computing departments and is composed of three sub-teams; Beam, Climber and Driving/Braking that will try to get up the tether faster than the other teams within their proposed budget of $30,450.

The team has completed their design, and are testing their prototype even though they are still looking for sponsorship. Potential patrons can refer to MSET's Sponsorship Package for details.

MSET has their work cut out for them as another Canadian team from University of Saskatchewan (USST who will have their own profile on the Space Elevator Journal soon) has posted the fastest climbs the last two years in a row without surpassing the minimum speed of two metres per second required to claim the US$500K purse provided by NASA. This year USST may finally finish in the money only to have to split it with MSET or one of the other 24 teams in the race.

The 2007 McGill Space Elevator Team

Canada Invades the 2007 Space Elevator Competition

2007-01-30T16:51:00.000-05:00

The early-bird registration deadline for the 2007 edition of the Elevator 2010 Space Elevator Games is tomorrow and as per the Elevator 2010 teams list 28 teams have already registered. Two in the tether competition and the remaining 26 vying for their part of the US$500K prize money in the climber segment.

The Space Elevator Competition 2007 (SEC2K7) can now truly be called a global event with 10 of the teams coming from outside of the USA. Five teams have to cross the pond to get to the as-yet unannounced location from Ruhrarea and Munich (Germany), Kiev (Ukraine), Barcelona (Spain) and Tehran (Iran) and five are from Canada.

	McGill Space Elevator Team (Montreal) Associate Professor Andrew Higgins is organizing this first-year team. M-SET is looking to build a climber that approaches the minimum weight specification allowed.
	Queen's Space Elevator Team (Kingston)
	University of Saskatchewan Space Team (Saskatoon) These guys are the big dogs taking first place in both 2005 and 2006. They have acquired a laser and are taking their design to the next generation.
	University of Alberta Space Elevator Team (Edmonton) Another first-time team comprised of 14 students from Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Engineering Physics and Electrical Engineering Technicians led by faculty advisor Dr Abdulhakem Elezzabi.
[No Logo Available]	GTA (Toronto) This team is registered by Ron Bakowski who competed with Punkworks last year.

The wind challenged a few of the climbers last year so this year's climber competition has a new handbook.

Spaceward Foundation's Ben Shelef says via email "The wind was indeed a problem, but didn't stop anyone from winning. We'll have it licked this year by a combination of technical and administrative rule changes."

Stayed tuned to the SEJ for team profiles and more SEC2K7 news.

Space Elevator Journal Turns Two (Months)

2007-01-25T15:54:00.000-05:00

I wanted to thank the 252 visitors that generated 418 page views here on the Space Elevator Journal since November 28, 2006. It may not seem like much to some but it's better than I thought I'd do from a standing start especially considering the two weeks around the holidays when things went dead.

Call for Volunteers

The Space Elevator Search Engine (SESE) isn't doing as well and I'm note sure why. There have only been 9 queries on it in the past month despite the premium top-right placement

It's a Google Custom Search Engine that searches only the sites I index using Google Marker. As I'm surfing around researching articles for the SEJ I use marker to include sites with content relevant to the space elevator in the SESE. In time, I hope to have a comprehensive index of SE-related web content.

That's where volunteers come in. It's an impossible task keeping up with it and I could use some help. If anyone wants to volunteer to collaborate on it just click the collaboration link on the SESE home page.

Take the SESE for a spin by plugging a search term into the box above.

--PB--

Second Biennial Space Elevator Workshop

2007-01-24T09:19:00.000-05:00

The second Biennial Space Elevator Workshop takes place at Space Exploration 2007 (SEC 2007) - a four day conference on the theme of “Humankind in Space: Competition or Collaboration.”

According to conference organizers, The Space Engineering and Science Institute, SEC 2007, held Sunday, March 25 to Wednesday, 28 March 2007 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, "will draw together an international array of scientists, engineers, educators, managers and entrepreneurs and students."

The conference offers keynote talks, planning sessions and panel discussions on a broad array of topics;

planetary exploration,
bases,
habitation,
space station,
engineering and construction in space and on the Moon and Mars,
space access,
space transportation,
space elevator technologies and advanced concepts,
entrepreneurial ventures in/for space,
space power,
space resource development,
NEO’s,
space commerce, law, education

There will also be a Student Robotics Competition in the form of a space elevator (SE) climber challenge the goal of which is to design and build a climber able to climb a 30-foot ribbon with ground-based beamed power carrying a detachable payload representing SE cargo or, in the case of a moon-based SE, the command module components of a lunar base.

SEC 2007 is looking for multi-disciplinary student teams from high schools, two- and four-year colleges to participate and there are four already signed up;

Intelligent Distributed Multi-Agent Robotics Systems Lab at the University of New Mexico
Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN (headed by the SEC 2007 Robotics Chair Ahad Nasab)
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Akron (Ohio)
Department of Advanced Technical Education (ATE), Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute

Conference rates at the Albuquerque Marriott Pyramid North are available until February 14 by calling the hotel directly at (505) 821-3333 (Toll-free: 1-800-262-20430) or via the Marriot's online reservation system. Mention SEC 2007 or use Group Code 'spespea'.

Super Honeycomb CNT's: New Hope for Space Elevator Tether?

2007-01-21T09:09:00.000-05:00

Beijing -- Hope for the space elevator was set back when Nicola Pugno of Politecnico di Torino published a study in August 2006 pointing up problems with the proposed tether design. When Coluci et al proposed the existence of super-nanotubes in August 2006 Signor Pugno turned the problem into an opportunity publishing an evaluation of the strength, toughness and stiffness of super-nanotubes in October 2006 predicting "huge toughening mechanisms [that suggest] the feasibility of 'super-composites'" comparable to nacre (AKA mother-of-pearl).

Building on these previous works Tsinghua University scientists Min Wang, Xinming Qiu, and Xiong Zhang released a paper (abstracted here on the Institute of Physics site) on their study modeling the Mechanical Properties of Super Honeycomb Structures Based on Carbon Nanotubes. Their report shows a super honeycomb network configuration of hexagonal patterns made from periodically repeating carbon nanotube Y junctions "increases the ductility of the nanomaterials" so that they not only keep the "renowned strength and elasticity" of straight nanotubes but have "great flexibility and outstanding capability" to transfer force to other parts of the structure when broken.

Their paper concludes, in part, that "the network structures are expected to provide useful applications not only in nanoelectronics but also in fiber-reinforced composites."

In December, 2006, Signor Pugno told the Space Elevator Journal by email that he was "developing a theory to design a flaw-tolerant megacable."

Oberg says Chinese Satellite Killer has Limited Powers

2007-01-20T17:54:00.000-05:00

You may know James Oberg as NBC News' space analyst using his 22 years experience in NASA mission control to add context to technical issues. In another of his frequent contributions to the IEEE Spectrum blog he puts some perspective on China's anti-satellite technology.

The missile used to destroy the satellite was a 'kinetic kill' device - it had no explosives. The satellite was destroyed by the force of the collision.

Oberg points out that the head-on collision between the missile and its target sums the velocity of the two objects. The satellite's LEO orbit speed is around 28 000 km/hr, adding the missile's speed "creates a hypersonic shock wave that propagates from the inside of the target outward and, at the outer edge, shreds the target into metallic confetti that moves away at up to hundreds of meters per second."

He goes on to say the satellite was an easy target whose position, orbit and velocity were known in advance.

"The Chinese targeted a low-orbiting, obsolete, weather satellite, where the kinetic kill energy was very great. However, the really strategic satellites fly much higher—the navigation network is 20 000 km up, and the communications constellations are in a geosynchronous arc at 40 000 km. At geosynchronous altitudes, the orbital velocities are so much lower that the impact energy would be only about a tenth as high as in last week's test.

Distance introduces a second burden: terminal navigation. When a target satellite is close to the Earth, ground radars can track it and relay final course corrections, both to the rocket during its ascent and to the kill vehicle, once it has been deployed on its hoped-for collision course. Radar operates at an inverse fourth power law, which means that for the Chinese system to aim many times farther than low Earth orbit—as it would have to do to track objects geosyncronously—the demands on a ground-based radar would be simply impossible."

US Government Questions China on Satellite Kill

2007-01-20T13:04:00.000-05:00

Washington, DC -- On January 11, 2007 China destroyed one of its old weather satellites by launching a kinetic energy device from a ballistic missile fired from the ground leaving hundreds of pieces of debris orbiting the earth in the path of existing satellites and, potentially, the space elevator (SE).

The Space Elevator Journal was conceived to cover not only the technical aspects of the SE but the issues that affect it and near-Earth real estate. Watching how the various governments and agencies react gives us an idea of how they will work for/against each other in the future. An area that is sure to heat up as space becomes more valuable in the years to come.

In this excerpt of a January 19, 2007 US State Department daily press briefing Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey outlines the US governments policies on the issue and response to date in response to questions from various reporters.

"U.S. policy is that all countries should have a right to peaceful access to space ... simply because so much of the world we live in today is dependant on space-based technology, communications in particular. We certainly are concerned by any effort, by any nation, that would be geared towards developing weapons or other military activities in space. That's absolutely contrary [to our policies]. So we have raised our concerns with the Chinese Government ... both here in Washington and in Beijing. I think you've seen comments from the Japanese Government as well as from Australian Prime Minister Downer and I think several other governments as well raising these same issues.

We don't want to see a situation where there is any militarization of space. We certainly don't want to see a situation in which even tests of this kind that produce extensive amounts of space debris have the potential for disturbing or accidentally disrupting communications satellites or other kinds of space vehicles that are out there. So certainly this is an issue that I think is of general concern not only to us but to the broader international community and we'll be looking to get some more information from the Chinese about it.

"We've been on record previously I think as saying that there are concerns about the level of transparency in China's military and [the satellite kill ] fits in with this pattern. We would like to see and understand and know more about what they're really trying to accomplish here.

The US conducted similar tests in the 1980's and Casey was questioned as to why the US can do it and the Chinese can't. His response portends the potential for conflict caused by the growing importance of space.

"I think there's two factors you might want to take a look at. The first is the fact that 22 years ago, there was a Cold War ... between the United States and the Soviet Union ... [which] dictated. I think, quite a different policy on the part of the U.S. that exists now.

"More importantly, though, I think you need to look at the development of space in those past 22 years. The extent to which countries not only the United States, but countries throughout the world are dependent on space-based technologies, weather satellites, communications satellites and other devices to conduct modern life as we know it. And so the consequences of any kind of activity like this are significantly greater now than they were at that time.

Reporter: "Since you don't think anybody should be engaged in such kind of activities, will the United States foreswear or say it won't do this, or do you wish to reserve the right to do so?"

MR. CASEY: "Arshad, my understanding is there are no plans or intentions on the part of the United States to engage in such activities." ... there's always concern whenever there's debris in space, regardless of the cause, for the potential impact it might have on commercial satellites on manned space missions like the space shuttle, on the international space station, on anything that's potentially up there. You've certainly seen, given the history of some of the events of manned space flight, that small things can cause very big problems."

It'll be interesting to watch this unfold. As space activities increase and their relative importance to those back on Earth grows, will we simply extend territorial thinking into space? I'm hoping the SE is too big and important a project to be left to any one country or vested interest and we set aside our terrestrial differences and humanity climbs up the gravity together.

View Video

New Space Debris from Chinese Anti-Satellite Weapon Test

2007-01-19T11:58:00.000-05:00

Space debris already causes major problems in space elevator design and space operations and the situation just got worse.

Aviation Week & Space Technology reporter Craig Covault says the January 22 issue will carry an article detailing reports of a "a major new Chinese military capability" in the form of an Anti-Satellite (ASAT) weapon.

Covault's report explains as-yet unconfirmed intelligence agency reports indicate China performed a successful ASAT weapons test at more than 500 mi. altitude destroying an aging Chinese weather satellite target with a kinetic kill vehicle launched on board a ballistic missile.the attack is believed to have occurred at about 5:28 p.m. EST Jan. 11.

"Details emerging from space sources indicate that the Chinese Feng Yun 1C (FY-1C) polar orbit weather satellite launched in 1999 was attacked by an ASAT system launched from or near the Xichang Space Center ...as the weather satellite flew at 530 mi. altitude 4 deg. west of Xichang located in Sichuan province ... a major Chinese space launch center.

The test, if it occurred as envisioned by intelligence source, could also have left considerable space debris in an orbit used by many different satellites."

If the Chinese can shoot down satellites can they shoot down a space elevator climber?

Designing the Orbital Space Tourism Experience

2007-01-17T09:17:00.000-05:00

Some people like art or cars. Techno-journalists are info-geeks who get excited about well-designed web sites engorged with hard information. Couple that with the desire to write about things that will happen after the space elevator is built like space tourism and solar-power satellites and the Space Future (SF) site is pure info-porn.

In a kind of logical mobius strip SF credits its own commercial consulting arm, Space Future Consulting with its genesis. In any case, it is the work of some well-ordered minds who have laid out a smörgåsbord of articles and studies about space habitat and tourism, space vehicles and space power generation.

Among those is the article mentioned in title from Spaceport Associates' Derek Webber laying out the principal parameters of a successful space tourism venture.

Webber posits that "the average potential orbital space tourist is probably male, aged mid fifties, and works full time even though being worth at least $200M" who will book his trip with a specialist space agency on a polar orbit that will provide the most diverse view of terrestrial features.

The article covers the potential medical, technical and human aspects of pre-flight, on-orbit and return phases of the journey.

Webber assumes orbit will be achieved by conventional rockets or space planes with no consideration given to a space elevator.

--PB--

NOVA: Space Elevator - Cheaper, Safer Than Rockets?

2007-01-11T01:29:00.000-05:00

The NOVA scienceNOW segment on the space elevator that aired on Tuesday (January 9, 2007) is an excellent introductory explanation of what a space elevator is, carbon nanotubes, beamed power and the challenges involved in making it all come together.

My favourite quote was Neil de Grasse Tyson saying "A space Elevator can be cheaper and safer than rockets - giving routine access to the solar system."

See the 12-minute broadcast segment via:

QuickTime high | low RealVideo high | low Windows Media high | low

Liftport didn't get mentioned in the broadcast (even though Liftport Sysadmin Brian "Kilroy" Dunbar claims the elevator doors that close on Neil de Grasse Tyson in the intro are theirs) but they were well covered in a video extra as per this SpaceLF8R Journal post: Space Elevator Segment on NOVA scienceNOW (PBS)

Dr. Edwards made a brief appearance on the space elevator segment and provided answers for the Why Build IT? flash extra on the NOVA site. He is cited as being from something called Black Line Ascension. He did hint in an earlier comment on the SpaceLF8R Journal that something new was up. Stay tuned.

Radioactive Space Debris Re-enters Atmosphere

2007-01-08T10:26:00.000-05:00

[Author's Note: This posts documents three cases of nuclear power supplies on spacecraft whose orbit decayed. At this time I don't have any hard information about the size of the nuclear power supplies, radioactivity levels or expert opinion on any environmental damage. --PB--]

Sometimes nuclear power is the only source of long-term power stable enough to drive spacecraft and/or their onboard experiments. That may seem to be funny thing to put at the top of a post about nuclear mishaps but the point I'm trying to make is that nuclear power supplies will likely be a growing reality in space. Space debris isn't an issue only spacers need to worry about. It has and can continue to have an impact down here on the surface.

On December 12, 1959, quickly following the 1957 launch of Sputnik, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted Resolution 1472 (XVI) - International Co-operation in the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space beginning with the following laudable sentiments;

"The General Assembly,

Recognizing the common interest of mankind as a whole in furthering the peaceful use of outer space,

Believing that the exploration and use of outer space should be only for the betterment of mankind and to the benefit of States irrespective of the stage of their economic or scientific development,

Desiring to avoid the extension of present national rivalries into this new field,

Recognizing the great importance of international cooperation in the exploration and exploitation of outer space for peaceful purposes,

Noting the continuing programmes of scientific cooperation in the exploration of outer space being undertaken by the international scientific community,

Believing also that the United Nations should promote international co-operation in the peaceful uses of outer space,"

This resolution calls for reports from the Committee for Peaceful Uses of Outer Space which is overseen by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) which, along with other programs, maintains the Register of Objects Launched into Outer Space.

The register has a searchable index. Setting the search form to 'Uses Nuclear Power Source: Yes' and clicking the search button shows a list of the 62 objects shot into space with nuclear power sources aboard.

Adding 'Presently in Space: No' reduces the results to 11 objects, two of which are on Mars and six are listed as recovered . The remaining three suffered orbital decay, one of which burned up completely in Earth's atmosphere another burned partially spewing 'fragments' into the Pacific Ocean and a third sprayed radioactive debris across thousands of square miles of Canada.

The registration report dated May 23, 1997, describes, in dry, technocratic tones, the demise of Mars-96. The spacecraft, launched November 16, 1996 from the Baikonur launch site by a Proton carrier rocket on a mission to do a global study of the surface of the planet Mars and its internal structure and surrounding plasma, carried a Pu-238 RTG power supply.

"Transfer of the unmanned interplanetary station Mars-96 from artificial Earth satellite orbit to flight path to the planet Mars did not take place The Mars-96 station entered the dense layers of the atmosphere and broke up, with individual fragments falling into the water areas of the Pacific Ocean" [emphasis added]

In an abstract from a 1991 study entitled Potential health risks from postulated accidents involving the Pu-238 RTG (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator) on the Ulysses solar exploration mission the four authors (Goldman, M.; Nelson, R. C.; Bollinger, L.; Hoover, M. D. from the Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Inst. of Albuquerque, NM) had this to say.

"Potential radiation impacts from launch of the Ulysses solar exploration experiment were evaluated using eight postulated accident scenarios. Lifetime individual dose estimates rarely exceeded 1 mrem. Most of the potential health effects would come from inhalation exposures immediately after an accident, rather than from ingestion of contaminated food or water, or from inhalation of resuspended plutonium from contaminated ground. For local Florida accidents (that is, during the first minute after launch), an average source term accident was estimated to cause a total added cancer risk of up to 0.2 deaths. For accidents at later times after launch, a worldwide cancer risk of up to three cases was calculated (with a four in a million probability). Upper bound estimates were calculated to be about 10 times higher."

Cosmos 1402, another nuclear accident in the sky carrying a BOUK, described by the State Research Center of Russian Federation Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE) as "a small fast neutron reactor and remote thermoelectric generator based on semiconductors", launched Aug. 30, 1982. While the IPPE site says "more than 30 BOUK units were in operation on the board of the Cosmos spacecraft for a number of years" and there's nothing pointing to the reactor as the source of failure, Cosmos 1402 only lasted little more than 5 months.

Source: UNOOSA report from USSR dated Feb.9,1983

Cosmos 954, launched Sept. 18, 1977 and also carrying a BOUK, crashed to the ground on Jan. 24, 1978 in northern Canada spreading radioactive debris over a wide swath of remote territory south and east of Great Slave Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories (Google map of approximate location).

It wasn't until May 1978 that Academician B. N. Petrov, the Deputy Chairman of the Intercosmos Council off the USSR Academy of Sciences, officially acknowledged the end of Cosmos 954's short ride in the middle of a list of eight other space objects that also 'ceased to exist'.

In his report of December 22, 1978, the Permanent Representative of Canada notified UNOOSA that the search for the scattered remains of Cosmos 954 had ended. The details of the recovery of a number of parts emitting "man-made radiation" included;

6 beryllium cylinders approximately 10 cm. diameter x 25 cm. long
41 beryllium rods approximately 10 cm. long x 2.5 cm. [diameter]
1 piece of "sheath-like material"
18 small flakes, slivers and chunks
1 metallic cylinder approximately 51 cm. max length x 36 cm. diameter with a 2.5 mm. thick wall

Source: Note Verbale from Canada to UNOOSA Dec. 19, 1978

Postcards from the Future

2007-01-06T07:08:00.000-05:00

Clip from trailer for Postcards from the Future
Source: Mahalo Bay Films

US President George W. Bush is not the only one with visions of The Moon, Mars and Beyond. It's also the tagline of Alan Chan's upcoming 'future documentary', Postcards from the Future set in (and inspired by) the near-future Vision for Space Exploration era chronicling of the life of Sean Everman while he works on the new moonbase as a civilian electrical engineer building out the base's power grid, his days captured in a series of video postcards and personal messages he occasionally sends to his wife on Earth.

Director Alan Chan
Courtesy: Mahalo Bay Films

Chan adds directing Postcards to his earlier movie credits that include a stellar list of mainstream films (Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Titanic and Polar Express) as well as the short about the space elevator discussed in an earlier Space Elevator Journal post (see: Proud Papa Portrays Progeny).

There's a short trailer available here (requires Quicktime) and synopsis (in PDF format) on the movie's site. The curiosity of film geeks may be whetted by the shot anatomy explaining the all-digital process.

Space Elevator Segment on NOVA scienceNOW (PBS)

2007-01-05T16:38:00.000-05:00

The January 9, 2007 broadcast of NOVA scienceNOW has a segment about building a space elevator. Reading the synopsis, it sounds like it focuses heavily on the recent XPrize Cup.

A 2-minute preview of the show is available in several flavours.

QuickTime high | low RealVideo high | low Windows Media high | low

There's also some excellent collateral material. One in the form of a Flash presentation entitled Why Build It with answers by none other than Dr. Brad Edwards. The same presentation is available in HTML format.

Source: WGBH Boston

In a video extra available on the show's web site the NOVA scienceNOW's host, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson*, pays a visit to Liftport Group's CEO Michael Laine and Tom Nugent to see a demo of Liftport's robot climber in this short video available in QuickTime high and low speed versions and RealVideo high and low speed versions as well. The intro is voiced by producer Joe McMaster.

* Dr. deGrasse Tyson has an impressive list of credentials. The man's an astrophysicist, author of 7 books, and director of the Hayden Planetarium in the Rose Center For Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. He graduated from New York City's Bronx High School of Science before studying physics at Harvard and going on to receive his doctorate in astrophysics from Columbia University.

That makes his comment at the end of the video that he's "still a little bit skeptical" disturbing. I'll try to follow up with him and see what he meant by that or maybe he'll post a comment below. He still thought enough of the SE concept to ask for the first ride. :) --PB--

Proud Papa Portays Progeny

2007-01-03T14:19:00.000-05:00

Dr. Bradley Carl Edwards Ph.D
Source: http://www.bradleyedwards.info

"Our generation will go to space" is the tag line of the best visual explanation of what a space elevator is and does I have seen so far.

Dr. Edwards' site, as the online home of the man who fathered the SE when he developed the first (and so far only?) viable space elevator design in conjunction with NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), is a fitting place for it.

The Space Elevator Visualistaion Group movie by directed by Alan Chan starts off with the 'One Small Step' sequence and chronicles the demise of government-run space programs before making visually-stunning case for a privately built SE.

Space Debris

2007-01-02T11:57:00.000-05:00

Orbital debris hole in Solar Max Experiment panel

Source: NASA Orbital Debris Photo Gallery

While the space elevator faces a number of significant engineering challenges that need to be overcome before it gets built, the Space Elevator Journal has focussed on challenges that will occur once it's up and running. The issue of space debris, natural and man-made, will be a constant of life in space. Unfortunately, most of the man-made junk is in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO).

Millions of people have lived on Earth for thousands of years but, considering the few humans that have been in space, there may be more garbage per person in space than on Earth.

The link in the title of this post points to a flash animation from the European Space Agency (ESA) that is as compelling as it is disturbing. It shows the accumulation of space debris from the Sputnik launch in 1957 until the year 2000. Earth disappears from view in the mid-1970's.

The ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) runs a space debris program that explains since October 4th, 1957, more than 4,200 launches have lifted some 5,500 satellites into orbit but only approximately 700 are still operational. This unconscionable waste may be the best single reason for getting a space elevator built and ending Earth-based rocket launches forever.

On 21 January 2001, this 70 kg titanium motor casing from a PAM-D (Payload Assist Module - Delta), reentered the atmosphere over the Middle East landing about 240 km from the Saudi Arabia capital of Riyadh.

Source: NASA Orbital Debris Photo Gallery

According to SOCRATES, the free daily service that predicts the probability of orbital close encounters between satellites and the thousands pieces of debris orbiting Earth, today (/2007/01/02) at 15:32:01.539 UTC Cosmos 489, an old Russian satellite launched in 1972 and SL-8 R/B, a Tsyklon Stage 2 rocket body (launched in 1979) will pass within 0.054 kilometers (177.2 feet) of each other at a relative velocity of 14.225 km/sec (31,820 mph !!!). Allowing for reasonable margins of error means there's a distinct chance these two pieces of space junk will collide (and possibly explode if there's residual fuels, batteries or other volatile materials involved) scattering chunks all over LEO endangering operational satellites and the humans that depend on them.

Orbital debris in LEO*
- 95% junk -

Source: NASA Orbital Debris Program Office

Ironically, both objects are from the Tsiklon program, the first prototype Soviet navigation satellite system but that is only one potential collision among Several large pieces of space debris re-enter the atmosphere every month according to the Aerospace Corporation, a US space R&D centre.

Did it ever occur to you to wonder how many of the satellites have nuclear power sources on board and if any of them have ever decayed back into the atmosphere and/or crashed to Earth? Stay tuned to the Space Elevator Journal.

--PB--

* LEO - Low Earth Orbit: the region of space within 2,000 km of the Earth's surface. It is the most concentrated area for orbital debris.

Prime Space Real Estate

2006-12-27T23:43:00.000-05:00

LaGrange Points
Source: L5 News via National Space Society Archives

Look up at wide-open space with rose-coloured glasses and there's a potential utopia - lots of room for everybody. The reality is that space will be colonised for the same reason the 'new world' was - proximity to resources - the moon and near-earth asteroids in this case. Only certain locations can be colonised profitably.

We tend to think of the technologies and concepts we use today as 'new' but, as usual, we stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us.

In 1772 an Italian-French mathematician named Lagrange showed that there are five Libration points where, given two massive bodies in circular orbits around their common center of mass (e.g. the Earth and the Moon), there are five positions in space where a third body of comparatively negligible mass could be placed and maintain its position relative to the two massive bodies. These points have the peculiar property of allowing objects to orbit around them even though there is no material object nearby.

The Earth-Moon L1, L2, and L3 points lie on a line connecting the Earth and Moon. They are stable only in the plane perpendicular to the line between the two bodies. If an object located at one of these points drifted closer to one of the masses, the gravitational attraction it felt from that mass would be greater, and it would be pulled out of orbit.

The other two are L4 and L5. They lie at equal distance from Earth and Moon, in the Moon's orbit, thus forming equilateral triangles with Earth and Moon such that the libration point is ahead of (L4), or behind (L5), the smaller mass in its orbit around the larger mass.

L5 is the only one to have its own song (Home on Lagrange (The L5 Song) © 1978 by William S. Higgins and Barry D. Gehm).

The reason these points are in balance is that at L4 and L5, the distances to the two masses are equal. Accordingly, the gravitational forces from the two massive bodies are in the same ratio as the masses of the two bodies. While a colony could not be placed directly at L4 or L5, it could be placed in an orbit around one of these points that keeps the colony about 90,000 miles from its central libration point.

Several NASA missions are stationed at or use Lagrange Points and clouds of dust, called Kordylewski clouds, even fainter than the notoriously weak gegenschein (sunlight reflected by interplanetary dust), are also present in the L₄ and L₅ of the Earth–Moon system.

Space Colonisation Scenario
Source: NASA

The diagram to the right is from a 1975 NASA Publication: Space Settlements: A Design Study. Quoting from page 175: "An upper limit to the speed of growth of space colonization is estimated by assuming 3 years for the duplication of a habitat by a workforce equivalent to 12 percent of a habitat's population. Only 56 years are required at this rate for the construction of communities in space adequate to house a population equal to that of the Earth today."

--PB--

[N.B. I decided not clutter this post with links but it was mainly drawn from these: Wikipedia: LaGarangian Point, National Space Society]

Exploring Earth from Space for Free

2006-12-27T10:05:00.000-05:00

The beautiful images of Earth returned from space always fill me with awe and wonder. When the space elevator is up and running, first-hand experience of the 'astronaut's-eye-view' of Earth will be the main visual image people will retain once back on Terra Firma.

Madagascar from MIRAVI - Source:ESA

We don't have to wait to see stunning shots of near-real-time events since the European Space Agency (ESA) put up the MERIS Images RApid VIsualisation (MIRAVI) web site offering two-hour-old images of fires, floods and volcanic eruptions etc. from the world’s largest Earth Observation satellite, Envisat, ESA's polar-orbiting Earth observation satellite.

MIRAVI is free and requires no registration to view the images generated from the raw data collected by Envisat’s optical instrument, MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS), and provides them online within two hours and also provides a searchable archive of images taken since May 2006.

The site comes with a bit of a disclaimer: "Although the images are fascinating and provide the marvellous feeling that users are ‘onboard the satellite’, they are not suitable for scientific use. Scientists use MERIS products that exploit the instrument’s 15 spectral bands and are generated with sophisticated algorithms. MIRAVI images use only a few spectral bands processed to appear the way the naked eye would see them."

Technical Note: I couldn't get the MIRAVI site to work in FireFox although it worked well in Internet Explorer. Non-technical types may find the interface a bit daunting and it takes a few steps to actually view an image but the results are well worth it. --PB--

The Astronaut Farmer - Private Space Flight Goes Hollywood

2006-12-26T15:21:00.000-05:00

You have to know somebody who would start a space elevator blog is not-exactly pro-rocketry. Besides the tons of pollutants thrown with every launch and the space debris blanketing the earth from decades of throw-away booster stages, dead satellites etc., rockets just strike me as horribly inefficient and needlessly expensive. Not that the space elevator will be cheap to build but, once built, the cost of getting to space decreases with each lift.

All that aside for the moment, what caught my eye is not the fact that someone wrote the story but that it got financed. Hollywood thinks there's a market for space-related movies.

The Astronaut Farmer is about a NASA astronaut (played by Billy Bob Thornton) who is forced to retire to save his family farm. Unable to give up his dream of space travel, he builds his own rocket despite the government's threats to stop him. (View Trailer)

This seems like another All-American-boy-with-a-dream movie and space travel just happens to be far out enough to make the protagonist seem crazy but realistic enough to actually happen while being something the movie-going public can grasp. So the Hollywood money is mostly behind the moral carried in the tagline: If we don't have our dreams, we have nothing. Still, I'm glad to see private space travel is somewhere in our collective psyche.

NIST Laser-Based Method Cleans Up Grubby Nanotubes

2006-12-22T13:35:00.000-05:00

Before

After

Before and after electron microscope images of a pyroelectric detector coated with single-walled nanotubes (SWNTs) visually demonstrate the effect of the laser cleaning process. In addition, the SWNTs look visibly blacker after laser treatment, suggesting less graphitic material and increased porosity. (Image and Caption Source: NIST)

Before carbon nanotubes can fulfill their promise as ultrastrong fibers, electrical wires in molecular devices, or hydrogen storage components for fuel cells, better methods are needed for purifying raw nanotube materials. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL, Golden, Colo.), have taken a step toward this goal by demonstrating a simple method of cleaning nanotubes by zapping them with carefully calibrated laser pulses.

“Controlling and determining tube type is sort of the holy grail right now with carbon nanotubes. Purity is a key variable,” says NIST physicist John Lehman, who leads the research. “Over the last 15 years there’s been lots of promise, but when you buy some material you realize that a good percentage of it is not quite what you hoped.

"Anyone who thinks they’re going into business with nanotubes will realize that purification is an important—and expensive—step. There is a lot of work to be done.”

When carbon nanotubes—the cylindrical form of the fullerene family—are synthesized by any of several processes, a significant amount of contaminants such as soot, graphite and other impurities also is formed. Purifying the product is an important issue for commercial application of nanotubes. In a forthcoming issue of Chemical Physics Letters*, the NIST/NREL team describes how pulses from an excimer laser greatly reduce the amount of carbon impurities in a sample of bulk carbon single-walled nanotubes, without destroying tubes. Both visual examination and quantitative measurements of material structure and composition verify that the resulting sample is “cleaner.” The exact cleaning process may need to be slightly modified depending on how the nanotubes are made, the authors note. But the general approach is simpler and less costly than conventional “wet chemistry” processes, which can damage the tubes and also require removal of solvents afterwards.

Space Weather Now at the Space Environment Center

2006-12-21T14:20:00.001-05:00

Freelance journalists spend a lot time with their noses in their browsers building their space elevator blogs. I use Firefox (this site is optimised for Firefox which you may already know if you use IE) and I love Accuweather's ForecastFox extension which puts 3 days and nights of weather in my browser's status bar.

This would be really useful if I ever actually got up from the computer and went ouside but for now it at least serves to remind me there IS an outside.

A significant geomagnetic storm impacted the Earth beginning early Thursday afternoon around 1:00 p.m. Eastern time, 14 December, according to forecasters at the NOAA Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo. Impacts from this event can cause problems with High Frequency communications, satellite operations and induce currents in power grids. (Source: ESA)

Knowing Earth weather wouldn't be quite so useful if I lived and/or worked in space though. Knowing the space weather forecast can mean the difference between hidely safely behind radiation shielding or becoming a tiny, glowing constellation affectionately known as the Crispy Critter.

Space Weather Now ... give[s] the non-technical user a 'plain language' look at space weather. The page refreshes automatically once a minute.

The various sections are:

Events and Announcements

Solar X-ray Imager (SXI) - a Solar X-ray Imagers (carried by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) 12 and 13 spacecraft) that monitor the Sun’s X-rays for solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other phenomena that impact the geospace environment .

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Scales - The scales describe the environmental disturbances for three event types: geomagnetic storms, solar radiation storms, and radio blackouts. The scales have numbered levels, analogous to hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes that convey severity. They list possible effects at each level. They also show how often such events happen, and give a measure of the intensity of the physical causes.

Maximum in past 24-hours - These are the highest values over the last 24-hours for Geomagnetic Storms; planetary K-values for the last 8 3-hourly periods. Solar Radiation Storms; average 5-minute protons at >10 MeV from primary GOES satellite. Radio Blackouts; X-ray 1-minute values from primary GOES satellite.

Currently - Geomagnetic Storms (latest 3-hour K-value), Solar Radiation Storms (averaged 5-minute proton value), and Radio Blackouts (x-ray 1-minute value) current values.

Real-time Solar Wind pages - Solar wind values collected by the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE). Data is averaged over the last 15-minutes for the values. The latest dial display can be linked to at : http://www.sec.noaa.gov/SWN/sw_dials.gif. Explanation

Auroral Map - The plots on this page show the current extent and position of the auroral oval at each pole, extrapolated from measurements taken during the most recent polar pass of the NOAA POES satellite.

Today’s Space Weather - A look at space weather for the more technical user. This page has the latest full-disk image, the 3-day Solar-Geophysical Forecast, Solar X-ray Flux plot, Satellite Environment Plot, and more information.

D-region Absorption - Long range communications using high frequency (HF) radio waves (3-30 MHz) depend on reflection of the signals in the ionosphere.

Solar Image References - Link to additional descriptions and sources of solar images

Latest Alert - Updated hourly and as Alerts, Warnings, or Watches are issued.

Last Advisory Bulletin - Updated as a Space Weather Bulletin is issued. The file contains back bulletins for the last 8 months.

Solar Cycle 23 Progression - A plot indicating the progression of the current solar cycle. These are updated at the first of each month.

Today’s Theme - A variety of short subject themes about space weather, products, services, or projects. They change each day and rotate through the provided list of themes.

USER Groups - Links to specific pages of importance to the various user categories served by SEC.

--PB--

Discovery Astronaut's Hand-eye Skills Tested by Canadians

2006-12-20T14:50:00.000-05:00

(And no, we didn't shoot hockey pucks at them!)

A Canadian Space Agency sponsored experiment aboard Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-116) conducted on December 12th, 2006 tested for the causes of reduced hand-eye coordination capacity in microgravity. Research that could have a direct bearing on all activities in microgravity from running a space elevator to manufacturing tasks to serving drinks in a space hotel without spilling them on the customer.

Astronaut Sunita Williams performing the PMDIS experiment on NASA's shuttle flight STS-116. (Source: NASA)

According to the CSA press release linked in the title above "experience and science experiments have shown that, while in microgravity, astronauts have a harder time reaching and pointing to objects than when they are on Earth. This could be critical in emergency situations."

York University's Dr. Barry Fowler designed an experiment that resembles a simple computer game to research the causes of Perceptual-Motor Deficits in Space (PMDIS).

Astronaut Sunita Williams, led by Dr. Fowler, used a joystick to click on various-sized targets appearing on a computer screen and tap with a pointer directly on a purpose-built touch screen. The experiment simulated multi-tasking by requiring Astronaut Williams to push a button in response to a tone while simultaneously hitting targets.

"Once the 'why' of perceptual-motor deficits in space is known ", said Dr. Fowler, "we can start looking at how to remedy this problem. This research in space could also lead to new medical knowledge on how the brain adapts or not to disease or injury that can confound hand-eye coordination".

Space Diving

2006-12-19T12:32:00.000-05:00

While most 'spacers' are currently occupied with how to get to space I'm actually more interested in the whys. One of which is space tourism.

Enjoying the view from a space hotel while learning to eat in reduced gravity might be a suitable challenge for those who think merely going to space is risky enough. Others will need more. Returning to Earth equipped with a parachute and pressure suit - spacediving - might be one of those.

Building on feats by the likes of Captain Joe Kittinger in 1960*, Canadian Arrow is proposing a new type of extreme sport [they] call "spacediving".

Canadian Arrow concieves of a future where "spacedivers may routinely take 60-second rocket fights to the edge of space, proceed to jump out, and while wearing a counter pressure suit, will free fall to earth from 40 miles or more. Even today, reaching 120,000 ft to make a high altitude jump requires a balloon ride of many hours. By contrast, a sub-orbital rocket could take skydivers from the ground to this altitude in just minutes!"

There are practical benefits as well. Canadian Arrow posits "this type of extreme sport could bring about a revolution in spacesuit design ... a self contained ballistic recovery system could be designed to bring a spacediver safely to the ground."

It makes me wonder if this might also be effective for anyone stranded on a space elevator or for emergency evacuation of low-orbit industrial or tourist facilities.

Canadian Arrow plans continue to explore spacediving while in the construction phase of building their sub-orbital rockets.

--PB--

* William Thomas' Convergence Weekly has an excellent description of Kittinger's exploits in his SpaceDivers article.

2006-12-18T11:18:00.000-05:00

The 4th (and final) in a series of excerpts of my article in;

Liftport: The Space Elevator: Opening Space To Everyone
edited by Michael J Laine, Tom Nugent, Bill Fawcett
Published 2006 - 308 pages

Limited preview - Table of Contents - About this book

[Links to previous/following excerpts are at the bottom of this post]

Solar power isn’t the only industry that would be transformed by inexpensive space platforms hoisted into orbit on the SE.

Delbert E. Day, the Curators' Professor of Ceramic Engineering and Senior Research Investigator at the Graduate Center for Materials Research, University of Missouri-Rolla knows who will be happiest when the SE comes on line.

“In the ceramics field it would be those people who are making objects that are difficult to nearly impossible to make on earth,” says Professor Day. “In other words, people in the electronics and optical communications fields who know that there are materials out there, which, if they could be made, would find some immediate application.”

Ceramics and glasses are made by high-temperature melting of raw materials taken directly from the earth (clay, sand, etc.) and processed materials into inorganic, nonmetallic solids. They are made into everything from spark plugs, glass, electronic components and nuclear materials to abrasives, rocket components, and tableware.

Making any kind of glass means cooling the melted raw material with minimal crystal formation.

“There’s been lots and lots of research that hasn’t gone anywhere because many of the compositions that have desirable properties tend to crystallize,” says Professor Day.

“There are fluoride glasses people know have very good optical transmission qualities which are very difficult, in fact almost impossible, to make here on earth.”

An optical fiber made from fluoride glass transmits light over far greater distances than convention optical fiber without the degradation of the light signal found in silicon-based optical fibers. This could have the practical effect of reducing or even eliminating the installation and maintenance of expensive networking hardware enroute.

“One of the advantages of space is, at least from the very limited experiments we‘ve done, everybody’s reported that the crystallization tendencies of a melt are lower,” says Professor Day. “[If it did’t crystallize] that would be a major stride forward.

“Part of the problem is that we have done so few experiments because of the high cost [of going into space] and limited time available [once there]. I’m confident that if the SE was operational and [transport] cost a hundred dollars per pound, people would do experiments and we would find things we can’t even dream of [today].”

Permanently extending Earth’s economy into space in an economically and environmentally sustainable way is inspired by dreams but it will have to be achieved by political, business and technical realities that are harsher, colder and as unforgiving as space itself.

The ROI is out there if we can master and marshal our own mental and emotional universes so as to find the courage to change our ways and not simply repeat the mistakes of the past that have cost so much to learn.

--PB--

Space Elevator (Excerpt I)

Space Elevator (Excerpt II)

Space Elevator (Excerpt III)

Space Elevator ROI (Excerpt III) Updated

2006-12-18T10:49:00.000-05:00

The 3rd in a series of excerpts of my article in;

[Links to previous/following excerpts are at the bottom of this post]

Solar Power Satellites (SPS’s) concentrate the Sun’s energy and beam it to Earth using microwaves or lasers. Unlike terrestrial solar power, SPS’s generate electricity 24 hours a day from sunlight unfiltered by Earth’s atmosphere.

According to Larry Kazmerski, technology manager for solar energy technologies at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, rocket launch costs are birth control for an SPS industry that has would-be participants already lined up in the waiting room.

“2004 is the fiftieth anniversary of the Bell invention of the solar cell. One solar cell we had back then was five milliwatts of power,” says Kazmerski. “Last year the industry shipped out something like three-quarters of a gigawatt, something like nine billion cells. Most of that progress has been in the last 10 – 15 years. So, if you look 10 – 15 years ahead, technological progress tends to compress in time.

“Some people think even one SPS up there would be a business", he adds with a laugh.

“I actually served for three years on a NASA panel that looked at the future of space power. They have experts looking at SPS’s for Earth still because they said ‘eventually we’re going to have this.’

“Probably the primary thing right now is delivering those things up to space. The SE does attack a critical showstopper,” states Kazmerski. “If you can get this stuff up there cheap, all of a sudden space solar power becomes feasible.

“I actually served for three years on a NASA panel that looked at the future of space power. They have experts looking at SPS’s for Earth still because they said ‘eventually we’re going to have this.’

“Probably the primary thing right now is delivering those things up to space. The SE does attack a critical showstopper,” states Kazmerski. “If you can get this stuff up there cheap, all of a sudden space solar power becomes feasible.

“If you go up [in space] now every near-earth satellite uses dual or triple-junction solar power devices that are on the order of 28% efficient [in zero air mass]. They are not at their limits yet. They could still probably be optimized by adding a 4^th junction to bring them up to 40 or 50% efficiency.

“I think right now, if the delivery system were sufficient, [current solar power technologies] would be good enough to start us. [But], right now, it would be difficult to deliver a square mile of photovoltaics up into space.”

--PB--

Space Elevator (Excerpt I)

Space Elevator (Excerpt II)

Passive Radiation Shielding Considerations for the Proposed Space Elevator

2006-12-14T08:29:00.000-05:00

This article by A.M. Jorgensen of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology's Electrical Engineering Department, S.E. Patamia from the Space Instrumentation and System Engineering department of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and B. Gassend from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was published online 24 October, 2006 on Science Direct and will appear in Acta Astronautica, Volume 60, Issue 3, February 2007, Pages 198-209.

A precis of the abstract follows. Full text access to this article is available for US$30 upon registration with Science Direct.

The Earth's natural van Allen radiation belts present a serious hazard to ... travel on [a] space elevator. The average radiation level is sufficiently high that it can cause radiation sickness, and perhaps death, for humans spending more than a brief period of time in the belts without shielding.

The exact dose and the level of the related hazard depends on the type or radiation, the intensity of the radiation, the length of exposure, and on any shielding introduced.

For the space elevator the radiation concern is particularly critical since it passes through the most intense regions of the radiation belts.

Apollo astronauts [travelling through the belts] received radiation doses up to approximately 1 rem over a time interval less than an hour. A vehicle climbing the space elevator travels approximately 200 times slower than the moon rockets did, [resulting] in an extremely high dose up to approximately 200 rem under similar conditions, in a timespan of a few days [and may also affect] technological systems on the space elevator.

[This paper gives] an overview of the radiation belts in terms relevant to space elevator studies ... compute[s] the expected radiation doses and evaluate[s] the required level of shielding.

[The authors] concentrate on passive shielding using aluminum, but also look briefly at active shielding using magnetic fields.

[They] also look at the effect of moving the space elevator anchor point and increasing the speed of the climber. Each of these mitigation mechanisms will result in a performance decrease, cost increase, and technical complications for the space elevator.

--PB--

Outer Space Exposure

2006-12-05T09:40:00.000-05:00

This is interesting to me because I have a short SF piece in the works about a psycho living in the LEO colony engendered by the space engine who kills by pushing people out into space unprotected and letting them fall into the atmosphere to dispose of the bodies. (Don't get any ideas now)

Researching this was in the plan ( LOL plan eh? ;> ) and I'm glad I found it. It removes one excuse for not working on that piece. I guess, like lot of others, I had the 'Hollywood' explosive decompression image in my head. The reality actually has more potential for literary imagery.

My thanks to DamnInteresting.com and Alan Bellows who posted this on November 27th, 2006 at 6:51 am.

{I hit the highlights only but the details and background are worth reading --PB--}

"In scores of science fiction stories, hapless adventurers find themselves unwittingly introduced to the vacuum of space without proper protection. [The Hollywood version of what happens]does not reflect the reality of exposure to outer space.

Ever since humanity first began to probe outside of our protective atmosphere, a number of live organisms have been exposed to vacuum, both deliberately and otherwise. By combining these experiences with our knowledge of outer space, scientists have a pretty clear idea of what would happen if an unprotected human slipped into the cold, airless void."

...

"When the human body is suddenly exposed to the vacuum of space, a number of injuries begin to occur immediately. Though they are relatively minor at first, they accumulate rapidly into a life-threatening combination."

...

"Expansion of gases within the lungs and digestive tract due to the reduction of external pressure ... the lungs rupture and spill bubbles of air into the circulatory system."

...

"Water spontaneously converts into vapor, [causing] the moisture in a victim's mouth and eyes to quickly boil away [and evaporates the water]in the muscles and soft tissues ... prompting some parts of the body to swell to twice their usual size after a few moments."

...

"Nitrogen dissolved in the blood forms gaseous bubbles - a painful condition known to divers as "the bends."

...

"The gas exchange of the lungs works in reverse, dumping oxygen out of the blood and accelerating the oxygen-starved state known as hypoxia. After about ten seconds a victim will experience loss of vision and impaired judgement ... unconsciousness and convulsions would follow several seconds later ..."

...

"[In ninety seconds] the blood pressure would fall sufficiently that the blood itself would begin to boil."

I spent way too much reading some of the other articles on Damn Interesting. It's an excellent site. Bellows et al have a real flair for digging up interesting topics. --PB--

Space Elevator ROI Excerpt II

2006-12-04T10:10:00.000-05:00

The second in a series of excerpts from an article I contributed to;

[Links to previous/following posts in this series listed below]

In the first excerpt (see below or in the archives) Jim Benson of SpaceDev explained the fundamentals of space industry economics.

Benson draws on his decades of experience to delineate one of the problems of making an SE project sustainable - ”keeping [the SE] from being destroyed by [space] junk” and in doing so comes out as one of the first space environmentalists.

“I think it’s inevitable [that we have to] vacuum the vacuum. We’ve got to stop generating [space debris] and clean up what exists,” Benson explains. “People thought the ocean was so big that that it just didn’t matter and here we are not only polluting it but depopulating it.

“Most of the satellites and therefore debris are at LEO. [Debris] is a huge consideration. One I don’t think they have a good answer for yet.”

Benson has but to ask the author of his inspiration, Dr. John S. Lewis, Planetary Sciences Professor at the University of Arizona about the space debris problem. Dr. Lewis sees not only a danger but also a recycling opportunity in the man-made space flotsam orbiting our globe.

“They’re not only threatening debris they are a fairly substantial source of solar cells and metals. You can assume that any spacecraft that’s died up there has exhausted its attitude control fuel so you don’t really expect to retrieve volatiles,” explains Dr. Lewis. “On the other hand you do have the structural metals and solar cells. I’m sure that if you do have a source of any kind of mass up there you’d think of a way to use it if only for radiation shielding.”

Dr. Lewis points out that gravitational geographies preclude a geosynchronous SE from use as a launch platform for all but a scant few asteroid mining expeditions but an SE still has practical benefits over blasting into space.

“If you’re talking about a geosynchronous tether, it has two main functions as I see it,” says Dr. Lewis. “It has the ability to put large masses in GEO and launch science payloads at very high speeds to a wide range of destinations. Those are the clear-cut advantages.”

He has no trouble listing several commercial satellite applications.

“Solar Power Satellites (SPS) number one … a constellation of [manufacturing] stations girdling the earth … and orbital hotels,” outlines Dr. Lewis. “[The potential of] orbital hotels should not be under-rated. This is a real cheap way to get to GEO and you should be thinking of having tourists up there.

“If you’re talking about launching one or more communications or surveillance platforms in geosynchronous orbit this is a great way to do it,” Dr. Lewis concludes.

Look for another excerpt next week or subscribe to SEJ by clicking
here.

--PB--

Space Elevator ROI (Excerpt I)

Space Elevator ROI (Excerpt III)

Postcards To Space

2006-12-02T22:38:00.000-05:00

Postcards To Space is developing the world's first space sculpture called STREET, a 325ft. diameter ring made of Kapton, a space-rated plastic film. In flight the craft will digitally display postcards printed on it during construction against the backdrop of Low Earth Orbit.

The design, building and flying of these inflatable space sculptures are funded by postcard sales.

According to their site "Postcards To Space exists to develop space-media opportunities for individuals, promote scientific knowledge and create public art in the new frontier."

Somebody had to be first. Purchase postcard kits here.

--PB--

University of Cincinnati Researchers Grow Their Longest Carbon Nanotube Ever

2006-11-30T12:14:00.000-05:00

"A nanospace race has raged to successfully grow a nanotube array suitable for many uses. And today a UC research team, in conjunction with First Nano, is ahead — by a thousandth of a hair.

Nanotechnology revolves around the creation of technology — films, materials, devices, applications and systems — on a scale of 1–100 nanometers. But what is a nanometer? A nanometer is one billionth of a meter or 40 billionths of an inch. A human hair is between 50 and 100 microns wide — and a micron is 1,000 nanometers. A DNA molecule is about 2½ nanometers wide. A typical human hair is between 50,000 and 100,000 nanometers wide. So, we could stack at least 1000 nano-devices across the end of a human hair.

It might sound like an oxymoron, but long nanotubes are critical to manufacturers and practitioners in such fields as transportation, defense, safety and medicine. Because of their increased surface area, large nanotube arrays offer improvements in sensors. Larger nanotubes can be “spun” — or suspended in an epoxy-like substrate — and used to strengthen materials used in airplanes, for example. Like your great-grandmother’s yarn, the longer a continuous thread, the better. In conjunction with First Nano (FN), a division of CVD Equipment Corporation, UC has grown an array on FN’s EasyTube Carbon Nanotube system that is longer than 7 mm."

Space Elevator ROI

2006-11-29T16:39:00.000-05:00

This is an excerpt from an article I contributed to Liftport Opening Space to Everyone Copyright © 2006 Liftport Inc.

In economic terms, a Space Elevator (SE) is to rocketry what railways and public transit systems are to automobiles. The technologies to move massive amounts of people and cargo into space inexpensively are coming on stream but the possibility still exists for space to be rendered inaccessible by economics.

There’s no question SE’s will lower the cost of going to space by orders of magnitude. The question is will the cost threshold be low enough to make a profit for the existing terrestrial industries that will pioneer the space economy and bootstrap whole new industries we haven’t thought of yet.

Return On Investment (ROI) will determine when (and possibly whether)
humanity will be able to bolster Earth’s economy and environment with space
resources.

It’s clear to Jim Benson, CEO of California satellite manufacturer SpaceDev why the human race needs to get into space in a permanent, economically viable way. After selling off his software companies Benson was looking for new challenges. He read Mining the Sky by Dr. John Lewis of Arizona University and it resonated with his Bachelor of Science degree in geology. His life was changed.

“I was so excited about the book I bought 50 copies and for the next two or three years gave copies away to people I was trying to educate about the abundance of natural resources in space and how easy they are to get to,” says Benson. “That was one of my main reasons for founding SpaceDev.

“We don’t want to go the Moon or Mars. We want to be going to Near Earth Objects. That’s where the wealth and life support and water is. I’ve been saying for a long time that water is the white gold of space.”

The problem is getting to those resources in a cost-effective way. A new technology like a Space Elevator (SE) will lower the cost of going to space but Benson believes before it can get off the ground we also need a new way of doing things here on earth. ROI begins in the business model.

“My favorite slogan is ‘if we want to go to space to stay, space has to pay’,” says Benson. “Everybody knows it costs from US$5K to US$40K per pound [to bring something to space] today. That’s just a given.”

The reasons for the high cost of leaving Earth are as much systemic as they are practical. Benson is working to change the existing system from within by “bringing the microcomputer way of thinking into space.” SpaceDev turns out what it calls micro and nano-satellites designed to reduce the cost of manufacturing and launch.

“When SpaceDev designed ChipSat for NASA there was definitely requirements for the ability to withstand g-forces during launch. I believe it was 10g’s in all three axes. That’s pretty ridiculous,” he exclaims.

“No launch vehicle today generates those kinds of forces. That’s typical government fear of failure. There are some expenses to meeting unrealistic requirements like that but it doesn’t add that much to the cost. The big cost is simply the launch vehicles [and] the cost of launching itself. That’s the heart of the problem.”

An SE will shift existing economic paradigms and create whole new ones by making the ride to orbit mundane. Achieving that requires a perceptual shift in those that would build it of a similar or greater extent.

"If a project like this is going to be undertaken it needs to be undertaken by a new company. I really think this has got to be done by a private sector company that’s not one of the usual suspects," contends Benson.

“Boeing and Lockheed feel like they’re entitled to their share of the military and NASA space budgets.

"They don’t know and don’t care about doing things in innovative, lower-cost ways because almost everything they do is on a cost-plus, fixed fee contract basis.

“The higher the cost, the bigger the fee so they have no interest whatsoever in doing anything that’s innovative or cost-effective.”

Benson feels it’s time for an entrepreneurial revolution. “We have to look at everything [and ask] is it profitable? If it’s profitable then it’s sustainable. Until this point, almost everything in space, except communications satellites, has been government-financed,” he says. “There’s been no thought given to profitability therefore no thought given to sustainability.”

==== Space Elevator ROI Excerpt II ====

We Have Lift-off!!

2006-11-28T17:46:00.000-05:00

Watching a Space Elevator (SE) start it's climb may not be as dramatic as watching a rocket launch but it's exciting to those involved. Similarly this new blog won't fire up a lot of people but I'm happy about it.

In the weird coincidences department today is also the day I received my copy of the book LiftPort: Opening Space To Everyone that I earned by contributing a non-fiction article entitled Return on Investment: How the space elevator will pay for itself.

It's on page 182 and is the first time I've ever seen my name in a book as an author.

The cover art is excellent and I'm in some fine company with the likes of Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Kim Stanley Robinson. I'm excited and humbled.

Let me point out two features to this blog. One is the Space Elevator Search Engine above. It's a Google Co-op Custom Search Engine customised and refined to provide filtered search results about the SE.

The other is the Google™ news feed. It's just some tricked-up javascript crossed with Google News™ but it will deliver fresh headlines every time you come back or hit refresh.

So please, use the search engine, comment on the posts, read the news, suggest story ideas or even join the blog as a team member. My contact info is over in the sidebar.

--PB--