Countdown to Lift - The Race to Build a Space Elevator

LiftPort has a clock counting down to 27 October 2031 on their website.  The US-based company believes that, on this date, they will achieve the construction of a space elevator.

The concept was first considered in 1895 when Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky proposed using the Eiffel Tower in Paris as the base of a tower that would reach from the ground up to an altitude of 35,790 kilometres above sea level.  This is the altitude necessary to achieve geostationary orbit in which a satellite remains fixed over a point on the earth below.

“The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars,” said Carl Sagan, in his television show “Cosmos”.

The limitation of this call is that a cable 35,790 kilometres straight up would have to be immensely strong to withstand the incredible tension it would be under as well as its own weight.  With the invention of carbon nanotubes in the 1990s, David Smitherman of NASA/Marshall's Advanced Projects Office realised that the high strength of these materials might make the concept possible.  In March 2005, NASA introduced an annual competition - the Space Elevator Challenge - in order to promote investment and innovation.  The current prize stands at $2 million.

The economics of space elevators are simple.  It costs well over $11,000 per kilogram to lift a payload into space using conventional rockets.  The cost of using a space elevator has been estimated at $220 per kilogram.

A system that permits low-cost space exploration will open up the planets in Earth's solar system to mining.  The most obvious targets are the moon and Mars, both nearby.

The countries that are first able to build viable space elevators will have a tremendous advantage in claiming the riches beyond Earth's atmosphere.  They’ll also open up a can of worms last seen in the colonial era.

The first off-planet colonies will be run by highly-qualified people there to work and make money; not unlike the first colonists of many parts of the “new world”.

The cost of living off Earth will be great.  Unlike previous eras of colonisation, people won’t just be able to turn up and take some land.  None of the nearest planets or satellites will support human life and so they’d have to arrive with everything they need to live, grow food, produce air and survive. As the mother-countries demand a greater and greater share of the revenue produced by the colonies, it is inevitable that conflict will arise.

The colonies are unlikely to be places where countries dump their poor.  As the wealthiest and most capable leave the Earth, the balance of wealth and production will change.  The difficulty of economic development and poverty alleviation in the world’s poorest nations will get ever worse.

This may all sound needlessly speculative but consider that it will only cost $40 billion to build a space elevator.  To put that in perspective:  the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost $150 billion a year, and the US financial bailout since 2008 has cost over $7 trillion.  There are plenty of countries and companies that can afford to build a space elevator.

LiftPort’s 2031 target may be optimistic but that target is only 20 years away. Long before Africa brings poverty under control, people will be living on the moon.  And this will affect most of the people alive today.

“Between 1836 and 1914, over thirty million European immigrants entered the United States of America. Millions of others arrived in Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina,” says Nicolas Evans of the University of Hull.

As nations grapple with restructuring the world order after the fall-out of the 2008 credit crisis, it may well do to imagine the consequences of a future in which we answer the call of the sky.

Add Comment

Name

Email (will not be published)

Comment

Enter the letters you see in the image.

Click to get a new image.