International Space Elevator Consortium
October 2016 Newsletter

In this Issue:

Editor’s Note
EUSPEC Climber Challenge
President’s Corner
Space Elevator Research
Architecture Note #2
Earth Port Update #2
History Committee Report
Why?

Editor’s Note

Dear Friend,

Welcome to the October 2016 edition of the ISEC Newsletter. In this issue you will find a report on the 2016 European Space Elevator Challenge which took place in Munich last month. In this annual event robotic climbers built by teams from around the world are tested against each other on a simulated 100 meter Space Elevator tether. We are fortunate to have our Eurospaceward Liaison, Martin Lades, sharing a first hand account of the competition in this month's newsletter.

Below you will also find an extensive interview with Yuri Artsutanov, an early pioneer of the Space Elevator and tireless space research innovator. His 1960 article in a Soviet youth magazine is the first published proposal for the modern tapered tether Space Elevator system.

On the systems engineering side of SE design, Vern Hall weighs in on ocean infrastructure for the Earth Port and our Architecture Chair, Micheal Fitzgerald, continues his series on SE Architecture with a write up on the business posibilities of the SE. Research Director John Knapman reports on our efforts to make SE resources readily available for those interested in technical SE research.

All ISEC reports are available FOR FREE in electronic (pdf) format at ISEC.org.

If you want to help us make a space elevator happen, JOIN ISEC and get involved! A space elevator would truly revolutionize life on earth and open up the solar system and beyond to all of us.

Please don’t forget to LIKE US on Facebook, FOLLOW US on Twitter, and enjoy the photos and videos that we’ve posted on Flickr and YouTube, all under our Social Identity of ISECdotORG.

Thank you,

Sandy Curth
ISEC Publicity Director

2016 EUSPEC Climber Challenge 

Tim Wiese and his team from WARR at TUM organized in September 2016, 12th to 15th, the third European Space Elevator Challenge (EUSPEC 2016). WARR, the "Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft fuer Raketentechnik und Raumfahrt," is a student rocket science group, founded in 1962. Today WARR has branched out into topics such as Space Elevators and Hyperloops. TUM, the Technical University of Munich, is one of the largest in Germany counting over 39,000 students in 2015. WARR permits topics to be pursued by multiple generations of students under their own auspices, cross fertilizing between different disciplines, e.g., mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, and physics. External connections exist to the aerospace industry and space experiments.

This time the EUSPEC competition used a big lawn just west of the TUM Garching campus, within walking distance of TUM Maker Space and Business Incubator, where presentations and indoors activities took place. The competition took place over four days plus a spare for weather contingencies. The competition consisted of presentations by the teams explaining their climbers, testing of the climbers for safety, a BBQ session, and press interviews.

The rules specified that the advanced teams climb 100 meters to a balloon, hold for five seconds, then descend. The beginner teams worked on a 20 meter track without the descent requirement. Any number of climbs were possible within a climb time-window as long as the climbing range was cleared before the window ran out. A significant penalty was incurred when the time window was exceeded. Both a rope tether (TENDON Aramid, 10mm diameter) and a tape (Gueth&Wolf Fabric Tape, Teijin Twaron Aramid, 38mmx2mm) were available to choose from and used by the teams. Three advanced teams showed up, two, Aoki Lab A and C, from Aoki Labs, Nihon University Japan all three teams had previous climber construction experience. Two more high school teams, "Meier's Eleven" and "Space Group Hof" came to Munich for the entry level competition under tutelage of their Physics teachers. Unfortunately none of the other interested, already signed-up, international teams made it to the competition, proving again how deadly climber competitions are for rookie teams. Battery based climbs look deceivingly simple in theory, but in practice a lot can always be learned by the competitors.

Highlights from this year's EUSPEC:

- Best weather all summer in Munich during the two climbing days. Find pictures under https://www.facebook.com/EUSPEC and maybe feel sorry you did not participate. :)

- The competition attracted the main sponsorship from an elevator company: Vestner. They sponsored, among other items, the balloon for the climbs and participated in the jury. Interesting discussions included challenges for elevator cables in the real world.

- Lessons learned from previous German or Japanese competitions contributed to this year's climbers and new concepts were tested, e.g., Aoki Lab C's TryForce triangular drive wheel setup. Japanese motto for Space Elevator enthusiasts: "Keep Trying!"

- Most climbers were quick to mount/dismount and behaved well on the tether. The Aoki Lab A's mature Tuna climber was not only fast for the climbs.

- One climber was capable of lifting twice its weight, approaching the ratio asked for in the Edwards study. This is promising for the feasibility condition.

- One climber exceeded 100km/h, the lightened improved successor of the 2012 TUM climber. That original had also been jokingly referred as the "Bismarck", due to weight issues. Of course a climber that fast is very challenging on a balloon setup.

- The combination of both 2x payload and over 100km was not achieved but appeared possible.

- The beginners' level of the competition was a tight race.

-- Meier's Eleven team used a COTS (commercial off the shelf approach) very successfully for their climber, that could due to rapid prototyping navigate both tape and round tethers.

-- The Space Team Hof barely edged by due to a need for more in depth analysis and deeper understanding of drive train requirements.

Special thanks go to all of ours sponsors, Prof. Aoki for the effort to participate again from Japan, and the TUM team that made the event once again very cordial and promising for another follow-up in 2017. Stay tuned.

Links for more information:

http://euspec.warr.de/

https://www.facebook.com/EUSPEC/

Copyright for images: "Harald Wiese - Wiese Foto + Film"

Martin Lades, 
Eurospaceward Liaison

President's Corner

Wake up Every Day  

While I was at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara at the end of September, I was fortunate enough to attend the Elon Musk kickoff of his efforts to make the human species a multi-planet one. He has long dreamed of colonizing Mars and now has the resources to initiate those activities. In his hour lecture to over 2,000 attendees, he showed how he plans on taking about 200 people on each trip starting in about ten years. An amazing vision! During this discussion, he showed that he truly believed in his vision and that he plans on executing the plan over the next few years within SpaceX.

Amazing! The similarity to our activities in the space elevator community is that he wakes up in the morning with a vision and excitement in his step because he knows where he is going. His statement, referencing the colonization of Mars, was:

"It would be an incredible adventure; it would be the most inspiring thing that I can possibly imagine. Life needs to be more than just solving problems every day. You need to wake up and be excited about the future, and be inspired and want to live."

I believe our involvement in the space elevator adventure has a similar motivation to wake up in the morning and look forward to advancing the concept of a massive infrastructure providing low cost access to space. We are fortunate to have such a strong motivation to become involved in this adventure. Welcome to the team venturing out into the future helping to create a path for a multi-planet future. But of course, I am just reflecting what Professor Einstein was quoted as saying so well. 

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead - his eyes are closed."

Keep Climbing my Friends -- 

Pete Swan

Space Elevator Research
 

We're working on a bibliography or reading list to help newcomers to the area find their way around what's already been written. We hope that experienced people will also benefit from seeing a good list of publications in various areas relevant to the space elevator.

First there are the books by Brad Edwards and the study sponsored by the International Academy of Astronautics. Then we look at the early publications that set the scene, including the pioneering Russians Tsiolkovsky and Artsutanov as well as the American Jerome Pearson. He was the first to publish enough detail to enable scientists and engineers to see that the idea could be made to work.

There have been a number of promising publications on strong materials, and we expect continuing progress as techniques advance. There have been several studies on tether dynamics, including modes of oscillation and how to avoid them. The radiation environment has been studied with consideration of its effect on the tether and climbers. There are publications about the space elevator in the atmosphere, particularly the effects of winds and ice.

Rich streams of information can be found in the journal, magazine and conference proceedings sponsored and run by ISEC. There are also many interesting papers on the space elevator at the annual International Astronautical Congress. Acta Astronautica and the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society have published several important papers on relevant topics.

John Knapman
ISEC Director for Research

Architecture Note #2

When it achieves IOC, the Space Elevator transportation system will encounter robust & diverse on-orbit business activity. 

Personal Prologue

This is an Architecture Note. It is the opinion of ISEC's Chief Architect. It represents an effort to document ISEC's ongoing science and engineering discussions, and is one of many to be published over time. Most importantly, it is a sincere effort to be the diary, or the chronicle, of the multitude of our technical considerations as we progress; along the pathway developing the Space Elevator.

Michael A. Fitzgerald

Future Business in Space - Now

ISEC has been at it for a while. Other entities and nation states have been at it for a while also; in fact, much longer than ISEC has.   Over the past quarter century or more, commercial involvement in space has made its mark. Commercial space launch, commercial communications systems, and commercial imaging satellites. The other day, I saw an article about commercial weather data collection; and we have all seen the ventures offering rides into space - Space Tourism!! ISEC is certainly not expert in any of these activities. 

Who are these people? Well, for starters they are our future clients, teammates, competitors, protagonists, and/or even investors. Maybe -- we better find out. Rule #80 applies: Seek to understand before you seek to be understood. We should engage; now.

Future Business in Space - Some future visions, as seen now 

If you look around, one can see what will likely be on-orbit business activities when we show up. I have already mentioned the fledgling efforts for space tourism; flights to the edge of space within 5 or 10 years. We could ask the flight-for-pay guys if they would offer excursion flights from our climber or within our GEO Node Region.

The National Space Society talks of habitats in space before the end of the century
https://space.nss.org/space-settlement-national-space-society/
In services that are far less futuristic, Satellite fleet operator SES (http://www.ses.com/about-ses) says it is encouraging development of technology to enable satellite in-orbit refueling and the replacement of aging payloads. SES is in separate negotiations with MDA of Canada (http://mdacorporation.com/) and Orbital ATK, whose mission extension vehicle is in concept development.

The commercial communications industry is ready to invest in designing satellites for their use; born-enabled. Designed for in-orbit refueling and in-orbit payload swaps. It is said that SES is seeking to extend the life of satellites once on-orbit services are operational. It seems they want these services within 15 years!! Repairable and refuelable space communications systems are being designed now; ready to be repaired and refueled 15 years from now.

The business offerings of the Space Elevator - Some future vision 

The Space Elevator Enterprise - the transportation system plus - would offer a number of services; situational awareness coverage; payload repairing, refueling, transferring and more. At the 2016 Space Elevator Convention, I spoke of services provided by small spacecraft gathered around the client's payload.

Portions of Space Elevator will be facilities - The Earth Port, the Tether, parts of both the GEO NODE Region and the APEX Anchor. Services at these facilities will need defining. Power generation, craft repair, science investigations, data processing and the like are envisioned. There is a business basis here that must be delineated. These services could be delivered by us ... or out sourced ... or owned ... or bought later. Or in a scary scenario, ignored by us now and we miss the boat then.

Further in the future (by the end of the century according to NSS); housing, recreation, safety, health, and entertainment will be needed aloft. All need a business basis to ensure that the commercial enterprise is safe, efficient, and profitable. Its contribution to the future of mankind cannot be a money losing proposition.

In closing 

This is a huge topic and will have great impact on our Enterprise. We cannot take our eye off the fundamental target, a revolutionary space access transportation system .... But ... we need a plan. I will offer more thoughts next month

Fitzer

Earth Port Update #2  

This image shows the basic elements of today's global cargo transportation system: ocean going ships, railroads, highway trucking and air cargo planes. As discussed at the 2016 ISEC Conference, the Space Elevator system will add a third dimension to this well established earthbound logistics system; that is: into and back from space in a safe, reliable and routine way. As previously stated, the facilities and operations of the Space Elevator's Earth Port will be a key link in this expanded logistics chain.

In early September, the existing global transportation system that is generally taken for granted by the consumer and other so-called "end users" became headline news with the announced bankruptcy of South Korea's Hanjin Shipping Company. Around the Pacific Rim, ships carrying containers full of retail products for Christmas shopping were denied entrance to port terminals. Hanjin containers backed up on landside terminals causing unanticipated congestion in major ports. Trucks and intermodal railcars experienced delays and uncertainties as the financial issues surfaced and solutions were worked out. The October 17, 2016 on-line issue of the Journal of Commerce (www.joc.com) has an excellent summary of the on-going situation revolving around the world's 5th largest shipping line.

One of the immediate positive trends coming out of the Hanjin bankruptcy is that various industry leaders are recognizing the need for improved system-wide communications technologies. A number of so-called "tech" firms are seeing the fall-out from the Hanjin collapse as a catalyst for development of new technological tools to improve the interaction between those transporting goods, freight forwarders and shippers. Such improved systems can certainly be expanded to benefit the Space Elevator system.

The Earth Port's Operating Platform that serves the Floating Tether Terminus Platforms could certainly be land-based on a near-Equatorial island or could be a converted ship or off-shore oil platform. However, the primary focus of ISEC's 2015 Report was on the characteristics of a Floating Operations Platform that would be newly designed and constructed specifically for the Space Elevator system. Two recent articles speak encouragingly about up-coming enhancements to the marine design and construction industry.

As reported in the Maritime Executive's daily web updates (www.maritime-executive.com), the European Union has allocated 6.2 million Euros ($7 million) to a three year research project called SHIPLYS (Ship Lifecycle Software Solutions). "The project is a response to the needs of medium-sized enterprises in naval architecture, shipbuilding and ship owning, who in order to survive in the world market require to: improve their capability to reduce the time and costs of design and production; develop the ability to reliably produce better ship concepts through virtual prototyping; and meet the increasing requirements for life cycle cost analysis, environmental assessments, risk assessments and end-of-life considerations as differentiators." "The SHIPLYS consortium is comprised of 12 participants from seven countries that brings together a mix of stakeholder organizations and corresponding expertise." Such software could definitely benefit the design of the Space Elevator floating platforms. Life-cycle cost analysis is often a neglected or under-appreciated factor in heavy construction.

On a grander scale, Saudi Arabia has recently announced that it intends to build a world class and globally competitive shipyard as part of its sweeping economic reform plan. As planned, the facility will become the largest maritime yard in the world. It... "will have a range of facilities including seven fully-equipped dry docks, two basins and five piers, a shiplift system, workshops, warehouses....and facilities for more than 10,000 workers".   The shipyard is currently scheduled to fully operational by the year 2021. Not that the Space Elevator enterprise would necessarily choose to build its floating platforms in Saudi Arabia, but by virtue of there being such a facility, the world-wide competitive market should improve to the benefit of all deep water platform owners. As a point of interest, the planned shipyard's location in the Arabian Gulf is about halfway around the world from the proposed Earth Port location(s) in the Pacific. Using even today's water-borne technologies, transporting completed platforms between such locations could be readily accomplished at a predicable cost.

Vern Hall,
Earth Port Harbor Master

History Committee Report

The ISEC History Committee continues website development and transcriptions of interviews. We can use more help of course so if you have time to write word documents for us while listening to interesting thoughts about the Space Elevator, such as those below from none other than Yuri Artsutanov, please let us know!

Warm welcome,

Paula Smith
ISEC History Chair 
Paula.smith@isec.org

Yuri Artsutanov was an original thinker who extrapolated from his world, Soviet Union of 1960 with space activities expanding rapidly, to one where rockets were not required.  This leap in thinking was remarkable and established the baseline for all further thought experiments on "hanging ropes" beyond geosynchronous altitude.  He has responded to our oral interview questions with the following discussion:

1). After high school, I entered the Leningrad Institute of Technology and graduated as an engineer for fuel processing. In this capacity, I worked for 3 years in the Scientific-Research Institute of the Petrochemical Industry (Petrochem), and then enrolled in the post-graduate school of the Institute of Technology in the Department of Colloid Chemistry. I finished it in 3 years, and after that taught there for a few years. Then I worked as a researcher at the first All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Synthetic Rubber, and then at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute for Abrasives and Grinding. I worked in the latter until my retirement.

During all this time I had no thoughts of a Space Elevator but one day one of my friends told me that the Americans had made a strong rope, capable (as a measure of its strength) of holding 400 km of its body weight. And then I had an idea what you might do with a rope of infinite length.  

The higher you go above Earth the less the force of gravity becomes. 

This is what I wrote in an article that was published in the paper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" in 1960. In it, I wrote that if you can create a very durable material, then it will be possible to make a rope long enough to climb into space without the use of rockets. The fact is that when a rocket is used to escape earth's gravity with high kinetic speed and with great thermal energy it emits tons of incandescent gas, which is practically lost. 

How to travel into space without the use of rockets? It is necessary to construct a very long and very strong rope, which will not fall to Earth as the Earth's centrifugal force will prevent it from doing so. And the longer the rope, the less the force of Earth's gravity and the greater the centrifugal force. And if it is long enough, it will remain taut and with it you can travel into space much cheaper and easier than with rockets. That was my idea and I wrote about it in that article.

2). The greatest interest to me is precisely that rope or tether. How long can it be made, i.e. the higher above the Earth, the greater the centrifugal force, and less graviational pull by the Earth. And so it will remain upright and taut.

3). The biggest challenge - the strength of the rope, so it does not break with the centrifugal force acting on it. It has to have the strength of diamond fibres - this is important. These materials already exist, at least are very close to existing, but as the rope needed must be tens of thousands kilometers long, the amount of material required will be millions of tons, which is very, very expensive. So far, that cost is greater than the cost of the energy that is lost using rockets.

The fibre with the structure of graphite (i.e. the way the atoms are linked in graphite) - it is merely a nano-tube, i.e. material which now exists only in minmal amounts. So the biggest problem - a durable material which is at present very, very expensive. 

Another problem - meteorites in space, which can destroy the tether in a collision. Howeve, current experience with satellites shows that there is a possible solution. 

The source of energy used for the initial start-up could be nuclear.

4). Travel into space using an elevator will be much cheaper than rocket propelled flights. The tether/ elevator will operate for a long time and will be able to transport people and goods. Therefore, if and when the earth can no longer sustain the huge number of people, or if it becomes known that a certain planet will collide with Earth at some future time, or that the Earth will become uninhabitable for some reason in the forseeable future a single lift will be able to transport all the people from Earth to a new planet in two to three years with using a single elevator.

5). I do not know when and who is going to build an elevator into space. I only know that no one is specifically engaged on it in Russia. But in the rest of the world (America, Japan), there are certain groups of enthusiasts who are interested in this issue and are working on it. Most likely it will happen in America, but there is not yet any designated group actively constructing it.

6). What is a space elevator? I explain it to those interested that the idea is very simple i.e if you lift a rope high above earth and then let go it will fall back to Earth. But if it is made very long then on the one hand Earth's gravity will become less and less, and on the other hand the centrifugal force of the Earth's rotation will be more and more. If the rope is very long, i.e. tens of thousands of kilometres, the centrifugal force at such a height becomes greater than the force of gravity of the Earth and the rope will remain upright. Therefore, based on this fact, any device equipped with the necessary power source, can lift the load to the end of the rope, and then, when the Earth points in the appropriate direction, this cargo at the end of the rope can be released and it will fly in the desired direction, depending on the Earth's angle of rotation. It will get beyond earth's gravity and will be free of it.

All the energy required to travel along the rope will be applied to leave Earth. 

This applies to the load on the sling: the sling is propelled through its own inertia depending only on its speed. Similarly the load on the rope, at an altitude of more than 60 000 kms its speed will be equal or greater than 'escape velocity', and it will fly of its own inertia, in the direction depending on the angle of rotation of the Earth. A jet engine, if necessary, may change the direction or operate as a brake but not as an accelerator. 

7). It can be used to search for minerals on other planets, for the tourist industry as well as resettlement from Earth, as it is quite possible that the Earth will become over-populated.

8). We have to encourage industry to produce that material for the rope and thus make the rope a reality.

9). The Space elevator should be the goal and advice for all mankind, and not merely individuals or certain organizations. Everybody should be educated to be altruistic, i.e. not merely to think of themselves and their business, but also about other people. That is to love others as yourself!

Why?

...to go where no one has gone before!

Recently, President Obama published an article "Now is the greatest time to be alive." I agree with him. We are in an exciting time with challenges to be considered and conquered. He even started one paragraph with "because we scienced the heck out of our challenges." Straight out of the movie The Martian. He makes several good points in his paper [check it out on the web]. However, the reason I am approaching you with this series of thoughts is he encouraged several aspect that are very applicable. Here are some of his words that challenge us inside the space elevator community:

"The point is: we need today's big thinkers thinking big. Think like you did when you were watching Star Trek or Star Wars or Inspector Gadget. Think like the kids I meet every year at the White House Science Fair. We started this event in 2010 with a simple premise: We need to teach our kids that it's not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated but the winner of the science fair.

We must continue to nurture our children's curiosity. We must keep funding scientific, technological, and medical research. And above all, we must embrace that quintessentially American compulsion to race for new frontiers and push the boundaries of what's possible. If we do, I'm hopeful that tomorrow's Americans will be able to look back at what we did-the diseases we conquered, the social problems we solved, the planet we protected for them-and when they see all that, they'll plainly see that theirs is the best time to be alive. And then they'll take a page from our book and write the next great chapter in our American story, emboldened to keep going where no one has gone before."

Now that he has laid down the gauntlet, we of the space elevator community must continue to "think big" and challenge the world's youth towards engineering and science. One of the reasons we do space elevators is to push the technology faster towards our future. We MUST "keep going where no one has gone before!"

Dr. Peter Swan
President - ISEC

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