Soccer Dad

Going up .. up .. up .. up?

When I first read about the concept of a space elevator, I'll admit to being a bit skeptical. Fortunately, when I first blogged about it, Brian Dunbar a system administrator for Liftport, a company devoted to fielding a working space elevator in the coming decades, left a comment.

I followed up by asking him some questions. He graciously e-mailed me back and allowed me to quote from his e-mail. Mostly I was curious as to how Liftport would be financially viable until its main product was ready. I also wanted to know how something as long as the space elevator's "ribbon" could be secured against the elements or sabotage. Here's his response:

We've known from the start (2002) that for a private venture the space elevator could not pay the way. We hope to use the technology we need to build the SE (nano, robotics, media) as revenue and a measure of seriousness on our part.

Which does make it seem as if we're not focused on the final goal. We are - we just have to take a pragmatic approach to getting there.

Weather is a worry as is effects from radiation, vacuum and etc. All I can say is that it's a problem we're put into the 'study this' list. Part of the reason for the long deployment time is to lift a series of experiments into orbit with the ribbon material to study the effects of space on it.

Sabotage is a worry as well. This is mitigated because the anchor head is going to be way the heck out in the middle of the ocean (400 miles west of South America) making it difficult to get to. The ribbon itself will be a meter wide and CM thin in the atmosphere, making it really difficult to target. Granted if someone wants to start tossing bombs around the anchor is a target but .. this is true of many currently existing infrastructure.

We know it's a problem, we'll simply have to deal with it.

Liftport isn't the only concern attempting to develop and build a space elevator. A dozen teams competed in the "Elevator Games" events at the XPrize Cup Event in October. Among the technologies that were being tested were the materials for the tethers that could be used as the connection between an earthbound anchor and a platform in space as well as a method of power transmission that could move an elevator car up and down the tether.

In the end none of the teams competing won the cash prize this year, but they did show technological innovation of the type that this competition is hoping to encourage.

Given that the purpose of the XPrize is to encourage commercial innovation, the XPrize Cup had a number of other competitions geared towards making space flight accessible and affordable. Though there were no winners this year in any of the competitions, the organizers were quite happy with the results as well as the interest by the many people who came to the New Mexico desert to watch.

The events at the XPrize cup competition were done in cooperation with NASA's centennial challenges.

Blogdigger Tags: XPrize Cup, Space Elevator