Editor’s Note

Dear Friend,

Welcome to the February 2017 Newsletter. Here you will find current technical content from our engineers and new opportunities to get involved. In this edition we cover two recent presentations in England and the UAE by ISEC team members as well as an in-depth look at Earthport infrastructure. We are also reposting an interview with Dr. Bradley Edwards, one of the true pioneers of Space Elevator research. As always, thank you for reading!

If you missed the news last month, our pilot internship program last Summer was a success and we are now offering opportunities for Summer 2017. More specifically, we are offering two paid positions this summer for undergraduate students. This program is aimed at Freshman and Sophomores in Aerospace fields, but all are welcome to apply. The program is explained in detail below. We look forward to your applications!

As always, you will find notices of several open volunteer positions (a great way to help this project, even if you’re not a scientist or engineer) and a reminder that all ISEC reports are available FOR FREE in electronic (pdf) format at ISEC.org. There is plenty of work to be done!

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

President's Corner             

Keeping the Vision - IOC First

For an idea or a concept to flourish, it must be fed - refined - enhanced - strengthened and nourished. Space elevators began with grand concepts from Tsiolkovsky, Artsutanov and Pearson. Space elevators then became real with the three modern day architectures [Edwards, IAA, Obayashi]. Now is the time for the tough job - maintaining the momentum, increasing the body of knowledge and enhancing the vision. We are maintaining the momentum though our yearly conference and the many activities supported by ISEC, the JSEA, and others. The body of knowledge has been increasing incrementally with each study including the five ISEC year-long studies, the IAA completed study [2013] and its follow-on [estimate to publish in 2018] and the Obayashi design study [2013]. Meanwhile, our current vision is alive and well with the ISEC statement:

A world with inexpensive, safe, routine, and efficient access to space for the benefit of all mankind

Our technical team, lead by Skip Penny - VP of ISEC, is outlining the plan on "how to" build the first and second space elevators, preparing to hand over to a large construction company. Their focus has become - How to reach Initial Operational Capability? This IOC milestone is a remarkable concept and will enable space elevators to change the way the world accesses space. One cannot underestimate the value of reaching IOC in a timely manner. The IOC concept team is made up of members of the ISEC community and reaches out for incremental steps in the development of the space elevator. Two key events come to mind when thinking of Skip's efforts; (1) publishing of the first ISEC study report on Space Debris and the Space Elevator with the realization that the problem was manageable, and (2) his contributions to the Architecture study and the refinement of the definition of IOC.

IOC is the critical first major phase of the total development of a space elevator. When we reach IOC we will have businesses appearing and significant movement of current and future payloads to space. IOC will be the incredible leap from rockets to efficient lift of payloads to mission orbits. In next month's newsletter we will discuss the term Pre-IOC, a capability of early commercial services at less than IOC rates and masses.

Keep Climbing my Friends

Pete Swan

ISEC President Presents in Dubai

Dr. Peter Swan [President of ISEC] and Dr. Cathy Swan [ISEC Ribbon Rider Member] were sponsored to inspire the youth of the United Arab Emirates for careers in space, engineering and science. The UAE Space Agency conducted a conference entitled "Project Space" enhancing the image of the UAE in Space. Project Space was a two-day student oriented conference focusing on the future of space and how the youth of Dubai and the UAE could expand their horizons. The focus was towards training their youth to: A) embrace National Pride, B) ensure integrity, C) focus on Excellence, D) encourage commitment, E) develop collaboration, and F) encourage Innovation. The vision of the conference was shown often as: Think - Inspire - Discover.

Their new Space Agency and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center are impressive. They operate two satellites from their Space Center. They are building one satellite inside the Center and have a new commitment to design, build and launch to Mars a scientific satellite able to collect world class [oops - Mars class] scientific data on the atmosphere of Mars. These are not small challenges and they have successfully achieved their goals so far. The Project Space activity was to ensure that their future Space Center members have excellent motivation to study engineering and scientific topics preparing for their role in the future of space inside the UAE.

Dr. Cathy Swan's panel had four amazing women and a moderator. They were: Swan - President of SouthWest Analytic Network and co-author of IAA and ISEC Space Elevator study reports, Dr. Sara Al Maini - Math and Communications expert at the MBRSC, "Astronaut Abby" - leader of The Mars Generation Foundation, and Bakhita Al Mheiri - Emirates Airline's first woman, and youngest (21) pilot ever. The whole two hours was well received by the audience and excited so many young women [and men] that it was in the news that night.

Dr. Peter Swan's talk was entitled "Take the Elevator to Space." The MBRSC has been intrigued by the concept of space elevators with an article in their magazine [Majarat, Sept 2016 - "Why fly when you can take the space elevator?"]. The presentation went very well with many questions - they had to cut it off and have additional questions in a side room. The IAA books that we brought were gone rapidly with many autographs asked for. Amazing.

The day after the conference was spent at the Space Center, which turned out to be a remarkable facility. The two Assistant Director Generals - Science & Technology, and Corporate Support, Administrative and Financial, hosted us. The briefings and tour were marvelous with insights into their advanced development techniques for space systems. Their clean rooms, assembly areas and local testing facilities are as good as any I have been associated with.

Dubai

Left to right: Salem Humaid AlMarri, Peter Swan, Cathy Swan, Noureddine Molikechi, Mona Ahmed AlQamzi.

The UAE Space Agency and the MBRSC have taken on the grand challenge of designing - building - testing [all in-house] and then launching a probe to the planet Mars. [Only four nations have been successful - US, Soviet Union, European Space Agency & India while two nations have failed in their attempts] This is a remarkable move for the MBRSC and one that will push their capabilities to the point where they are rapidly looking for, and capturing, experience, engineering approaches, and refining the special knowledge needed to achieve this grand challenge. The Hope Probe takes the UAE Space Agency and the MBRSC to another level achieved by an only few countries.

Student Competition In Space Solar Power

The International Space Solar Power Student Project has begun and is looking for student teams. The need to advance the goals of STEM (science, technology, engineering & mathematics) education is especially important in encouraging the emergence of future generations of researchers, technologists and innovators in the space sector in general, and in particular in the special fields of expertise required for the successful exploration, development and eventual settlement of space. The critical topic of Space Solar Power (SSP) - harvesting solar energy in space affordably and delivering it to markets in space and on Earth - has been studied as a vision for Humanity's future for almost 50 years. The purpose of the competition is to engender new, meaningful and credible student research projects in the broad field of Space Solar Power, and to support the presentation of the best of the various projects in an international forum including explicit recognition of the best research with a formal prize.

The International Space Solar Power Student Competition Prize will have four parts: (a) travel and registration support for selected semi-finalist teams to attend the annual ISDC (see below); (b) a formal certificate of recognition for selected semi- finalist teams (as a team, and for each team member, including the faculty advisor); (c) travel and registration support for one or two selected finalist team(s) to attend the annual IAC SSP Symposium (see below); (d) a formal certificate and a plaque for the selected winning team(s) (the plaque for the team, and a certificate for each participant, including the faculty advisor)..

For additional information, please contact us at:

sspstudentcompetition@gmail.com

The first deadline for participation in the 2017 competition is the development and submission of an abstract for a proposed student research project by not later than March 29, 2017.

BIS "Future Histories and Forecasting" Presentation Highlights

Two of our Research Team members, Dr. John Knapman and Peter Robinson, presented on the "future history" of the space elevator last month. We will be sharing their slides a few at a time over the next few newsletters. The more we work together to share knowledge about the SE the sooner these futures will be reality!

History
History

ISEC History Committee

Below you will find excerpts from our interview with Dr. Bradley Edwards, one of the early pioneers of Space Elevator Research. The research he and his team conducted at NIAC (NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts) has paved the way for much of the work done by ISEC researchers and others over the past 15 years. Enjoy!

Paula Smith
ISEC History Committee Chair

_______________________________

Mark Dodrill:   What are you doing now?

Bradley Edwards:    I've got a company right now that makes carbon nanotubes. Which our thing, the other thing, is basically required to get the space elevator moving. That's sort of the technological challenge that people point to and say well we don't have the material, we don't have the carbon nanotubes. They sort of say that, and that's sort of slows down actually doing much more on the elevator. But as I was just saying is there's been a couple of papers. I forget where they're out of. I think they're actually out of China. There's one where they've made carbon nanotubes at about a 190, 200 gigapascals which is over three times what you need for the space elevator. There are people who are growing them 55 centimeters in length. We grow them a number of millimeters. We've grown them up to 6 millimeters. And they're high strength carbon nanotubes. In reality all you need is to get to about 20 millimeters. Then you'd be able to spin all the threads you want for an elevator. You know if somebody actually wanted to do the space elevator they could put in, and it wouldn't even be a large chunk of money, but they would put in a chunk of money and get to where they needed to in carbon nanotubes. So it's more a matter of will and interest than it is of any actual technological hurdle. If we had the investment, our carbon nanotubes are going into composites and other things. If we had the investment to make the long ones for spinning, we'd probably redirect our resources to do that. I'm not sure how long it would take, but it wouldn't be very long. In our current system we may even be able to do it in a year's time simply by running the system longer. We may be able to get there. We haven't tried it yet. Because our system isn't optimized for that. It'd be sort of a pain to do it but we could. Right now we don't have a real need to do it.

Mark:   Right, you're sort of angling in a different direction than directly to space elevator.

Bradley:   Yeah, we have customers we actually have to ship things to.

Mark:   Right, make some money, yeah.

Bradley:   But if we got them ¾ of an inch we could send them off to Don Rush off in North Carolina, a guy we've worked with. He had spun some carbon nanotubes for us prior when we worked in Cincinnati. Spun a mixture of polyester and carbon nanotubes. With just a very small percentage of carbon nanotubes, I forget what it was, doubled the strength of fiber or whatever it was. He said they're very easy to spin. So it's not a problem. So once we get them to ¾ of an inch or an inch he's waiting with baited breath over in North Carolina anxious to get his hands on some so he can spin. You can get at 90% of the strength of the individual fibers into a spun thread.

Mark:   Ninety percent.

Bradley:   Yeah, that's what they do with cotton and whatever else. If you've got carbon nanotubes that are twice the strength, not even three times, but twice the strength of what's needed, and you go to spin them you now have something that's almost twice the strength of what you need. It's very conceivable with of what we got. It could be done very soon if we wanted to. There's all kinds of politics and everything else that run around that got more issues than technological.

Mark:   So could you give us a little more background on kind of what got you going down this road in the first place?

Bradley:   Yeah, I was at Los Alamos. I'd been at Los Alamos since 1990. I worked on advanced technology. I was one of the co-leads on the spacecraft down there. We were developing advanced technology like superconducting tunnel junctions. We built the world's first optical cryocooler which is a big thick piece of glass. You hit it with a high powered LASER and it cools down.. I built that one in a lab and tested it. People had been trying to build it since 1928. Every decade someone had tried to build it and had failed. Technology kept coming closer and closer. Then we were able to do it mid-nineties, ninety five or something published it in Nature. Turns out Eric Cornell, who got the Nobel Prize up in Colorado, he was working on it at exactly the same time we were. But he went a different route. Right after we published it in Nature we got a nice letter from him saying basically "you beat me."

Mark:   So you've always been kind of interested in technology and pushing the boundaries and learning new things?

Bradley:   Yeah, so that was sort of what I was doing, I was always sort of developing stuff. It came around into the nineties. I saw a book, it was out of, I think it was out of NASA, out of Marshall, possibly out of the report that Dave Smitherman did saying that it would be 300 years to never before we built the space elevator. David Smitherman had headed up a group who did a report on it. But they had based their effort on stuff like Arthur C. Clarke's work. Basically elevators that had been discussed to date at that time. Those were all huge elevators ten meters in diameter. They talked about capturing asteroids, mining them and extruding it down. And that's when I said we're not building this anytime soon. When I saw that, I sort of, I knew about carbon nanotubes at that time. You know, about 30 second calculation in your brain tells you that a ten meter diameter carbon nanotube cable would be able to lift the top ten feet of Washington state and all the buildings on it. It's like there's no way you need that. So what do you actually need to make something that's viable? I started looking into it. It's like well, let's say you want to launch twenty tons, which is what the shuttle does. You need a thread, you need a string. You don't need a huge cable. If you got a string and you could actually use it, how heavy would it be? What would it take to launch it? Then how do you use the string? How do you climb it? That's where I started. When I started looking at it just briefly, well, all of this sounds like there should be a way to get around each of these hurdles. So I started looking into it. I just kept looking, and I sort of worked through each of the details each of the issues as they popped up. I write a brief paper for Acta Astronautica in the nineties which basically had an outline for this. Obviously not in all the details, because the paper was only eight pages long or whatever. But that was sort of where it started. I had a lot of the details of the individual components. The ribbon, the climbers, how you power, various things like that. That one I basically rewrote into a proposal and sent it to NIAC. That was 99 or some such thing. As Gentry Lee tells it, he was on the committee that was looking at the NIAC proposals and he said somebody basically picked up my proposal and said Space Elevator, and like this, straight for the garbage. And Gentry says whoa, whoa, whoa and he sort of grabs it half way to the garbage can. I don't know if physically that was the actual situation or if it was just, they were all reading and said no we need to look at it.   He said they started looking at it, and decided, hey there's actually real details in here. No this isn't a massive cable that we can't build, this is actually something we may do. That's when they gave me the Phase One Award for the NIAC. I started working on that when I was down in Los Alamos. It was actually very interesting. It was right about that time that a fire had gone through Los Alamos. And burned a third of the town including the quad where I was living. And I happened to be out of the country at the time that it burned so...I had an overnight bag in the truck.  The overnight bag is what I carried to...wherever I was.  And the truck had been parked at the airport.  So everything else was gone.  But when I got back, basically everything else was rented or gone at that point, so I ended up in a three or four hundred square foot studio or some such thing.  Half a bedroom kind of place.  Basically, that's where I did the Phase 1.  I was working at Los Alamos at the time, and after that I was...called whoever I needed.  Boeing for their lasers, or various other people for their various components, and talked to them.  So I was working at Los Alamos and then doing another job on the side doing this. So I had free time and whatever else.  So that's what I did for the six months down there.  And then on May 9, I had turned it in, and I gave my final presentation around then.

Mark:   What was their reaction?

Bradley:   It was very interesting.  Rob Casanova said, "Well, we need you to come out and give a presentation on your work."  And it was like, okay, how long do you want me to present?  He's like, "Well, present it all."  He said all of it, yeah.  However long it takes.  I was like okay, if you really want that.  So I went out and started the presentation in the morning.  And then we broke for lunch after a couple of hours, and I continued to present through the afternoon.  So it was basically an all-day talk  

Mark:   At the end of the day, what did people have to say about it?

Bradley:   They were very happy.  And very impressed.  They thought it was an incredible job.  They were extremely skeptical when I first showed them my proposal.  But after this, they were very happy with it.  And the space elevator, before they canceled NIAC the space elevator was always on their front sheet when they went to present to people about that.  

Mark:   Sort of a poster child?

Bradley:    A poster child, yeah, saying, "This is what our funding has done."  You've heard about this.  And so it was always showing up.  I would see them present and my elevator would be on the front page.  So it was good.  And they were very happy.  I went to a couple of their conferences, and presented various things.  And then after that, I basically wanted to do something different, and I met my current wife.  So we left Los Alamos in 1990 and basically headed down to the Caribbean to live with her for a few months.  But literally as I was walking out the door, the day before I left Los Alamos, I got a notification that I had gotten Phase Two.  And so of course some people at Los Alamos weren't too excited to see me walk out the door with the $500,000.  Then that started the Phase Two.  So I did that for a few months down in the Caribbean.  We came up, we spent a month in Russia, where she is actually from, we spent a couple months in Wisconsin where my family is from, and we were looking around at where we wanted to live.  And then we ended up here in Seattle.  And during that time I was working on the Phase Two.  And doing additional work and additional details.  So the Phase One, the real bulk of the material, and then Phase Two was going into the time consuming details of various aspects of it.  The cleanup, clean up this part, clean up that part sort of thing.  And so I started doing that here in Seattle.  And that was also when Eric Westen contacted me about turning the Phase One into a book.  And then, so Eric and I were going back and forth on re-writing that.  That's how that got published.  I wasn't really thinking too much about making it into a book, but he called me up and I said, "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." I didn't know Eric.  He called me out of the blue.  He said, "I read your report.  It's great.  It really is good.  It needs to be re-written, and it'd be great for a book."  Great!  Excellent!  I don't have the time to do that..  He's like, "I do."  So it's like, OK.

The space elevator, all that work on the Phase One and the Phase Two, you can see all the people that did the various components in here.  And there's lots of people I called and would ask, "How do you do this and this?  What is the best motor for this?  How would you spin these?  How would you get the laser to do this?"  I was calling all over the place.  There's a long list in there and I doubt that I got everybody, but I was calling all over the place.  And that's what most of it was.  I didn't meet any of those people that I worked with in person until afterwards.  I didn't even meet Eric until after the book was published.

I never met him until the conference later, or something.  And that was the first time I even met him. So it was all done in this virtual, telecommuting type thing.

Mark:   That's probably typical now, I mean, you're communicating with so many people.

Bradley:   Yeah.  And anything like this, it sort of has to be.  In companies, like ours, I'm working with people directly, hands-on kind of thing.  And that's sort of the way it has to be in that.  But when you're developing a concept and doing the designs, and stuff like this, unless you've got the entire team right there...I spent my time picking the best people on the planet that I could find to answer questions.  There was no point in me talking to some guy two blocks down just because he was two blocks down.  It was much better for me to call the world's expert in...English, or something, and pick his brain.  And I had no problem, you know, every single person I called, they were more than happy to just spill everything, you know?  Freely.  Explaining the work and how it's going, what we're doing, stuff like that.  I'm sure I got more than my fair share of intellectual property sort of spilled out onto me.

Mark:   Right.  You said the reaction in the scientific community, was pretty well received, right?

Bradley:   Yeah, the people I was talking to, I'd go through exactly what I was doing, and it went very well.  And I gave a bunch of talks.  Before I left Los Alamos, I gave a talk down there.  And it was probably the most critical audience, because they were my friends.  People I knew, and they knew me.  So I gave a presentation, and of course they were just, you know, harassing me.  But basically, by the end of it, you could see all the attitudes change.  They started seeing the information and it's like, "Oh, Brad spent some time on this."  And by the end of it, my boss raises his hand and he says, "Can you let me know when your IPO is?  When you actually do this, let me know!"

Member of Audience:  I'll be investing, yeah.

EARTH PORT Update #5                                                                  

Earthport update #5

Current considerations outlined.

One of my personal goals for 2017 is to make an effort to introduce the Earth Port and Space Elevator concepts to the port and harbor community and the maritime shipping industry. I realize that at best, this will be a "seed-planting" endeavor with future pay-offs as ISEC continues to mature. With respect to the Port industry, I plan to use my continuing participation in the Facilities Engineering Committee of the American Association of Port Authorities ("AAPA"). This Washington, D.C. based organization represents all of the deep water ports and harbors in the Western Hemisphere, vital links in the world-wide transportation chain. I will present more information on my efforts with this important organization in future monthly updates.

Recently, a small step was taken in the direction of exposing the Earth Port concept (see above image) to the maritime industry through the worldwide publication: Sea Technology magazine. For over 50 years, Sea Technology has been the worldwide information leader for marine business, science and engineering. Their stated goal is to provide a global audience with current information on the various segments of the worldwide marine/ocean industry through state-of-the-art and application articles, news columns, and staff reports. Complete information on this organization may be found on its website at: www.sea-technology.com. In order to augment the monthly publication and distribution of the printed magazine, Sea Technology recently initiated a daily blog under the direction of Managing Editor Aileen Torres-Bennett. The February 6, 2017 post was entitled: The Space Elevator is Becoming a Reality. It featured the image presented above and the following text:

"In our July 2015 issue, we ran a fascinating piece by Dr. Peter A. Swan on the Space Elevator. It may seem a fantastical concept, but it's well on its way in terms of development within the first half of this century.

In Dr. Swan's article, he discusses the marine node of the Space Elevator project. We caught up with the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) to see where the project stands at the moment, and Vernon E. Hall, Earth Port Harbor Master of ISEC, said the marine node concept has since been expanded and renamed as the "Earth Port".

Hall brought us up to date with the latest from the annual ISEC Conference in August 2016, during which several points were emphasized:

  1. The Space Elevator will add a third dimension to existing and well-established earthbound transportation systems and cargo logistics chains.

  2. The Earth Port facilities will serve as a key intermodal link in this expanded transportation system.

  3. Design, build and operation of the Earth Port will require expertise in several maritime-related fields that are not typically within the purview of the aerospace industry, e.g., the discipline of naval architecture to design the floating platforms.

  4. A variety of modern ocean-going vessels and regional aircraft will be utilized in the day-to-day activities of the Earth Port."

As stated above, this blog in a widely distributed industry publication is but one step in getting the word out to appropriate entities that will support development and operations of the Earth Port in the future.

Vern Hall,
Earth Port Harbor Master

Architecture Note #6

We need "Sequences."

Taking the Space Elevator from NOW, to THEN, and BEYOND.

 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

From NOW, to THEN, and BEYOND.

We envision moving from NOW - holding a vision of the Space Elevator; to THEN - a marvelously engineered space transportation system; and BEYOND - to a gloriously robust enterprise in a Galactic Harbour

Introduction

This Architecture note will be the first of two or three notes that will discuss what "Sequences" is about and how it is at the heart of our Technology Maturation and Engineering Validation process. This process is the source of our technical and intellectual fuel. Many of the early steps will be repeated until we "get it" and until we "get it right"; the essential definition of perseverance. By "get it", I mean engineering validation. By "getting it right", I mean a Space Elevator transportation system design. Let's talk about the first few steps in the Sequences.

"Sequences" - You need to know what it is and why.

I figure that most of you know that no one has ever built a Space Elevator before. Yet as one part of us talks to another part of us; we aren't daunted by that at all. Let me explain. You build something that has never been built before by persevering; relentlessly. We must prevail. We must not fail our vision. But, we need a playbook!  This Architecture Note is about that perseverance playbook. We call that playbook "Sequences".

The idea of Sequences is simple. Take a technology that is needed in the Space Elevator. Then work with it until it matures to become a valid engineering approach. Then take the engineering approach and build it into something that operates. Then take that thing that operates and make it operate good enough to be part of the Space Elevator transportation system. Those of us who have built these "first ever" sorts of things, figure it'll take 8 steps è 8 steps in Sequence.

The next few Architecture notes will discuss the 8 Steps. I want all to know how we will persevere; together. The official published paper can be downloaded. It was presented as a paper at International Astronautics Congress 2016; September 29 2016; IAC-16-D4.3.8.

Space Elevator "Sequences" - Here are the 8 steps.

  1. Pathfinder

  2. Seed Tether

  3. Single String Testing

  4. Operational Testing,

  5. Limited Operational Capability (LOC),

  6. Initial Operational Capability (IOC),

  7. Capability On Ramps leading to FOC

  8. Full Operational Capability (FOC)

First, start the design process for the Space Elevator Transportation system

This is really Step Zero. The early design activity of the Space Elevator development will take a few years; reaching a system design that we are confident can be achieved. Part of that design process will require that relevant technologies be identified within the design. As discussed in ISEC report #2014 -1; a large number of tests, analyses, inspections, simulations, and experiments are needed to generate the technical information necessary for the development process. In addition to the planning approach and because of the breadth of the test taxonomy portrayed in 2014 -1; a common, orderly, stepped process is required; the "Sequences".  For that, ISEC's Technology Maturation programs will call for any number of specific "Pathfinder" efforts to examine the validity of the various technologies. That is where we enter the Sequences; moving from Step Zero to Step #1.

Sequences #1 - Pathfinder

The technologies identified in the early design process will be examined in variety of engineering tests, experiments, or modeling & simulation forms in order to validate that the technology can be molded into something that works. As a particular technology completes its transit of Sequence #1, we envision an on-orbit flight demonstration; a Pathfinder flight. The Pathfinder flight may have several objectives for the topic at hand but the primary one is to assess the technology in the space environment and some other stress environments.. It is already clear that a Tether Pathfinder flight is needed; but we expect on-orbit Pathfinder flights of other parts of the Space Elevator. One could envision Pathfinding an approach on which the Japanese Space Elevator team seeks collaboration. Successful Pathfinder flights make investors interested.

Sequences #2 - Seed Tether / Seed Events

This is an important step in the Sequences. It represents the transition from technology to a valid, workable engineering manifestation of our vision; or some important portion of our vision. This Seed phase of the Space Elevator development will not be a one and done demonstration but rather a substantive and thorough technology readiness assessment and engineering technique validation. Much of what we currently envision as parts of the Space Elevator has never been built before. As a consequence, many of the future seed events have not yet been defined.

We see, but are not intimidated by, our modular view of things; as discussed in Architecture Note #1. That vision of the Space Elevator being assembled using unmanned, robotic operations will be achieved only with practice. These repetitive robotic assembly practices will be birthed in Sequence #2. The Seed activities will be the basis for safe and efficient operating procedures. The assembly of key portions of the Space Elevator transportation system will be initially portrayed in Sequence #2. Successful Seed events make investors more interested.

Sequences have sequences

At this point I must emphasize that most everything to be accomplished in each Sequence step will be done a few times. Tests will be repeated until we get it right; and repeated again to be sure. In my many years of chasing unique system solutions, I feared "random success" more than a failure. In many instances we will repeat success to show it was not a random success.

Each Sequence phase will have its own sequence. Each effort to add functions to the Space Elevator will levy specific testing; in order to ensure that operational validity is retained when the capability is added. Generally, each Sequence will have a sub-sequence like this:

  1. Entrance criteria review

  2. Simulation of the tests to be conducted

  3. Validation of risk reduction and test data collection

  4. Execution of the sequence phase tests

  5. Assessment of the performance data collected

  6. Repeat as necessary

  7. Exit criteria review; proceed to the next Sequence phase

In closing - Sequences have consequences

This is a huge topic and will have great impact on our efforts. It is our long term perseverance playbook. It will take us to our Space Elevator vision. We will learn that Sequences has consequences; good ones. In the March newsletter, I will discuss the next steps of Sequences.

Michael A. Fitzgerald 

Why?

Mouth of the Tiger

Recently I was in the mouth of a tiger - or in your terms - I spent a full day at a company who builds and launches rockets [ULA - Denver]. I was invited to the CisLunar business development conference with about 60 other space professionals. I was invited to the activity as an expert on space mineral resources [helped publish a 3 year IAA study on the topic]. As such, the role as president of ISEC did not come up during the invitation process. The day focused upon:

George Sowers has stated, "water is everywhere" in our solar system. With this introduction, the topic of commercial successes in the CIS-Lunar arena becomes reasonable. Hundreds of people can work in the CIS-lunar arena conducting commercial businesses such as selling fuel, water and resources. The full day of discussions focused on how to develop businesses beyond LEO. The one key element was the realization that mining water [at asteroids or surface of the Moon] will lead to commercial sales at many locations.

My point for this newsletter is NO ONE ever mentioned space elevators until the end of the day when I brought up the topic. The realization [not surprising] is that major launch companies are NOT considering this alternative. The ULA full day workshop was very innovative and addressed many incredible ideas and concepts to be pushed forward; however, it did not address alternate approaches for access to space.

Our mission at ISEC is once again reinforced as the necessary task of increasing the body of knowledge on space elevators and preparing for the maturation of the necessary material. Until that time, we must keep the dream alive and work to be prepared to accelerate our activities.

Dr. Peter Swan  

President - ISEC

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