Editor's Note

Dear Fellow Space Elevator Enthusiast,

The ISEC Student Challenge is proceeding to plan (see https://www.isec.org/events/isecchallenge), with ten papers just received from semifinalists. Some appear to be of a very high standard; our judges are now reviewing them in detail. We hope to announce the finalists in the May newsletter. After that, they will move on to the video presentation stage.

The Chinese film, The Wandering Earth II, was released in January to limited theaters. It is a story about a bold plan to drag the earth from its orbit away from the aging sun that is expanding to a size that will threaten all life on the surface. It features a space elevator that uses rockets to propel equipment up the tethers. Watch a clip of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nyPLUlJCZg. It is a prequel to the movie, The Wandering Earth. 

Sandee Schaeffer
Newsletter Editor

President's Corner

by Pete Swan

Opening Day

Every sport has an opening day—Thursday, March 30th, was opening day for U.S. baseball. Of course, there are various days for football (for both the U.S. and the rest of the world). It turns out they are very similar in so many ways—specifically for veterans and rookies. We can imagine ourselves being out there on the “pitch,” ready to take on the full season of experiences leading to the concluding championships. What will the season be like? What will be my performance? In the past, we came so close, but only one team can win! These are all the things dreams are made of in the sporting world. You can remember your team winning the championship, or perhaps coming close, obviously an important phase of your life—to participate as a teammate in a remarkable run towards the trophy.

Well, the parallel is true within teams taking on significant challenges in the “real world” of architecture, engineering, production, construction, operations, transportation, and business creation. Our situation is similar to that of a sports team about to start a full season. We have many veterans and a few rookies each year with dreams of excelling. This year may be amazing for space elevators in that we have progressed rapidly and our body of knowledge is vast. Our reports, articles, and studies have led us to this pivot point where the needs of the many will match the capabilities of the few. We are ready to reach out to our future customers and explain how space elevators will significantly enhance their future dreams and hopes. At this point, there are two activities that will require both veterans and rookies. We need the rookies to join us, develop the baseline architecture, and start the engineering development arena. In addition, some of those new players in our space elevator community will be needed to assist with interactions around the world: governments, NGOs, corporations, universities, and start-ups. We will need veterans with tremendous skill sets inside our small community to reach out to other communities. How do we approach global issues facing the human race while developing the realization that space elevators are vital to Earth’s future?

Space Elevator veterans and rookies have considerable challenges in front of them as we reach out to mesh with the needs of the global community. How can we help with current and future significant issues? How do we define our customers? How do we work with our future customers to define their needs and what we can provide? We need ideas and concepts. Please think about this and send a note to me at info@isec.org

Pete

Call for Educators

Expertise Needed – Volunteers to Coordinate
with the National Space Society's
Space Elevator Center of Educational Excellence

ISEC needs educators with teaching experience at any level ranging from kindergarten up to University level to help develop the National Space Society's SpacEdge Academy's Center of Educational Excellence for Space Elevators. "SpacEdge Education is a space education program of the National Space Society dedicated to providing STEAM education to all through the online SpacEdge Academy. The Academy contains Projects, Activities, and Lessons for K-postgrad student teams from all around the world. The mission of SpacEdge Academy, National Space Society, is to motivate students everywhere to reach for the stars. The Academy will engage and inspire the next generation—all ages and walks of life—by igniting an interest in space exploration and development." https://spacedge.academy

Two parts of the puzzle need to be developed with significant support from NSS and their teacher volunteers:

  • Development of a Space Elevator Center of Educational Excellence. "The National Space Society's educational arm hosts the Centers for Academic Excellence through the SpacEdge Academy, which is also a repository for K through University lessons, activities, and resources. The Centers for Excellence pairs industries and universities with students for cutting-edge opportunities. The Center for Excellence is interested in partners to expand the breadth of opportunities." https://spacedge.academy/course/index.php?categoryid=8. The mission is to assist teachers from around the US and worldwide in developing lesson plans for their classrooms.

  • While ISEC's website and YouTube location have a tremendous body of knowledge, our ability to work with teachers, understand their needs, and translate space elevator knowledge into realizable concepts has been limited. Much of that can be learned with the help of ISEC's and the SpacEdge Academy's teams. Therefore, we have initiated this activity! We need a leader willing to jump in and help teachers from around the world.

Please email info@isec.org with your desire to contribute to the Space Elevator and K-University teacher communities.

Tether Materials

by Adrian Nixon, Board Member, ISEC

How Tether Materials Resist Tearing

Tether materials have incredibly strong tensile strengths. It takes a lot of energy to pull them apart. There are very few materials with the strength needed which is why, at the time of writing, there are only three main candidates: Carbon nanotubes, graphene, and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). The current assumption is that we will need single crystals of these materials. This means a perfectly repeating pattern of bonds with no grain boundaries or gaps in the material (vacancies).

While these candidate materials are incredibly strong in tension, how these materials will resist fracturing (tearing in 2D materials) is a failure mode that needs to be considered. Fracture toughness is a measure of a material's ability to resist crack propagation. It is typically measured by the amount of energy required to fracture a material, normalized by its cross-sectional area.

Fracture toughness can be determined by test method ASTM E399-22. It "characterizes the resistance of a material to fracture in a neutral environment in the presence of a sharp crack under essentially linear-elastic stress and severe tensile constraint, such that the state of stress near the crack front approaches tritensile plane strain, and the crack-tip plastic zone is small compared to the crack size, specimen thickness, and ligament ahead of the crack." [1].

The fracture toughness for single-walled carbon nanotubes has been measured by computer simulation of introduced vacancies in the tube wall at 2.9 ± 0.3 MPa m0.5 [2]. The fracture toughness of single crystal graphene has been experimentally measured by introducing a crack at the edge of the sheet at 4.0 ± 0.6 MPa m0.5 [3]. The fracture toughness of single crystal hexagonal boron nitride has been experimentally measured by introducing a crack at the edge of the sheet at 8.7 MPa m0.5 [4].

Tether materials graphic

The fracture toughness values of the candidate tether materials are typical of moderately brittle materials. The values reside in the high-end range of ceramics (0.2 to 5 MPa m0.5) and polymers (0.4 to 4 MPa m0.5) and are lower than the values of metals and alloys (5 to 200 MPa m0.5). They are higher than the values of glass (0.8 MPa m0.5) and epoxy (0.4 MPa m0.5) and comparable with those of nylon (3 MPa m0.5) and alumina (4 MPa m0.5) [2].

Further work has demonstrated that in polycrystalline graphene, the grain boundaries deflect the propagation of cracks, and this can increase the fracture toughness. The fracture of a single C–C bond at the crack tip of single-crystal graphene under tearing load was analysed from the atomic view. The work found that the fracture toughness of the single C–C bond occupied about half of the fracture toughness for the complete failure of the total single-crystal graphene, and the other half of the energy distributes in the rest of the graphene. [5].

This means that the presence of grain boundaries in polycrystalline graphene could potentially double the fracture toughness of the material. This should also be true for the other tether candidate materials, provided no vacancy defects exist.

Polycrystalline graphene may be stronger than expected provided there are no vacancies in the graphene sheet. Molecular dynamics modelling results suggest that polycrystalline graphene sheets with average grain sizes greater than 2 nm present an ultrahigh tensile strength of around 85 GPa, which is two orders of magnitude higher than that of high-strength steels and titanium alloys [6]. Furthermore, the study concluded that ultra-fine-grained graphene structures have ultrahigh tensile strength and elastic modulus values that are very close to those for defect-free single crystal graphene sheets (130 GPa).

So, our assumption that we will need perfect single crystal materials needs challenging. It could be that grain boundary defects will make our candidate materials tougher in use while maintaining sufficient strength in tension for the space elevator tether.

References:

1. www.astm.org. (2022). Standard Test Method for Linear-Elastic Plane-Strain Fracture Toughness of Metallic Materials. [online] Available at: https://www.astm.org/e0399-22.html.

2. Yang, L., Greenfeld, I. and Wagner, H.D. (2016). Toughness of carbon nanotubes conforms to classic fracture mechanics. Science Advances, 2(2).

3. Zhang, P., Ma, L., Fan, F., Zeng, Z., Peng, C., Loya, P.E., Liu, Z., Gong, Y., Zhang, J., Zhang, X., Ajayan, P.M., Zhu, T. and Lou, J. (2014). Fracture toughness of graphene. Nature Communications, [online] 5(1), pp.1–7. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4782

4. Yang, Y., Song, Z., Lu, G., Zhang, Q., Zhang, B., Ni, B., Wang, C., Li, X., Gu, L., Xie, X., Gao, H. and Lou, J. (2021). Intrinsic toughening and stable crack propagation in hexagonal boron nitride. Nature, 594(7861), pp.57–61.

5. Wang, Y. and Liu, Z. (2016). The fracture toughness of graphene during the tearing process. Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering, 24(8), p.085002.

6. Mortazavi, B. and Cuniberti, G. (2014). Atomistic modelling of mechanical properties of polycrystalline graphene. Nanotechnology, 25(21), p.215704.

Perspective of Space Elevators—2023

by Pete Swan

This the third part of a 3-part series on Space Elevator Perspectives. For Part I, see the February 2023 issue of the ISEC newsletter. For Part II, see the March issue of the ISEC newsletter.

Last month, Space Elevator Perspective II covered the first three points. This third month’s continuation will have three more perspectives of Space Elevators as we see them in the spring of 2023 and will cover points four through six.

Space Elevator Perspective III:

4. Permanent Space Transportation Infrastructure—Space Elevators: From a historical transportation perspective, canals, channels and deep-water ports are infrastructure—the ships are vehicles. Likewise, the interstate highway, bridges, and trans-continental rail systems are infrastructure for ground transportation—trucks and trains are the vehicles that use it. The international airports and related facilities are the infrastructure for air travel, the planes are the vehicles. From this perspective, rockets, no matter how large and reusable they may be in the future, will always be vehicles - not a permanent space infrastructure. In the Galactic Harbour proposal, climbers are the vehicles while tethers, Earth Ports with several termini and operational platforms, GEO construction—repair garages/stations, and Apex Anchor are the permanent, reliable space infrastructure. This permanent transportation infrastructure defines the future space superhighway’s main green road to space with collaborating and complementary permanent infrastructures.

5. Space Elevators are “Massive Green Machines:” Recently, ISEC completed an 18-month study1 that evaluated Space Elevator’s environmental factors. This study started critical discussions by showing the additional benefits of Space Elevators being defined as "Massive Green Machines" as they do not burn rocket fuel in the atmosphere, do not leave debris in orbit, and enable environmentally enhancing missions that require massive movement to GEO and beyond. In point of fact, the operations of Space Elevators and Galactic Harbours will be carbon negative. Several of the concepts developed during this study establish the reality that Space Elevators can make the Earth Greener. This net assessment trade study conducted by ISEC showed that:

“Space Elevators and Galactic Harbours are Big Green Machines designed to improve the Earth's environment through two significant contributions. The first is the remarkable "zero-emission" lift of cargo to space—reducing environmental impacts from rocket launches. The second is the ability to deploy massive systems to GEO and beyond that…minimize…rocket launches by becoming a partner in Dual Space Access Architecture.”2

6. Mass to GEO & Beyond:3 The chart above compares the mass delivered to GEO & Beyond to reflect movement by advanced rockets and Space Elevators. This estimate is developed for SpaceX with 1,000 launches per year while the estimate for the Space Elevator reflects growth from the Initial Operational Capability (30,000 tonnes per year) to the Full Operational Capability (170,000 tonnes per year). This capability of Space Elevators dwarfs advanced rockets rapidly because of its efficiency of delivery and environmentally friendly operations.

References:

[1] Eddy, et.al., "Space Elevators are the Green Road to Space," ISEC Report, Lulu Publishers, April 2021.

[2] Ibid

[3] Calculations conducted inside the ISEC ongoing study “Dual Space Access Architecture” to be published late summer 2023.

Pete

Mid-year Interns Application

Now is the time!

The involvement of college students in space elevator basic research is a rewarding annual activity. ISEC gains insight into issues while the students gain experience evaluating hypotheses and presenting ideas and conclusions to the community. ISEC mentors enjoy these relationships (mostly by zoom) with 3rd and 4th year college students.

We are now accepting applications from university students to participate this summer. Please go to www.isec.org/interns and apply if you would like to contribute to the advancement of space elevators. Those selected will spend time researching a space elevator topic under the mentorship of an ISEC member. Upon completing your project, you will receive a USD $599.00 stipend and be given the opportunity to present your work at an ISEC event.

  • Applications Will Be Accepted Until 15 May 2023

  • Internship Start: 1 June 2023

  • Completion: 15 August 2023

History Corner

by David Raitt

On the Hunt for a Space Elevator Image

The June 2023 issue of Spaceflight—the magazine of the British Interplanetary Society—is scheduled as a special issue on the modern-day space elevator. In his quest to source relevant space elevator images, the Editor of Spaceflight sent me the accompanying image which he had found on the ESA Multimedia Image page for October 2007 with a little text about it in French which translates as “The big dream: Going up and down to an altitude of 40,000km.” He asked me whether I had come across it before. Well, yes, I had—but from 2005. I had included it in my PowerPoint presentation at the 2005 IAC in Fukuoka, Japan (how it came to be on the ESA site is a mystery since ESA was never really interested in the space elevator. Perhaps they got it from my ppt, or maybe one of my SF books they had published—though I would never have given the distance as 40,000km!) 

I did not have the source of the image readily to hand (the ESA website gave copyright to “Space Elevator” whoever or whatever that was). So, I undertook a little search to try and track the image down, and in the process, came across several new articles and items that I didn't know about. (And there are certainly quite a few more!) I found the image cropped up in several places—usually in news items on the web and often associated with Obayashi’s concept of a space elevator—though it predates their concept and they do not seem to have used it themselves in their concept designs. Interestingly, though, the image has persisted for quite some years, though why it suddenly started being used in 2012 and later when it first appeared in 2005 is a mystery!

So we find it under the title “Japanese Company Announces Plans to Build 22,000-Mile-High Space Elevator by 2050” on the Inhabit website for 25 February 2012.

https://inhabitat.com/japanese-company-announces-plans-for-20000-mile-high-space-elevator/

Just two days later, on 27 February 2012, we came across another article with the same image under the title "Obayashi’s Space Elevator to Be Operational by 2050" Here the plan is for 96,000km—the concept we already know from the company:

https://scitechdaily.com/obayashis-space-elevator-to-be-operational-by-2050/

We find the same image repeated on 21 September 2014 on the Research Career website under the heading "Builder holds door open for chance of lift to space." The news item again talks of Obayashi's 96,000km concept:

http://www.researchcareer.com.au/archived-news/builder-holds-door-open-for-chance-of-lift-to-space.

The image appears once again some years later, on the Medium website for 4 September 2019 under the title “Researchers working on a space elevator concept” by Faisal Khan:

https://medium.com/technicity/researchers-working-on-a-space-elevator-concept-30c9834943a5

The researchers from Columbia University (USA) and Cambridge University (UK) are working on a project, called Spaceline, that they reckon could drastically cut the space travel time between the Earth and the Moon. The idea is that the space elevator is tethered to the surface of the Moon and dangle down to a geostationary orbit around the Earth. The authors had prepared a draft to submit to Acta Astronautica, but there is an absolute dearth of references!

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.09339.pdf

This article also led me to an earlier paper "Why space elevators could be the future of space travel" in Futurism by Dieter Holger, dated 23 October 2016. They would lower the cost of launching into space by 99 percent. 

https://futurism.com/why-space-elevators-are-the-future-of-space-travel

However, with a little more diligence I came across a paper dated January 2009 by Michael Campbell, et al entitled "The Role of Nuclear Power in Space Exploration and the Associated Environmental Issues: An Overview."

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255619611_The_Role_of_Nuclear_Power_in_Space_Exploration_and_the_Associated_Environmental_Issues_An_Overview

The article has a couple of pages on the space elevator and mentions that "The space elevator in concept is a vertical conveyance system with one end anchored on the Earth and the other to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit that will be used to ferry people and materials quickly and safely into Earth orbit and from orbit back to the Earth." Geosynchronous orbit is, of course, round about the 40,000km (25,000 miles) quoted elsewhere. Figure 12 in the article is captioned "Conceptual View of the Space Elevator. Hoagland, 2005" and it is precisely the image in question. According to the list of references, Hoagland, 2005, is R. C. Hoagland’s series “Moon with a View: Or, What Did Arthur Know ...and When Did He Know it?” Part 5. 2005 was, of course, in the very early days of space elevators.

Hoagland appeared on the Space Show a few times. The blurb says, "Richard C. Hoagland is a former space science museum curator; a former NASA consultant, and during the historic Apollo Missions to the Moon, was science advisor to Walter Cronkite and CBS News. For the last 19 years, Hoagland has been leading an outside scientific Team in a critically acclaimed independent analysis of possible intelligently-designed artifacts on Mars. In the last 4 years, he and his Team's investigations have been quietly extended to include over 30 years of previously hidden data from NASA, Soviet, and Pentagon missions to the Moon. We will be discussing the VSE on this program and much more.” However, according to Wikipedia "Richard Charles Hoagland (born April 25, 1945), was an American author and a proponent of various conspiracy theories about NASA, lost alien civilizations on the Moon and on Mars and other related topics. Hoagland has been documented to misappropriate others' professional achievements and is widely described as a conspiracy theorist and fringe pseudoscientist."

Hoagland is not mentioned in the Space Elevators: A History book, nor does he seem to have written much, if anything, about space elevators. So, it seems doubtful that Hoagland himself created the image in question which he presumably used in his book. The reference given by Campbell itself is not available online under the URL given (accessed in 2008).

One of the other references in Campbell's article was to The Space Elevator Reference (page accessed on 30 July 2008). Clicking the URL given (www.spaceelevator.com) took me to the new site https://spaceref.com/tag/space-elevator/ and revealed a whole list of articles—some known, some unknown. Unfortunately, many of the older items about space elevators were all (re)entered in 2013 and do not have an image—but I am willing to bet this is where our image first appeared around 2005.

The very latest posting on SpaceRef is dated 1 February 2023 and is titled "A Bloomberg Originals on the Space Elevator". The short item starts: "Bloomberg today launched a Bloomberg Originals which ‘offers bold takes for curious minds on today’s biggest topics.’ One of the latest videos, still branded as Bloomberg Quicktake, is an update on the Space Elevator." Although there is no link provided to the video, by chance I came across it earlier whilst looking for THE image! It seems to have been posted a couple of months or so ago on YouTube under the title "Space Elevators Are Getting Closer to Reality"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lldv_u4R6BUU

The short video features Brad Edwards, Ron Turner from NIAC, and others. I have subsequently recalled that the video was published a year earlier on 16 February 2022, under the same title, on Bloomberg’s own site:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2022-02-16/space-elevators-are-getting-closer-to-reality-video

Eventually, in my search for the image, I came across another video on YouTube simply titled "The Space Elevator". Posted some 15 years ago, the video not only discusses the origins of the space elevator, how it might work, and making carbon nanotubes, but it also contains footage of entries trying to win the power beaming prize in the 2006 NASA Centennial Challenge in New Mexico:

https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnwZmWoymeI

I may not yet have found the original artist and date of the image, but I have certainly found some new historical items about the space elevator!

Poetry from an AI

by Peter Robinson

Another Chat with an AI: Poetry!

Readers may remember a test of the Microsoft 'ChatGPT' AI system in the February 2023 newsletter. In late March, along with probably millions of others, I tested the rival Google 'Bard' system. Given the system name, I decided on a Shakespearean task, and requested, "Write a Shakespearean sonnet to an Earth Space Elevator" with the following results:

From Earth to the heavens, a golden tether
Reaches, a ladder to the stars.
With hope and dreams, it calls us ever
To explore the vast unknown.

No longer bound to Earth's gravity,
We soar to new heights, to see
The world from a new perspective,
To touch the face of the divine.

This space elevator is our key
To a new world, a world of wonder
Where anything is possible.

So let us climb this golden tether
And reach for the stars.
Let us explore the unknown
And discover all that is yet to be found.

Another draft also provided...

O Earth Space Elevator, thou art a sight to see,
A marvel of engineering and ingenuity.
Thy tether reaches up into the heavens,
A bridge between worlds, a path for all to travel.

Thy climbers ascend and descend with ease,
Carrying cargo and passengers to and fro.
Thy port is a bustling hub of activity,
A gateway to the stars, a place of wonder.

O Earth Space Elevator, thou art a symbol of hope,
 A beacon of light in a dark and lonely world.
Thou art a promise of a better future,
A dream of a world where all can reach for the stars.

I sing thy praises, O Earth Space Elevator,
And I pray that thy success may be assured.
May thy tether never break,
May thy climbers always ascend,
And may thy port always be open to all.

Upcoming Events

International Space Development Conference
Sponsored by the National Space Society
https://isdc2023.nss.org/
Thursday, May 25th through Sunday, May 28th, 2023
Dallas-Frisco, Texas, USA
Theme: “A New Space Age”

Space Elevator Conference
Sponsored by the International Space Elevator Consortium and Slalom, Inc.
https://www.isec.org/events/isec2023
Saturday, August 12th through Sunday, August 13th, 2023
Downtown Chicago, Illinois, USA
Theme: “Permanent Space Access Transportation Infrastructure”

74th International Astronautical Congress
Sponsored by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF)
https://www.iafastro.org/events/iac/iac-2023/
Theme: “Global Challenges and Opportunities: Give Space a Chance”
Monday, October 2nd through Friday, October 6th, 2023
Baku, Azerbaijan

75th International Astronautical Congress
Sponsored by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF)
https://www.iafastro.org/events/iac/international-astronautical-congress-2024/
Theme: “Responsible Space for Sustainability”
Monday, October 14th through Friday, October 18th, 2024
Milan, Italy

76th International Astronautical Congress
Sponsored by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF)
Monday, September 29th through Friday, October 3rd, 2025
Sydney, Australia

Contact Us:

You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and Mastodon.

Our website is www.isec.org.

Support us:

Sign up to be a member at: https://www.isec.org/membership

You can also give directly using the “Donate” link at the bottom of our website page.

Does your place of employment do matching funds for donations or volunteer time through Benevity? If so, you can make ISEC your recipient. Our 501(c)(3) number is 80-0302896.