O/T - Space elevator to become reality
- From: Ed <Edward.A.Bowden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 07:01:21 -0700 (PDT)
Japan hopes to turn sci-fi into reality with elevator to the stars,
just like Arthur C Clarke envisioned in 1979 novel! Cool or what!?
Leo Lewis in Tokyo
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4799369.ece
From cyborg housemaids and waterpowered cars to dog translators androcket boots, Japanese boffins have racked up plenty of near-misses in
the quest to turn science fiction into reality.
Now the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to
cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Man
has so far conquered space by painfully and inefficiently blasting
himself out of the atmosphere but the 21st century should bring a more
leisurely ride to the final frontier.
For chemists, physicists, material scientists, astronauts and dreamers
across the globe, the space elevator represents the most tantalising
of concepts: cables stronger and lighter than any fibre yet woven,
tethered to the ground and disappearing beyond the atmosphere to a
satellite docking station in geosynchronous orbit above Earth.
Up and down the 22,000 mile-long (36,000km) cables — or flat ribbons —
will run the elevator carriages, themselves requiring huge
breakthroughs in engineering to which the biggest Japanese companies
and universities have turned their collective attention.
In the carriages, the scientists behind the idea told The Times, could
be any number of cargoes. A space elevator could carry people, huge
solar-powered generators or even casks of radioactive waste. The point
is that breaking free of Earth's gravity will no longer require so
much energy — perhaps 100 times less than launching the space
shuttle.
“Just like travelling abroad, anyone will be able to ride the elevator
into space,” Shuichi Ono, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator
Association, said.
The vision has inspired scientists around the world and government
organisations including Nasa. Several competing space elevator
projects are gathering pace as various groups vie to build practical
carriages, tethers and the hundreds of other parts required to carry
out the plan. There are prizes offered by space elevator-related
scientific organisations for breakthroughs and competitions for the
best and fastest design of carriage.
First envisioned by the celebrated master of science fiction, Arthur
C. Clarke, in his 1979 work The Fountains of Paradise, the concept has
all the best qualities of great science fiction: it is bold, it is a
leap of imagination and it would change life as we know it.
Unlike the warp drives in Star Trek, or H.G. Wells's The Time Machine,
the idea of the space elevator does not mess with the laws of science;
it just presents a series of very, very complex engineering problems.
Japan is increasingly confident that its sprawling academic and
industrial base can solve those issues, and has even put the
astonishingly low price tag of a trillion yen (£5 billion) on building
the elevator. Japan is renowned as a global leader in the precision
engineering and high-quality material production without which the
idea could never be possible.
The biggest obstacle lies in the cables. To extend the elevator to a
stationary satellite from the Earth's surface would require twice that
length of cable to reach a counterweight, ensuring that the cable
maintains its tension.
The cable must be exceptionally light, staggeringly strong and able to
withstand all projectiles thrown at it inside and outside the
atmosphere. The answer, according to the groups working on designs,
will lie in carbon nanotubes - microscopic particles that can be
formed into fibres and whose mass production is now a focus of Japan's
big textile companies.
According to Yoshio Aoki, a professor of precision machinery
engineering at Nihon University and a director of the Japan Space
Elevator Association, the cable would need to be about four times
stronger than what is currently the strongest carbon nanotube fibre,
or about 180 times stronger than steel. Pioneering work on carbon
nanotubes in Cambridge has produced a strength improvement of about
100 times over the last five years.
Equally, there is the issue of powering the carriages as they climb
into space. “We are thinking of using the technology employed in our
bullet trains,” Professor Aoki said. “Carbon nanotubes are good
conductors of electricity, so we are thinking of having a second cable
to provide power all along the route.”
Japan is hosting an international conference in November to draw up a
timetable for the machine.
Stranger than fiction
“Riding silently into the sky, soon she was 100km high, higher even
than the old pioneering rocket planes, the X15s, used to reach. The
sky was already all but black above her, with a twinkling of stars
right at the zenith, the point to which the ribbon, gold-bright in the
sunlight, pointed like an arrow. Looking up that way she could see no
sign of structures further up the ribbon, no sign of the
counterweight. Nothing but the shining beads of more spiders
clambering up this thread to the sky. She suspected she still had not
grasped the scale of the elevator, not remotely.”
From Firstborn by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen BaxterPublisher: Del Ray
.
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