Japan hopes to turn sci-fi into reality with elevator to the stars
The Times
“From cyborg housemaids and water-powered cars to dog translators and rocket boots, Japanese boffins have racked up plenty of near-misses in the quest to turn science fiction into reality.
“Now the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Man has so far conquered space by painfully and inefficiently blasting himself out of the atmosphere but the 21st century should bring a more leisurely ride to the final frontier.”
A new non-profit group, JPL Space Foundation, has been created to promote space elevators. The Georgia-based charity, which is not associated with that JPL, was created over the summer by John P. Lee (who lends his initials to the name).
Continue reading ‘New Foundation Created to Give a Boost to Space Elevators’
Brian Turner of the Kansas City Space Pirates - one of the groups competing in the Space Elevator Games - will be a guest on Late Night with Conan O’Brien on Friday, May 2. The late night funny man will interview Turner about space elevators, according to the Space Elevator Games blog. So, tune in or set your TiVo.
Three brief updates from the Space Elevator Blog….
Participants can now register for the 2008 Space Elevator Conference, which will be held in Redmond, Washington on July 18-20.
The blog also has an interview with Team DeltaX and Nanocomp, which entered a carbon nanotube tether in last year’s Space Elevator Games. DeltaX’s Stephen Steiner and David Lashmore of Nanocomp discuss their joint efforts. DeltaX has a great heritage: it comes out of MIT.
The Kansas City Space Pirates, another competitor in the Space Elevator Games, reports that their new sponsor, Thorlabs, will provide most or all of the group’s “optical needs.”
A controversial new study suggests that building reliable space elevators could be a lot more difficult than advocates believe due to severe tether wobbling, according to New Scientist.
Lubos Perek, of the Czech Academy of Sciences’ Astronomical Institute in Prague, said current space elevator designs are probably not stable enough. Thrusters would need to be attached to the tether to control wobbling, making the project more expensive and complicated.
A space elevator consists of a tether anchored to Earth that extends into space. Centrifugal forces from the Earth’s spin will theoretically keep the cable taut. Vehicles would climb along the tether without the need for expensive propulsion systems, making space access cheap and reliable.
Other experts quoted in the New Scientist article do not believe that wobbling will be a major problem. Perek thinks that despite the challenges, the idea is worth pursuing because of the advantages space elevators would offer.
