Chapter 1 Space Elevator
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists"
Arthur C. Clarke passed away recently (about 5 years ago). He was a great author and a very imaginative man. One of the structures he always spoke about was a space elevator. A number of people are working on this venture as we speak. There are a number of technical barriers, involving strengths of cables and other issues. I will not review all the efforts to date, but it seems to me we could build a space elevator with existing technology with a slightly different strategy.
A space elevator effort like this, spearheaded by the United States, would capture the imagination of the world much as the effort to put a person on the moon in the 1960’s. It is hard to describe the world wide sense of wonder inspired by the space race of the 1960’s. I remember watching it on a small black and white TV- I saw one of the later ones, not Apollo 11 ,as I did not arrive in Canada until 1970. I think a space elevator would have a similar effect on the world and reestablish the United States as a preeminent leader in technology. It would also give a national focus to the effort –again very similar to the situation of the space race in the 1960’s.
How do I suggest going about this? Am I delusional in thinking this is possible with existing technology? I hope not. Let us start with the tallest building in the world – the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It stands a regal 2717 feet tall, a tad more than ½ mile. So we have the technology on an existing scale already that can pull us up ½ mile. So you start with two adjacent blocks. The first block will be identical to the Burj Khalifa- it will have habitable floors and an elevator that takes you all the way to the top. The second block will be mostly a block of cement. You can have solar panels surrounding it and appropriate wiring and collection to help power the first block. There is nothing habitable in this block- the main purpose of this block will become apparent. If you think of this plan in terms of Lego blocks, block 2 will be a solid Lego block to build upon; block 1 is the Burj Khalifa building. This is shown in the diagram below:
Diagram 1 – First Phase of Space Elevator Construction.
The block on the right represents the solid block adjacent to the main building. So here is the trick. We now have an elevator that takes us up ½ mile. Also note from a business sense that there’s an opportunity to generate revenue from this investment already by renting out office space, restaurants and perhaps even living quarters. This is important because this means a phased plan like the one I am proposing funds itself along the way and does not have to be just a pipe dream. Now we can move to phase two. You use the existing infrastructure and build another Burj Khalifa, on top of the 2nd block. True, it will be a very tedious process as you carry all the material you need up via freight elevator that’s separated from the usable elevators. But I don’t think there’s anything that forbids you from accomplishing the task from a technical point of view. It’s just going to be difficult and time consuming, but definitely possible. I’m assuming here that there’s a feasible way of building a solid support structure along an existing habitable building. This seems fairly intuitively clear that it should be possible. The building on top of block 2, which we will call block 3 will have normal elevator structure. This situation is shown in Diagram 2.
Diagram 2 – Phase 2 of Space Elevator
Our space elevator works as follows now: You go up to the top of block 1, then you switch to horizontal tracks (once you reach the maximum height), and glide over to block 3’s elevator. Then the elevator just goes up block 3 like a normal elevator. I admit there’s some fancy engineering required to make this happen, but it seems to me it’s mostly track switching technology, not dissimilar to the way trains switch tracks (although trains don’t do it perpendicularly). If the perpendicular track switch is the problem, you could probably do a different angle or mechanism.
I’m sure you see the pattern by now. You now use block 2 and block 3 to construct a solid block 4. You have to make sure that block 2 and 3 are constructed in a manner so that you can gradually lay out a solid block 4. Also, by now, with intervening years of technical advances you can build on a solid block 4 a block 5 that will be 1 mile in height. For each iteration, you double the height of the building. You can pause the project any time along the way, and do some revenue generation and guided tours- one can imagine how spectacular the views will be even after 3 or 4 iterations. The doubling makes sense since our technical abilities are increasing exponentially in quite a few fields. You just continue to iterate until you get to the ultimate goal. If technology has improved at a faster pace than expected, you can quadruple the height (or use an even higher multiple).
The beauty of this approach is that you don’t have to worry about creating and sustaining cables with huge tensile strengths. It relies on known technology, some scaling, and repetition of building blocks.
The country that does this first will have a monstrous advantage in terms of space exploration. The capital outlay could be recouped as we go along this phased plan. The discoveries made in a venture like this would propel the United States back to being the premier technical power.
The plan will require a lot of land, but also offers a super commercial opportunity. As each phase gets done, you will have visitors from all over the world flocking to get the views. You could have hotels and balconies at the top of each phase. Restaurants with an outside view could charge exorbitant amounts for the rich experience. A good place for this might be in the mid-West where there is plenty of land. As the project gains momentum, all top researchers, engineers and others will want to gravitate to the United States to participate. It’s a technical dream come true. The plan would be to have multiple sets of elevators, some suited for straight cargo runs into space with no people, and others for people to go up at their own pace and take in the views.
Solar panels adorning the solid blocks built along the way could be fed back to the main grid of the United States. As the elevator/hotel construction becomes larger this will provide more and more of our energy needs, as well as supporting energy for the structure itself. We could at least expect the structure to be carbon neutral. Anything more might be too optimistic, but who knows? The way solar panel technology is advancing, there might be more gain here than can be imagined. Towering above cloud cover , the solar energy supply would be more plentiful.
Discuss and enjoy !
Notes to the 3rd Edition for Chapter 1
Many readers felt that this idea was the most impractical one in the book. There are actually many engineers who have done serious research into the field. I suggest the readers start with the following link: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast07sep_1/. You are perfectly entitled to view my approach as deficient or impractical, but the overall structure will be built within 50 or a 100 years , in my opinion.