Space Elevator Journal

The Right Way to Get to Space

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)

Labels: "Space Elevator" "Solar Power Satellite", Space commerce, space commercialisation, space tourism

Space Elevator ROI (Excerpt III) Updated

The 3rd 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 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)

Labels: "Space Elevator" "Solar Power Satellite"

Space Elevator ROI Excerpt II

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

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 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)

Labels: "Space Elevator" "Solar Power Satellite", Space commerce, space commercialisation

Space Elevator ROI

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 ====

Labels: "Space Elevator" "Solar Power Satellite", Space commerce, space commercialisation