I mentioned this briefly last March, but with the Columbia disaster, the idea of space elevators is starting to float around the ‘net again.
Forget the roar of rocketry and those bone jarring liftoffs, the elevator would be a smooth 62,000-mile (100,000-kilometer) ride up a long cable. Payloads can shimmy up the Earth-to-space cable, experiencing no large launch forces, slowly climbing from one atmosphere to a vacuum.
For a space elevator to function, a cable with one end attached to the Earth’s surface stretches upwards, reaching beyond geosynchronous orbit, at 21,700 miles (35,000-kilometer altitude). After that, simple physics takes charge.
The competing forces of gravity at the lower end and outward centripetal acceleration at the farther end keep the cable under tension. The cable remains stationary over a single position on Earth. This cable, once in position, can be scaled from Earth by mechanical means, right into Earth orbit. An object released at the cable’s far end would have sufficient energy to escape from the gravity tug of our home planet and travel to neighboring the moon or to more distant interplanetary targets.
Fascinating stuff to envision, and according to that article, it could conceivably be a reality in ten to fifteen years.
Part of the fun for me, though, was just tracking the thread across the web. I picked up on this from Doc Searls pointing to Dana Blankenhorn’s series of five blog posts about the idea. Dana’s posts led me to John Stryker pointing out some possible problems. The ensuing conversation in the comments to John’s post included some encouraging words from Michael Laine, the president of HighLift Systems, a company actively working on attempting to collect the necessary technology and funding to put this project into reality.
While this will probably come as no great surprise to those who know me, I’m solidly in the camp of people who would love to see this vision become a reality. If I had the pocket change, I’d write the check myself — unfortunately that’s a wee bit out of my range at the moment. Still, though, I’ll keep hoping.