Space elevator by 2050 planned, to include space solar power
February 22, 2012 | Source: Daily Yomiuri
Obayashi Corp., headquartered in Tokyo, has unveiled a project to build a space elevator by the year 2050 that would transport passengers to a station 36,000 kilometers above the Earth and transmit power to the ground.
A cable, made of carbon nanotubes, would be stretched up to 96,000 kilometers, or about one-fourth of the distance between the Earth and the moon. One end of the cable would be anchored at a spaceport on the ground, while the other would be fitted with a counterweight.
The terminal station would house laboratories and living space. The elevator car could carry 30 people to the station at 200 kilometers per hour, a 7-1/2 day trip.
It would include a space solar power system to transmit power to the ground for electrical distribution.
Comments (11)
by Dan Robinson
Arthur C. Clarke probably had patents on the space elevator, as he did on communication satellites years before space flight. Spottedmarley, it’s a cable, not a tower, because it’s supported from above by orbital motion and “tidal” effects (which I’ll leave to someone else to explain). I think the theory is that it would take equal energy for the elevator car to go a given distance either up or down and the cable would have equal tension all along its length, and I don’t quite understand that either.
Clarke said it would have to be at a special place along the equator (namely Sri Lanka I believe, where he lived and owned property) where the earth’s mass was well balanced. Is this true?
I think ideally it would be built by sending cable of carbon fiber (or whatever strongest material of the day) by rocket to the eventual location of the terminal station, then using small rockets to pull a small cable to reach the ground and location of the counterweight. The beginning cable would be just strong enough that small a capsule could climb it, pulling a small strand of more cable. This would pull yet more, to eventually accommodate larger capsules. Early capsules, mostly going up, would also be made to be converted to counterweight and building material.
Of course none of this considers the two new issues, of space debris, and imminent political/financial/environmental collapse.
by Chrispium
Susan Pettee the book can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountains_of_Paradise
SpottedMarley it’s a cable, 60000 miles long.
by Susan Pettee
Arthur C. Clark imagined a similar space elevator about 50 years ago. Can’t remember the name of the story, but it sounds exactly like what Obayashi is planning. Too bad he didn’t live to see that someone is hoping to make one.
by SpottedMarley
It’ll take that long just to construct the 30,000mi long …what… cable? shaft? stairwell? what is that long vertical structure anyways?
by {i}Pan~
2050 is far too late anyway.
We wil be nearly completely merged with our technology by 2035-2039.
by Micheal Karg
Maybe some of us
by HArchH
How will they make money off of this?
by Micheal Karg
I guess Einstein would not have wanted to live up there :)
by Aezel
Europe has space programs on the board and huge investments in tech, China is aiming for the moon, Japan is building space elevators. Meanwhile, America? Shrinking investments in science, shrinking amount of peer-reviewed research, no space delivery system in place, and on and on.
People like to toss around the phrase “America is becoming a third world country,” to rile people up. However, if things continue at this rate by 2050 that could actually be true.
by HArchH
If that’s what it takes to stop funding all the wastes of money we’re spewing out into the world, that’s totally fine. I’ll be happy to not have the US economy tank under debt in trade for no US funded space research for a couple of decades. Sadly, the POTUS don’t seem to get this yet.
by gaoptimize
“At this moment, we cannot estimate the cost for the project,” an Obayashi official said. ”
The accuracy of an estimate isn’t the point of the discipline of creating and publishing an engineering cost model. A model would illuminate the critical engineering challenges and focus progress on enabling technologies and necessary programatic and economic assumptions. Until Obayashi demonstrates this discipline, yes, it is a day dream / fantasy.