Space Elevator by 2019?

From: Steve Dufour (stevejdufour_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 06/27/04 

Date: 26 Jun 2004 23:55:25 -0700

Space elevator eyed as possible by 2019

ASSOCIATED PRESS
    President Bush wants to return to the moon and put a man on Mars.
But scientist Bradley C. Edwards has an idea that's really out of this
world: an elevator that climbs 62,000 miles into space.
 
    Mr. Edwards thinks an initial version could be operating in 15
years, a year earlier than Mr. Bush's 2020 timetable for a return to
the moon. He pegs the cost at $10 billion, a pittance compared with
other space endeavors.
    "It's not new physics — nothing new has to be discovered, nothing
new has to be invented from scratch," he said. "If there are delays in
budget or delays in whatever, it could stretch, but 15 years is a
realistic estimate for when we could have one up."
    Mr. Edwards is not just some guy with an idea. He's head of the
space elevator project at the Institute for Scientific Research in
Fairmont, W.Va. NASA already has given it more than $500,000 to study
the idea, and Congress has earmarked $2.5 million more.
    "A lot of people at NASA are excited about the idea," said Robert
Casanova, director of the NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts in
Atlanta.
    Mr. Edwards believes a space elevator offers a cheaper, safer form
of space travel that eventually could be used to carry explorers to
the planets.
    Mr. Edwards' elevator would climb on a cable made of nanotubes —
tiny bundles of carbon atoms many times stronger than steel. The cable
would be about 3 feet wide and thinner than a piece of paper, but
capable of supporting a payload up to 13 tons.
    The cable would be attached to a platform on the equator, off the
Pacific coast of South America where winds are calm, weather is good
and commercial airplane flights are few. The platform would be mobile
so the cable could be moved to get out of the path of orbiting
satellites.
    David Brin, a science-fiction writer who formerly taught physics
at San Diego State University, believes the concept is solid but
doubts such an elevator could be operating by 2019.
    "I have no doubt that our great-grandchildren will routinely use
space elevators," he said. "But it will take another generation to
gather the technologies needed."
    Mr. Edwards' institute is holding a third annual conference on
space elevators in Washington starting tomorrow. A keynote speaker at
the three-day meeting will be John Mankins, NASA's manager of human
and robotics technology. Organizers say it will discuss technical
challenges and solutions and the economic feasibility of the elevator
proposal.
    The space elevator is not a new idea. A Russian scientist,
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, envisioned it a century ago. And Arthur C.
Clarke's novel "The Fountains of Paradise," published in 1979, talks
of a space elevator 24,000 miles high, and permanent colonies on the
moon, Mercury and Mars.
    The difference now, Mr. Edwards said, is "we have a material that
we can use to actually build it."
    He envisions launching sections of cable into space on rockets. A
"climber" — his version of an elevator car — would then be attached to
the cable and used to add more lengths of cable until eventually it
stretches down to the Earth.

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