Monday, March 13, 2006

Space enthusiasm undimmed

The movie Armageddon was on this weekend (as it always is somewhere in cable space). I am amused that, given the current state of the Space Shuttle program, in the movie they pull out a super Shuttle that the Air Force has supposedly built in secret. This same idea was also used in a recent West Wing episode. I've often wished that there was some secret program producing a better Space shuttle so that we would have some hope of maintaining our space faring capability, and because I have a higher chance of flying in a space plane to space than a rocket. Aviation Week reports that not only does such a clandestine program exist but that it has already been canceled. The article is shrouded in rumor and innuendo, but it would be great if someone would suddenly reveal a finished space plane.

Another way into space is a space elevator. This is a very common theme in science fiction, I was recently reminded of it having just completed "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi in which the characters are lifted from earth to space using a space elevator. There is an article in IEEE Spectrum on the feasibility of building a space elevator. There is the obligatory requirement of using carbon nanotube fibers for the cable because no known material would be light enough to withstand the stresses required for an elevator from Earth's surface to geostationary orbit and beyond. The author of the article presents a reasonable estimate of the cost of the elevator and the feasibility of building one using current or soon to be available technologies. A $10 billion space elevator could take the cost of putting a kilogram into orbit from $20,000 down to $200 and eventually to $10.

The construction of the space elevator involves putting a satellite in geostationary orbit and then paying out elevator fiber down toward the earth and out to space in such a way as to keep the center of mass in the same orbit. Eventually the fiber reaches the ground anchor. (Larry Niven grows his elevator in "Rainbow Mars") More fiber can be added for a bigger elevator using this first fiber as an elevator. The article also states that the first elevator is the expensive one, subsequent elevators can use the cheap lifting power of the first one, as well as lessons learned to make construction of a second or third one much less expensive. I can't wait to ride one of these to orbit.

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