Going Up?…all the way to Geosychronous Orbit
A couple of articles on a concept found in science fiction from Arthur C. Clarke and others: a tethered orbital elevator system! At first glance if one is unfamiliar with the concept it sounds like something from a hallucination – but the physics works, and with recent new developments in materials technology, the means are also now available.
The big advantage: CHEAP cost to orbit, especially compared to rocketry. Check these articles out: one from this weeks Sunday (London) Telegraph, and the other from none other than the big gorilla of the blogosphere hisself: Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds writing on Tech Central Station.
Click on image to enlarge. (Image from liftport.com)
The race is on to build the first “space elevator’ – long dismissed as science fiction – to carry people and materials into orbit along a cable thousands of miles long.
In a significant step, American aviation regulators have just given permission for the opening trials of a prototype, while a competition to be launched next month follows in the wake of the $10 million (£5.6 million) “X Prize”, which led to the first privately developed craft leaving the Earth’s atmosphere, briefly, last year.
Folks, this isn’t pie in the sky conceptualizing – it’s going into the engineering phase – that’s about as concrete as it gets!
I’ve written here in the past about NASA’s work on space elevators, and on the new leaner, meaner, prize-oriented approach favored by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin. Now there are some signs of real progress on a number of fronts. As I noted earlier, NASA was offering prizes for space elevator research. That’s still going on, but there are some new studies suggesting that space elevators may be closer to practicality than previously thought.
Indeed!