International Space Elevator Consortium
August 2015 Newsletter

In this Issue:

Editor’s Note
President’s Corner
Conference Summary
Research Lab

Editor’s Note

Dear Friend,

Welcome to the August, 2015 edition of the ISEC eNewsletter.

The 2015 ISEC Space Elevator Conference has just wrapped up and, by all accounts, was a smashing success.  Engineers, scientists, researchers and enthusiasts from around the world gathered for the three-day conference to give presentations, conduct workshops and brainstorming sessions, compare notes and made contributions which help us further our understanding of the space elevator.

It was particularly gratifying to host the group that attended from Japan, including senior members of the Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA) and the Obayashi Corporation, a corporation which has the stated goal of building an earth-based space elevator by the year 2050.

The ISEC Board of Directors also held its annual meeting at the conference and a report from them will be in a forthcoming issue of the eNewsletter.

If you want to help us make a space elevator happen, JOIN ISEC and get involved! A space elevator would truly revolutionize life on earth and open up the solar system and beyond to all of us.

Please don’t forget to LIKE US on Facebook, FOLLOW US on Twitter, and enjoy the photos and videos that we’ve posted on Flickr and YouTube, all under our Social Identity of ISECdotORG.

Thank you!
ISEC

President's Corner

This month I would like to address an on-going discussion on the basic terminology for our space elevator culture.  The International Academy of Astronautics [organization that conducted SE study resulting in 300 page study report assessing feasibility of SE's[1]] is conducting a second study on space elevators and focusing on the systems engineering aspects.  As such, one of the first steps is to have a common lexicon for all to use in the process.  The suggestions are:

  • Apex Anchor (roughly 100,000 km altitude)

  • Mars Gate  (roughly 57,000 km altitude) - release to Mars

  • Lunar Gate (roughly 47,000 km altitude) - release to Moon

  • GEO Node (roughly 36,000 km altitude) - release to geosynchronous

  • LEO Gate (roughly 24,000 km altitude) - elliptical release to LEO

  • Lunar Gravity Center (roughly 8,900 km altitude) - Lunar gravity similarity

  • Mars Gravity Center (roughly 3,900 km altitude) - Mars gravity similarity

  • Marine Node

  • Tether Climbers (or just Climbers)

  • Tether

  • Headquarters and Primary Operations Center

Most of these terms are familiar to each of you.  Please look at them and send me your comments on the lexicon.  We are setting up a repository of terms to ensure consistency within the community.

There is one term we are puzzling over at this time.  ISEC has been going with 'Marine Node'.  Others have termed their concept of this as a:  

Terrestrial Node, Earth Node, Earth Port, Earth Anchor.

At the present time we have multiple words representing the tether terminus on the planet - please jump in and suggest which one we should use.

Keep Climbing my Friends --  Pete Swan

---------------------------------------------

1 Swan, P., C.Swan, D. Raitt, S. Penny, J. Knapman, " Space Elevators: An Assessment of the Technological Feasibility and the Way Forward." Virginia Edition, 2013. 

Space Elevator Conference Summary

The 2015 ISEC Space Elevator Conference was just completed and, by all accounts, was a great success.  ISEC Director and Conference Chair David Horn provides a brief summary of the events:

We had a great turnout for the 2015 Space Elevator Conference, August 21-23.  Around 60 presenters, attendees, and press from around the world participated in 3 days of presentations, workshops, and social events at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA.  Our keynote speaker, Ph.D. student Mark Hasse from the University of Cincinnati, presented the current state of research in high strength CNTs.  His talk illustrated the recent advances in creating CNT threads and forecast that we might have a 25 MYuri tether in 20 years.

The mini-workshop on marine node design provide great inputs into the 2015 ISEC study on this topic and the tether dynamics workshop helped to direct the next steps in tether dynamics simulations and studies.  Other presentations included power via the tether, space elevators in science fiction, tether experiments in space, and ideas to fund start-ups for space elevator technology research.  We were very happy to have so many members from JSEA and other organizations from Japan attend and present the latest space elevator construction plans, ISS experiments, and climber competitions in Japan.

---------------------------------

For the second year running, the ISEC Space Elevator Conference hosted the "Elevator speech competition", a competition where contestants had to give a short, 30-second pitch extolling the benefits of a space elevator.  Generically, these types of speeches are known as "elevator speeches" and it's hard to imagine a more perfect name for a pitch about space elevators.  Contest coordinator Peter Robinson gives a brief summary of the competition:

The 2015 conference saw the 2nd running of the 'Elevator Speech' competition.  Initial sign-up only had four entrants, but a further four entered on the day.  The final result was very close, with only a quarter point separating the first and second place winners : congratulations to Jake Tucker and Nick Regnier for their excellent presentations.

Thanks go to all the contestants for the variety of inspiration and humor in their speeches, all of which stayed within the 30-80 second time limit.  Thanks also must go to the four judges (Mark Haase, Skip Perry, Ruth Richter and Sandee Schaeffer) for doing a difficult task, and to Rudy Resch for taking over the complex score calculations at the last minute.

-----------------------------------

As part of the annual ISEC Space Elevator Conference, there is also a 'Robo Climb" competition where youngsters build battery-powered robotic climbers and then compete against each other for prizes.  These competitions have been held for several years and are always well-attended and a lot of fun.  Conference Chair David Horn reports this year's winners:

(Almost) Anything Goes
1st: Wasabi Z   (910)
2nd: Red Shirts (635)
3rd: Atomic Robotics (120)

LEGO Only
1st: Cody Labs  (810)
2nd: Meadow Robotics Club #3   (440)
3rd: Space Invaders (430)

Engineering Award:  Cody Labs

Congratulations to all of the contestants!

The Research Lab

This months column is a summary of many of the science and research related topics that were discussed during the just-finished space elevator conference.

2015 Conference Research Report

A number of science-related topics were covered at the August 2015 conference : the following notes cover those directly relevant to the current ISEC earth space elevator vision.

The keynote speech by Mark Haase confirmed the promise of carbon nanotubes (CNT) as the lead material contender, but introduced alternative materials : boron nitride nanotubes do not quite match the strength of CNTs, but is far more inert and so less susceptible to oxidation and other reactions.

Dr. Bryan Laubscher described his ongoing experimental CNT work, and hinted that he may be able to reveal his progress in the near future.

Dr. Dennis Wright and Peter Robinson discussed tether dynamic simulation and described their tool benchmarking work undertaken in the last year : test cases run by analysts Jim Dempsey and Steven Patamia identified two distinct oscillation frequencies of the published tether configuration and indicated an error in the area taper equation.  This was followed by a simulation workshop, to be reported in more detail in a later newsletter.

The Marine Node (now renamed 'Earth Port') workshop will also be reported later, but identified some interesting new configuration options : for example, multiple (3+) tethers descending from some high-atmosphere junction node and connected to multiple platforms could address security concerns and may allow simpler lateral tether dynamic control using only reel in/out movement at sea level.

Dr. John Knapman discussed climber power transmission, describing a single-cable AC power transmission system that appears worthy of more extensive study.  He also mentioned an acoustic power transmission system proposed by Keith Lofstrom.

Last but not least, Yoji Ishikawa presented on the status of the concept development work in progress at Obayashi Corporation : he described an elevator concept with a higher lift capacity than the ISEC concept and included some results of dynamic simulation of various deployment scenarios.  These studies are ongoing, but are indicating a very substantial thruster fuel requirement during tether deployment from GEO to Earth.  In separate discussions he agreed that Obayashi would consider involvement in the ISEC dynamic model benchmarking process.