Elon Musk has scoffed at the idea, saying that until someone builds a structure made of carbon nanotubes longer than a footbridge, he won’t consider the possibility of a space elevator. Not everyone believes that a space elevator will be built as easily as Obayashi does. Before the primary station there would be additional hubs at altitudes where one could experience the level of gravity on the moon and on Mars, which would be ideal for conducting experiments for future missions. Further out would be the anchor at an altitude of about 60,000 miles. The space station that would serve as the final destination would be situated at about 22,000 miles above Earth. One structure designed by the company, the TOKYO SKYTREE, is the largest free-standing tower in the world, at just over 2,000 feet.Īccording to the company’s plan, there will be a series of anchors to counterbalance the elevator. Obayashi is a massive construction and development firm in Tokyo that is responsible for a number of large scale engineering feats across the world. Although over the past several years, advancements in AI like ARES (Autonomous Research System), allow scientists to let robots conduct, analyze and test hundreds of experiments autonomously, adding to the chance that nanotubes will be scaled within Obayashi’s timeline. The company says that it holds competitions among university students to encourage them to study and advance the technology. The Obayashi Corporation believes it can have the space elevator functioning by 2050 if carbon nanotubes become scalable by 2030. Also the setup would only require roughly the strength of a strong man to hold the system in place. Laine’s idea proposes that rare earth elements could be harvested and brought back to earth, creating a booming space mining operation. On the moon there’s little gravity and no ice or wind, presenting ideal conditions for an elevator. Laine wants to first build a space elevator on the moon, because a weaker material could be used for the cables, like Kevlar. One man who has devoted his life to studying the viability of space elevators is Michael Lane, and he’s raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter to work on models and prototypes. The elevator could cut the cost of transporting materials into orbit by a factor of 100, which could propel space programs and colonization efforts at an astounding rate. The trip would take about a week and function as a platform for scientific research, a launch point for space travel, and a mode of space tourism. For propulsion, it might be powered by a laser shot up from Earth that would supply it with the energy needed to climb the cables. The elevator cabin itself would ascend at about 120 miles per hour and carry a maximum capacity of about 30 people. In this scenario, an object remains in orbit over a single point on the equator, an obvious necessity for a space elevator to be feasible. The station would reside in what’s called Clarke orbit, or geostationary orbit, named after the sci-fi author himself. Once those tubes are scaled, which Obayashi believes will happen by 2030, an anchor would be built on Earth somewhere along the equator that would attach to the space station and a counterweight further up. At the moment, we’ve only been able to create a few-centimeter-long stretch of them. The only problem is that we haven’t quite figured out how to scale the technology. Dangling down from the station would be a series of cables made of carbon nanotubes – a real material developed 20 years ago that is stronger than steel by a factor of nearly 10. The elevator would essentially consist of a space station tethered between an anchor and a counterweight in Earth’s orbit. The biggest hurdle at this point is developing a material strong enough to build cables 60,000 miles long and capable of transporting 100-ton cargo. What is a Space Elevator?Ī space elevator is hypothetical for now, but Japanese construction giant, Obayashi Corporation, believes the necessary technology to build one could be ready in the next 10 to 12 years. Now, Clarke’s vision may soon come to fruition when a Japanese company begins work on its own space elevator. Clarke, wrote a book titled The Fountains of Paradise, in which a future society builds an elevator to space from a tiny island on the equator. In 1979, famed science fiction author, Arthur C.
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