Editor’s Note

Dear Fellow Space Elevator Enthusiast,

In our February newsletter, we asked that you follow us on LinkedIn. Your response was tremendous, resulting in over one thousand followers, and rising every week. Thanks!

As we said before, “One of your contacts may even have a contact who in turn knows that billionaire who will fund the project.” Keep networking, keep connecting, and maybe one day, we can make the Space Elevator happen!

Sandee Schaeffer
Newsletter Editor

President's Corner

by Pete Swan 

Transformational Characteristics

Each President’s corner I try to emphasize an important topic that is significant for the Space Elevator Community. In this one, I will address an immensely critical concept that needs to be shared outside of our community so that it illustrates the phenomenal differences in future capability. We, inside our community, tend to trivialize the concept of moving massive cargo inexpensively, safely, environmentally friendly every day. We tend to say, “yes we can support your visionary mission to Mars, the Moon, Geosynchronous or even the L-5 colony location.” However, we do not emphasize the reality that rockets will have tremendous impact on so many resources if it takes 1,000 launches a year for 50 years to support one million tonnes to Mars. The quandary of rockets is that we would be damaging the Earth’s atmosphere as we leave our planet. I suggest we start emphasizing the word transformational. The implementation of space elevators around the world will enable this capability to move cargo massively and routinely. This will transform the future of space activities. An example can be examined and discussed (see below), but the importance of this discussion is:  We must point out and emphasize to the public and to the project management of visionary space activities:

  • We are transformational

  • We are a partner with rockets in the Dual Space Access Architecture

  • We are Green

  • We are closer than they think as we have entered engineering development

  • We can execute your program for timely delivery of massive needs for development and after operations starts

When discussing Modern Day Space Elevators as a permanent transportation infrastructure which moves massive cargo daily, routinely, and safely, the level of impact on our future movement beyond LEO is transformational at a basic level. This new capability will be revolutionary in approach but evolutionary in scope. This example shows the tremendous impact on a remarkable future mission which is “enabled” by Space Elevators in the sense of timely delivery of required supplies.

Supporting 1,000,000 tonnes to the surface of Mars:                    

Space Elevators have many strengths, but, the most remarkable ones relate to their being a permanent space transportation infrastructure. A recent study completed by the Arizona State University and the International Space Elevator Consortium illuminated some remarkable conclusions about supporting colonies on Mars.1

This new movement off planet includes Space Elevator's ability to:

  • Depart the Apex Anchor at great velocity (7.76 km/sec)

  • Support interplanetary missions (Fastest transit of 61 days to Mars, with range of travel times throughout the 26-month planetary dance)

  • Supply massive payloads daily (170,000 tonnes per year)

  • Enable zero carbon operations for delivery to Mars

  • Exit the gravity well while avoiding the burden of the rocket equation

  • Accomplish these daily, routinely, and inexpensively

Inside the Dual Space Access Architecture, initial flights to Mars with equipment and settlers will be fulfilled by advanced rockets that are reusable and inexpensive. This mission is transformed once Space Elevators begin its support for Mars. Instead of waiting 26 months for a launch window and sending a flotilla of mission Starships towards Mars, the transformation occurs with daily launches with various travel times and high velocities. Rockets establish the early settlements with Space Elevators transporting the heavy stuff with on-time delivery. Instead of waiting for 50 years for the million tonnes, Space Elevators take approximately 15 years.

This example is used to show the transformational characteristics of having a massive permanent space access infrastructure. This should be emphasized as we talk with our space elevator enthusiasts AND with visionaries and mission planners. This includes the supporters of Space Solar Power (3,000,000 tonnes to GEO), Lunar Village (500,000 tonnes to surface of Moon), and L-5 settlers (10,500,000 tonnes to Moon’s orbit). We have an obligation to emphasize the tremendous difference Space Elevators will make when lifting massive cargo, daily, inexpensively, environmentally friendly, and routinely. We need to start using the word “Transformational” and then explain the phenomenal impact of our capabilities on their missions.

1. Swan, P, Swan C, Fitzgerald, M., Peet, M, Torla, J, Hall, V., "Space Elevators are the Transportation Story of the 21st Century," ISEC Study Report, www.lulu.com, 2020.

Help Needed on Latest ISEC Study! 

Dual Space Access:
An Evolutionary Step Towards
Humankind’s Movement Off-Planet

The International Space Elevator will initiate a study this spring to show how the dual space access architecture enables numerous space activities that will better life on Earth for all people, making Earth greener, cooler, and allowing continued growth and prosperity. In addition, it will show how Space Elevators will enable movement off-planet with a greener and more efficient approach. This concept leverages the best of both space access approaches with complementary and compatible strategies. The ISEC is looking for help with this project. We need volunteers to do research, chapter writing, editing or in any way that you may help. The breakout of the ISEC study could follow the following preliminary outline.

Chapter 1:  Introduction and Summary of the findings

Chapter 2:  Dreams of Many lead to Visions

  1. Elon Musk

  2. Jeff Bezos

  3. National Space Society (L-5 Colony)

  4. Lunar Village

  5. Space Solar Power

Chapter 3:  Space Elevator Strengths / Shortfalls

  1. Massive Movement

  2. Green Road to Space

  3. Routine and Fast transit to Mars and beyond

  4. Routine daily, cost effective safe,

  5. Not here today, estimated first operations 2037

  6. Slow to GEO and Beyond (once released fast to destination)

Chapter 4:  Rocket Strengths / Shortfalls

  1. Operational today

  2. Rapid transit to LEO/GEO and the Moon

  3. Fast thru radiation belts

  4. Delivery statistics of cargo to destination (2% of pad mass to GEO)

Chapter 5:  Case Study:    Dual Space Access Strategy for Space Solar Power

Chapter 6:  Case Study:    Dual Space Access Strategy for Mars

Chapter 7:  Case Study:    Dual Space Access Strategy for Lunar Village

Chapter 8:  Case Study:    Dual Space Access Strategy for L-5 Colony

Chapter 9:  Case Study:    Dual Space Access Sunshades for cooling Earth

Chapter 10:  Case Study: Dual Space Access Planetary Science Missions

Chapter 11:  Case Study:  Conclusions / Recommendations

Assumptions:  The following assumptions will establish the initial conditions of the study. A fully operational set of three galactic Harbors exist in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans. Thus, we have six fully operational elevators. Each elevator initially carrying 14 tonnes per day, 84 total per day and 30,660 metric tonnes per year. At full maturity, 2 or 3 climbers per day gives approximately 170,000 metric tonnes per year. In addition, the advanced rockets in the near future will be reusable with several hundred launches per year at very low prices. We would particularly like to have help with each of the case studies.

If you would like to be part of this exciting study, contact the editor Jerry K Eddy: jerry.eddy@isec.org.

Cambridge Rock Festival

Did you see this title in the newsletter contents and wonder, “What does a rock festival have to do with Space Elevators?” We hoped that would get your attention. And no, this is not a case of bait-and-switch! The Cambridge Rock Festival is hosting 68 bands over three nights on three stages. One of those bands is called “Space Elevator.” As cool as that is, that’s not enough for a mention in the ISEC newsletter. The connection is that Friday and Saturday evenings after the music shuts down, they host a late-night astronomy talk. Friday evening’s talk features our very own Peter Robinson and Adrian Nixon speaking about Space Elevators, and they'll be joined by Rob Whieldon of Nixene Publishing and former ISEC interns Sophia Lee Roberts and Craig Orrock!

The event takes place from Thursday, June 16th until Sunday, June 19th at the East of England Arena and Events Centre in Peterborough, England.

If you are in the area and wish to attend, check out their website at: https://www.cambridgerockfestival.co.uk/. Use coupon code 'ISEC' for a 10% discount.

Webinar

Do you have a space elevator question? Ask the experts! On April 30th, an ISEC panel will answer questions sent in by ISEC members. Send your questions by April 15th to membership@isec.org.

Not a member? Sign up here: www.isec.org/membership.

We have received some questions, already, but there is room for more! 

Tether Materials

by Adrian Nixon, Board Member, ISEC

Carbon nanotubes and Graphene:
Part 2: How We Can Know What
We-Know-We-Don’t-Know

In the last newsletter entry, I compared the progress of manufacturing carbon nanotubes and graphene.

The conclusion was that far more progress is being made on graphene and work on carbon nanotubes has stalled, at least as far as the space elevator is concerned.

The reason for this is that carbon nanotubes can only be made in very short lengths by batch processes.

Graphene is already being manufactured by continuous manufacturing processes. There are at least four competing industrial companies manufacturing graphene right now. The scale and speed of graphene manufacturing is astonishing, graphene can already be made at speeds of up to two metres per minute and in lengths of up to one kilometre.

I was challenged to the effect that this is all very impressive, but could I have missed something?  Could there be more work taking place on carbon nanotubes that we could have missed.

How to know what you don’t know is always a tricky thing to do.  Fortunately, we live in a world of information marvels.  Most of the answers are all out there, you just need to know what questions to ask.

The question I asked was “is there a way of finding trends in technologies in published documents over time?”

The answer turns out to be yes, there is. Google has developed a search tool that can show trends with worlds and phrases over time. Information scientists call these n-grams [1].  Google has developed an n-gram viewer that searched its store of books and pulls out the trend analysis. 

So, I ran the analysis comparing the mentions each year of carbon nanotubes and graphene using 1992 as a starting point [2]. 

Tether-Materials-graphic

The trends of the two materials are revealing.  Carbon nanotubes have shown a steadily increasing number of mentions in books over time.  However, the interest in graphene has been increasing in the early aughts and since 2010 graphene has been outpacing carbon nanotubes at an ever-increasing rate.

We have gained a small insight into what we-know-we-didn’t-know.

The n-gram viewer is not perfect; however, it does give us evidence to state with more confidence that in directing our attention to graphene, we are not missing significant activity in the world of carbon nanotubes.  We will keep challenging ourselves though.

References:

1. Anon, 2022. n-gram - Wikipedia. [online] En.wikipedia.org. Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-gram> [Accessed 5 April 2022].

2. Anon, 2022. Google Books Ngram Viewer. [online] Books.google.com. Available at:  <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=carbon+nanotubes%2Cgraphene&year_start=1992&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3> [Accessed 6 March 2022].

Upcoming Events

April Webinar

Sponsored by the International Space Elevator Consortium
Saturday, April 30th, 2022
Members Only Webinar Answering your questions about the Space Elevator. See above article for details.

International Space Development Conference (ISDC)

Sponsored by the National Space Society (NSS)
http://isdc2022.nss.org/
Friday, May 27th through Sunday, May 29th, 2022
Location: Hyatt Regency Crystal City
Arlington, VA

The ISDC is the annual conference of the National Space Society bringing together NSS leaders and members with leading managers, engineers, scientists, educators, and businessmen from civilian, military, commercial, entrepreneurial, and grassroots advocacy space sectors. Information about sponsorships, exhibiting, and volunteering is available at each year’s ISDC website. As in recent years, ISEC will host a ‘Space Elevator Track’ within ISDC2022, Friday 2-5 pm.

Track Title: “Permanent Infrastructure – Space Elevators As A Transformational Capability” 

Top Level:  Explain Transformational in the Sense of Enabling Missions and Changing the Way We Do Space Access, Centered On Our Three Study Reports:

  1. Green Road to Space

  2. Interplanetary

  3. And the newest study: Dual Space Access Architecture Study Explanation Level: Current Climber-Tether Interface and other topics as appropriate

Cambridge Rock Festival

https://www.cambridgerockfestival.co.uk/
Thursday, June 16th through Sunday, June 19th
East of England Arena and Events Centre
Peterborough, England

Virtual Space Elevator Conference

Sponsored by the International Space Elevator Consortium
https://www.isec.org/events
Topics: Transformational Permanent Space Infrastructure; Tether/Climber interface & Dual Space Access Architecture
Friday, August19th through Saturday, August 20th, 2022
Registration: TBD

73rd International Astronautical Congress

Sponsored by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF)
https://www.iafastro.org/events/iac/iac-2022/
Sunday, September 18th through Thursday, September 22nd, 2022
Paris, France

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