Editor's Note

Dear Fellow Space Elevator Enthusiast,

A remarkable article called “Harvesting Sunlight in Space” was written by Paul Marks and published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in the April 2023 issue of their online magazine.

In the article, he recognizes that the United Kingdom’s European Space Agency and the European Union are going forward with the concept of Space Solar Power to help with the puzzle of energy independence.

ISEC’s president, Pete Swan, is quoted in the article as an independent observer regarding the assistance of space elevators in this endeavor.

The complete article can be found here:

https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/harvesting-sunlight-in-space/

For more recommendations of what’s new on the world wide web in relation to space elevators, see our new feature called “Around the Web!”

Sandee Schaeffer
Newsletter Editor

President's Corner

by Pete Swan

Dreaming of Space:
Take a Space Elevator

On 21 April, I presented to the “Space Education Summit.” The organization consists of teachers, professors, and experts in space activities. The summit was a video symposium broadcast to over 400 viewers interested in “upping their game” with respect to space. The objective was to increase viewers’ knowledge of space and its various projects and activities with four parallel paths.

I was very excited about this opportunity to stimulate students towards future careers in the space arena. I felt right at home as I had started teaching (SCUBA) in college and I continue to interact and share my expertise at the university level with a variety of approaches. In fact, this summit felt like home with the continuing challenge of stimulating students and young professionals to join our wonderful space arena. I really enjoyed the discussions following the talk where I helped to expand on the dreams of many, the “out there” visions such as living productive lives off-planet with the potential transformational characteristics of space elevators.

To quote the presentation, “A space elevator can be thought of as a vertical railroad into space… Space elevators are not science fiction; they are, in fact, the most promising space/travel-related infrastructure on the drawing boards today.” This one-hour lecture explains where we are TODAY—with ISEC concepts, progress, body of knowledge, and how space elevators are the future of space! Please review the video while you are being brought “up to speed” on the modern-day space elevator, the Green Road to Space and our thrust to join rockets inside a Dual Space Access Strategy.

You can access the talk on our website:

https://www.isec.org/2023-dreaming-of-space

Pete

Space Elevator Conference

The upcoming 2023 Space Elevator Conference is sponsored by both the International Space Elevator Consortium and Slalom, Inc., who will be hosting the event in the Aon Center Building, Chicago, Illinois.

It will be held Saturday, August 12th through Sunday, August 13th, 2023 and the theme is, “Permanent Space Access Transportation Infrastructure” and will be co-chaired by Dan Gleeson and Karyn Gleeson.

The website link will have all the latest information:

https://www.isec.org/events/isec2023  

Tether Materials

by Adrian Nixon, Board Member, ISEC

How Tether Materials’ Tensile Strength Responds to Temperature

As materials are heated, their strength decreases. This is because the bonds between atoms vibrate by stretching and bending as energy is transferred to the material by heating. The more heat, the greater the movement, thus weakening the bonds, and the tensile strength decreases accordingly.

Just how much strength is lost by tether materials as they become hotter has been the subject of several studies. This work has been conducted by computer simulation rather than actual experimentation, but this will give us a good guide to the behaviour of these materials in practise. Studies using molecular dynamics simulations have been conducted for graphene, single-walled carbon nanotubes, and hexagonal boron nitride.

A sample of graphene, 20nm long and 6nm wide, was simulated and it was found that the tensile strength reduced from 125.87 to 42.93 GPa when the temperature increased from 300K to 2000K, indicating a reduction by 65.89% [1].

Another study [2] modelled single-walled carbon nanotubes and found that the tensile strength decreased from 83.23 GPa at 300K to 43.78 GPa at 1800K. The calculated tensile strength of the carbon nanotubes seems to be rather low. We would have expected CNTs to be at least as strong as graphene and possibly stronger. The study does not explain this difference as we don’t have access to the assumptions programmed into the computer model used to create the simulation. While we await further results, this data is the best published evidence at present.

The tensile strength performance of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) has also been modelled [3]. The strength results were comparable with those of graphene and declined similarly as the temperature increased. The following chart shows the results as trendlines.

Effect of temperature on tensile strength of tether materials

Tensile strength and temperature for tether candidate materials

What temperature extremes might we encounter in space around the Earth? To find out, a study commissioned by NASA investigated the temperatures in Earth's orbit [4]. The work found that the temperatures varied between 73k to 533K at low earth orbit and geostationary orbit. Over this range, the strength of the tether materials decreased by approximately 10% from their initial values. This means that all the candidate materials for the space elevator tether will still be strong enough to perform under tension over the range of temperatures encountered by structures as they orbit the Earth.

References:

1. Zhang, Y.Y. and Gu, Y.T. (2013). Mechanical properties of graphene: Effects of layer number, temperature and isotope. Computational Materials Science, 71, pp.197–200. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927025613000487.

2. Plante, J. and Lee, B. (2014). Environmental Conditions for Space Flight Hardware – A Survey. [online] NASA.gov. Available at: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20060013394/downloads/20060013394.pdf

3. Dereli, G. and Süngü, B. (2007). Temperature dependence of the tensile properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes: O(N)tight-binding molecular-dynamics simulations. Physical Review B, 75(18). https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.75.184104.

4. Han, T., Luo, Y. and Wang, C. (2013). Effects of temperature and strain rate on the mechanical properties of hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets. Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, 47(2), p.025303. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0022-3727/47/2/025303.

ISEC at ISDC

Space Elevator Track and Reception by ISEC
at the National Space Society’s
International Space Development Conference
May 25-28, 2023

ISEC will be active in this May’s International Space Development Conference helping the space community understand the space elevator progress and current Modern Day Space Elevator. Both Dennis Wright and Peter Swan will be at the conference leading the efforts to inform, convince, and educate about our progress. There are two major activities this year in Frisco, Texas:

1) ISEC will sponsor the reception prior to the Saturday night dinner, with a major award given and a speaker of note. This sponsorship will include the option of having posters around the room and a three-to-five-minute introduction to the idea. As a result, we should reach many more participants by hosting the reception. 

2) Our normal space elevator track will occur on Thursday pm with an agenda centered around Missions enabled by a Dual Space Access Strategy as follows:

2:00 P.M. Space Elevator Track Kickoff, Peter Swan (International Space Elevator Consortium)

2:05 P.M. Space in your Future—Take an Elevator, Peter Swan (International Space Elevator Consortium)

2:25-2:50 P.M. Space Tether Mission History and Planning in STARS Project for Space Elevator, Masahiro Nohmi (Shizuoka University)

3:00 P.M. NASA Space Settlement Contest Presentation

3:15 P.M. Missions Enabled by a Dual Space Access Strategy, Jerry Eddy (International Space Elevator Consortium)

3:30-3:50 P.M. Elastic Driven Climber, Jim Dempsey (The Cove)

4:00 P.M. Space Elevator Body of Knowledge, Peter Swan (Galactic Harbour Associates)

4:15 P.M. An Example: Interface Between Space Elevator Climber and the Tether, Dennis Wright (International Space Elevator Consortium)

5:00 P.M. Panel for Tough Questions: How Will the Space Elevator be Built? What Material Will be Used for the Tether? How Will We Manage Space Debris? When Will We Start? Moderator: Dennis Wright (International Space Elevator Consortium)

Learn more about the event here: https://www.isec.org/events/isdc2023

Call for Educators for SpacEdge Academy

Volunteer needed to Help ISEC
work with NSS's Space Elevator
Center of Educational Excellence

ISEC needs help working with the National Space Society's SpacEdge Academy's Center of Educational Excellence with a focus on Space Elevators. "SpacEdge Academy is a National Space Society education program dedicated to providing STEAM education to all. The mission is to motivate students to reach for the stars. https://spacedge.academy

Two parts of the puzzle need to be developed with significant support from NSS and their teacher volunteers: (1) Development of a Space Elevator Center of Educational Excellence, a repository for K through University lessons, activities, and resources. The mission is to assist teachers from around the US and worldwide in developing lesson plans for their classrooms https://spacedge.academy/course/index.php?categoryid=8. And (2) While understanding the needs of teachers, a key is the ability to translate space elevator knowledge into realizable concepts. Much of that can be learned within ISEC's and 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.

Around the Web

Acta Astronautica, the official journal of the International Academy of Astronautics, will publish two papers by members of ISEC:

The first one, “Space Elevator Tether Materials: An Overview of the Current Candidates” was written by authors Adrian Nixon, John Knapman, and Dennis Wright. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576523001704

The second paper, “Space Elevator Climber Dynamics and Climb Frequency Opitmisation” was written by Peter Robinson. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576523001947  

Both were presented at the IAC in Paris, September of 2022. They are available for viewing but must be purchased to download a PDF copy.

BBC’s Inside Science radio program presented a podcast called “Rocket Launch Pollution” which talks about the problem of rocket fuel exhaust starting at 0:28 and ending at 8:28. There is a bonus feature later in the podcast about graphene starting at 15:20 and ending at 20:10.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001l2fl  

This is a fun and fascinating video called, “Making Graphene Could KILL you…but We Did it Anyway?!” from a channel called Tech Ingredients where the presenter is making graphene in his shop. He mentions the possible use of graphene for space elevator tethers. Our own Adrian Nixon commented, “It is about making graphene powder and enhancing polymer composites. (Sheet graphene for the tether is a different form of graphene) Specifically, he makes graphene powder by the flash graphene process.  Also worth noting is that graphene is non-toxic and will not kill you; Tech Ingredients were working with very high voltages and this is the lethal aspect of their work”

https://youtu.be/3hHoL77QDkg

I don’t know if I saved the best for last, but I surely saved the most entertaining for last. This is an interactive program where you scroll up through the many layers of the atmosphere to get to space! You only make it to the Karman line, and thus, only one tenth of a percent of what the trip would be when the actual space elevator is built, but perhaps Neal will extend the program as need arises!

https://neal.fun/space-elevator/

Upcoming Events

41st 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

42nd International Space Development Conference
Sponsored by the National Space Society
Thursday, May 23rd through Sunday, May 26th, 2024
Los Angeles, California, USA 

75th International Astronautical Congress
Sponsored by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF)
Announcement: 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

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