Editor’s Note

Dear Friend,

Welcome to the May 2017 Newsletter. Here you will find current technical content from our engineers and new opportunities to get involved. In this edition we share an extensive interview with Space Elevator Enthusiast Micheal Schaeffer and the final piece of Micheal Fitzgerald's three part analysis of "Sequences" in the SE system. We are also excited to announce a call for presentations/papers the Space Elevator Symposium at the British Interplanetary Society in November. President Pete Swan continues to offer up inspiration for progress in the SE world. As always, thank you for reading and lending your support in the development of Space Elevators!

As you may have noticed we have a new logo! While it is not a perfectly to scale representation of the current standard SE model, we believe it offers a more accurate, exciting and inspiring vision of a Space Elevator future than our previous logo. Please let us know what you think by emailing sandy.curth@isec.org. Thank you.

If you missed the news, 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 by May 15th! If you have yet to apply, now is the time!

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 

Massively Transformative Purpose (MTP)

I believe we are living a MTP with our ISEC Vision: A world with inexpensive, safe, routine, and efficient access to space for the benefit of all mankind.

As one who believes we are going to change the world for the betterment of humanity, I encourage our team to recognize that we indeed are going to impact the future, for the good. The term MTP is being bantered around without recognition of ISEC and its vision. Lets go out there and talk to our friends and present the concept wherever we can. Alison Berman stated:

"Eradicating diseases, mastering flight, near-instant global communication, going to the moon - humans have developed a taste for making the impossible possible. Though we still face a daunting list of global challenges, we've learned that science and technology can uncover big solutions. But mind-blowing breakthroughs don't just happen. They take teams of bright and dedicated people chipping away at the problem day and night. They take a huge amount of motivation, toil, and at least a few failures. To solve our biggest problems, we need people to undertake big tasks. But what drives someone to take on such a difficult, uncertain process and stick with it? There's a secret to motivating individuals and teams to do great things: It's purpose.

Social movements, rapidly growing organizations, and remarkable breakthroughs in science and technology have something in common-they're often byproducts of a deeply unifying purpose. There's a name for this breed of motivation. It's called massive transformative purpose or MTP. Setting out to solve big problems brings purpose and meaning to work-it gives us a compelling reason to get out of bed in the morning and face another day. Peter Diamandis likes to say, 'Find something you would die for, and live for it.'"

By Alison E. Berman - The Motivating Power of a Massive Transformative Purpose, Nov 08, 2016 https://singularityhub.com/2016/11/08/the-motivating-power-of-a-massive-transformative-purpose/  

Keep Climbing my Friends --

Pete Swan

ISEC at ISDC

Join us in St. Louis - 27 May 2017 as ISEC
leads a Space Elevator Track at the NSS's
International Space Development Conference

Come join us in St. Louis at the end of the month to participate, question, and contribute to the space elevator excitement. We are running a series of lectures in the space elevator track [see below], working with students, giving spare talks here and there, and meeting as authors of our ISEC study reports. Please check out the events by going to the webpage for the conference: http://isdc2017.nss.org
In addition, we will have an exhibit space where we will be answering questions and showing a model of space elevators.

The fun and excitement at this conference reaches far beyond space elevators with its coverage of most activities focused upon movement of humanity off-planet  The four days cover most every topic of interest to include: asteroids, lunar settlements, low cost access to space, next generation space enthusiasts, many roads to space, space settlements, space solar power, Mars exploration and settlement, space law and space medicine.

The Saturday space elevator track is:

BIS Symposium on Space Elevators

We are excited to announce a series of talks at The British Interplanetary Society coming up in November of 2017.  Two of our Research Team members, Dr. John Knapman and Peter Robinson, presented on the "future history" of the space elevator last month and have arranged for a more extensive dive into SE technology and progress for a day of talks and discussions on November 7, 2017 at the. In addition to Peter and Dr. Knapman, Martin Lades, founder of Liftport will be presenting.

We also invite you to submit presentation proposals for talks of up to 40 minutes duration on topics related to space elevators. The scope may include marketing, finance, management, history (past and future) and science fiction, as well as scientific and technological topics such as materials research, climbers, power transmission, simulation and space debris.  Presentations will also be considered on associated technologies: these may include other techniques for establishing fixed infrastructure such as the orbital ring and versions of the launch loop. The more we work together to share knowledge about the SE the sooner these futures will be reality!

Please send details of your proposed presentation to research@isec.org before end-July 2017.  Proposal acceptance will be by mid-September 2017. Thank you.  

Space Elevator History

Summary of Mark Dodrill Interview with Michael Schaeffer 
(Computer Systems and Service Engineer with Microsoft)

Michael's first encounter with Space Elevator was a Popular Science magazine article sometime in the late 90s or early 2000. He still has the copy and remembers teaching the home school coop about the Space Elevator. The article inspired him to do a lot of research and got him excited about the Space Elevator.

The one aspect of the Space Elevator that he finds most interesting is the idea of a consistent and very safe mode of transport to outside of the Earth's gravity. Just as in the early days of aviation people viewed flying an airplane as a crazy and very dangerous with an expectation of dying but they flew anyway. A lot of people may view "hopping" on rockets for a $100 million, taking a view and coming back down again as dangerous but they don't think twice about hopping into an elevator that takes them to the top of the Sears Tower in about 1.5 minutes! That's a thousand feet on a straight shaft, straight below your feet. Nobody thinks about that; you fly 30 to 40 thousand feet in a 'plane and nobody thinks about that. The Space Elevator should be at least as safe and commonplace.

Michael suggests that geo-political arguments will change once you are outside of that sphere; you look back and you understand that it is one planet. He thinks that the Space Elevator will unify and change the world. There will still be conflicts, but also coming together with the Space Elevator transcending these "petty squabbles". For example, political differences in the US were put aside for a while after 9/11. Looking back at the planet  would start you thinking about all the threats out there in the cosmos and then you would realize that we need to get together to protect our Space Elevators.

Another aspect of the Space Elevator Michael sees is as enabling technologies, for example minerals gathering and asteroid mining. 

He agrees that exploration is 'coded in our genes'. For example, people go 'spelunking' down caves with reasonable expectations that they will be able to make it out alive. They hope they can but never know for sure, but they do it anyway.

Asked who he thinks will fund the Space Elevator, he suggests it will be the private sector but with some government funding. The Japanese are serious about the Space Elevator but have been approaching it slowly with a structured and measured approach over the last three years. If they succeed the US will be going along for the ride unless they compete with the Japanese. He thinks the Space Elevator will be built sooner rather than later in spite of lacking technologies we don't yet understand. He suggests that there will be quantum leaps in technology which will suddenly make things easier. The problems we view as insurmountable today will be commonplace in the next few years. For example, thirty years ago there was no such thing as the Internet; now practically everyone id on the Internet. It was all mainframe computers, now we have Cloud computers. In relation to the Space Elevator, carbon nano-tubes are a key technology and very difficult to manufacture, but soon they will be commonplace. We will have that structural strength and be able to move into the carbon nano age as described by Dr. Loudensure. Michael thinks a possible time frame would be 2050.

Explaining the Space Elevator to someone who has never heard of it, for example talking to colleagues at his office about the Space Elevator Conferences, generates an interest in what is being done and why. What can it do for them, what are the technologies it is going to drive? What are the possibilities out there? Some get more excited and some skeptical. The latter he refers to a point 115 years ago when there was no Eiffel Tower, no flying planes, no computers, no helicopters, no Internet! Now, 115 years later we are getting close range pictures of Pluto. Now building on the shoulders of giants what are the next hundred years going to produce, he asks. "It's going to be exponentially more exciting".

When Mark asks what is their reaction, Michael relates that there is a realization that it might be possible and then they start thinking of more practical questions, like, will they be standing or sitting in such an elevator? Michael offers the analogy of travelling from Seattle to Los Angeles. You can fly, the quickest route, or you can take the train, which may take longer but be more interesting - it's the journey and the elevator will be a journey into geo-stationary orbit.

He then discusses what that journey will look like. First things get smaller and smaller like in a 'plane, you pass through the clouds into the upper atmosphere. Then, as you get higher still, you may see the ISS orbiting every 90 minutes. Not too close that you would see the astronauts hopefully! There are other possibilities of going down to the anchor and experiencing a fraction of the gravity or depending upon where you are on the tether you could have a Moon/Mars simulator that would provide opportunities for experiments that would inform decisions for future exploration.

Mark asks what new industries would be created if we had the Space Elevator. Michael thinks there will be adaptations of existing industries; perhaps hotels and tourism, even 'Disney Space'! Science and development is going to be different: surgery in zero gravity is possible, growing crystals, different chemical interactions, a different form of manufacturing, orbital farms and power generation. The latter could be linked to a satellite grid together with Internet capability leading to the possibility of 'free' power and communication.

Michael was asked if he would be willing to be the first human to ride the elevator, to which he replied that he would go third! His caution arises from his background in Failure Mode and Effect Analysis. He would make sure they can make it and then repeat it.

Michael is asked what he thinks the next steps for the Space Elevator community. He replies that the community should take an 'evangelistic' approach; evangelism of the process of developing technologies like the carbon nano-tubes. We have to educate our neighbors, friends, families and peers about what that is going to do, what that takes. It's going to take funding. Once you are past the research stage and into industrializing the cost drops significantly. He estimates the tether would cost a hundred billion dollars today. If nano-technology was more of an everyday technology, having 200 000 miles of this on the Earth would drop the price of a 100 000 kilometer tether dramatically.

Mark says there are concerns that we should not build the Space Elevator because it could be destroyed by terrorists and consequently cause huge damage. Michael replies that isolationism never works for anyone; "if bad people are going to come they're going to come, we've never done anything new and exciting when we were afraid of everything. We have to go and prepare for the worst and plan for the best" Disasters will happen but we deal with them and move on.

Michael attends conferences because he is a life-long learner. He loveseducation and learning about new things. He had never heard about boron nitrate nano-tubes until this conference and to understand that it has radiation shielding properties gets him really excited. This means that when we are talking about the apex anchor being outside the shielding of the Earth and that we have to promote that concept and let people understand this is a possibility for a better solution for shielding the apex anchor. He suggests that coming to conferences and doing research is a better use of your brain than staying at home and watching The Simpsons! The brain continually needs information and you have to feed it somehow or other. One of his mentors pointed out to him a long time ago that you are where we are today because of decisions you made five years ago. Now decide where you want to be in five years time and then looking back, what are the decisions you need to be addressing to make this happen. That's what Michael does at the conference.

He finds the conferences very intellectually stimulating. He loves the community and that there are no really bad ideas, just some that are more feasible than others. The community is open to hear what anyone has to say. Not censoring and not going to shoot someone down because they want to get into orbit via an Archimedes death ray. It it's going to work then let's look at it. Laser powered climbers were was in fashion and now out of fashion. He introduced the newly discovered Higgs Boson concept at the conference; is it a possibility? Particle physicists would have to figure out how to manipulate that. He thinks that theoretically it is a possibility and possibly would make it easier to get in and out of orbit. By manipulating it perhaps we could manipulate the gravitational field for the debris and force it to come down sooner. Or do the opposite and super excite it in the opposite direction and being at escape velocity it shoots off into the Oort Cloud. Perhaps we don't want to do that because we will find it again later!

Michael concludes that the very fact that these ideas can be explored, even the craziest of ideas is beautiful. 

Architecture Note #8

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

The Space Elevator Sequences

Introduction

This Architecture note is the third of three notes discussing "Sequences"; 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 Sequence steps will be repeated until we "get it"; and further repeated until we "get it right". Getting it right is the essential definition of our perseverance to build the Space Elevator.

Let's talk about the 6rd, 7th, and 8th steps in the Sequences.

Sequences #6 - Initial Operational Capability (IOC) -

ISEC is completely confident that the design of Space Elevator Transportation System IOC will be validated by execution of the first five Sequences. In our Architecture engineering approach, reaching IOC requires successfully passing through the first 5 sequences. The 6th Sequence is documentation of the test data that all parts of the Space Elevator operated properly. It will show that the Space Elevator operates as designed; with safety and surety. Reaching IOC will show that the Space Elevator can be well monitored, and is in communications contact with the Space Elevator command center.

Reaching IOC, as shown in the figure below, should be viewed as a culmination of 5 successful testing and documentation phases; and that the system has a strong engineering foundation.

reaching IOC

With the Space Elevator Transportation System in place at IOC, an inexpensive, reliable, and robust transportation becomes a valued part of all on orbit activities. These activities are a wide set of business entities. Businesses will be ready to use the Space Elevator; but only after key support functions are added to the bare transportation system. These functions - services really - will be identified well before IOC, but added to the Architecture after IOC; and added in a prescribed manner. That prescription is Sequences #7.

Sequences #7 - Capability On Ramps

The Space Elevator post-IOC activity will feature a formal process by which we add more functionalities. Improved versions of the IOC functionalities might be added; and/or new Space Elevator functionalities will be added to support our client's businesses. We will conceive how these functionalities can meld into the operating Space Elevator Transportation System without loss of effectiveness or safety. In practice, functional additions will be in three categories More; Better; and then New.

Whatever is to be added must meet the same engineering standards that the Space Elevator Transportation System achieved. The added functions will progress through the Sequences via parallel on ramps; eventually merging ... as shown here.

visualizing functional growth

Adding new functions or services to the Space Elevator requires that the new capability successfully accomplish early sequences and go through a parallel operations period in Sequence 7. By notion, we see that as "getting up to speed"; like we all do getting on the freeway.

The Sequence approach also allows ISEC to wisely time when "more", "better", or "new" should enter and then join the Elevator. A good (pre-IOC) example of that is the consideration of when the second tether becomes operational. The sequenced approach simplifies that consideration. The second tether will follow the first tether.   How closely it follows the first tether is a matter of judgment; at that time.

Other functions & services would be inserted in the same way. ISEC expects that positioning, propulsion, refueling, and other functions would be added modularly to the GEO Node. As noted above, the timing of those additions / insertions is a matter of judgment; based on how well the addition / insertion is faring on its journey through the Sequences.

Sequences #8 - Full Operational Capability (FOC)

The visionary aspect of the Space Elevator Enterprise includes tourism, interplanetary travel staging, hospitals, factories, power generation, and a multitude of operational support services. That is a huge vision. In fact, we could consider that FOC is never reached! The Full Operational Capability vision of the Space Elevator will expand with time and be achieved by constant expansion via the "more", "better", or "new" paradigm cited in the on-ramp sequence. The basis of each expansion will be the foundational engineering maturation achieved by progressing through Sequences.

ISEC envisions any number of Space Elevator enterprises. They might be for tourist transportation, industrial complexes to collect power & water, factories to mine exotic materials, or assemble craft for intergalactic exploration and travel. Adding capabilities to match these visions will require the same level of engineering persistence needed to build the first Space Elevator; and Sequences will always be part of it.

In closing

ISEC sees a Space Elevator Transportation System beyond the IOC, and a Space Elevator Enterprise as an Architecture that matures through each step of the Sequences and presses on to the future. Sequences offers the enabling steps for the Space Elevator to grow beyond our dreams. Indeed. See you next month.

Michael A. Fitzgerald 

Why?

Keeping the Quest Alive

When I play golf, and I often do, the quest is always there - for a near perfect game. The swing works, the balls bounce correctly, the weather cooperates, the putts go in, and the round is fun. Each day there are challenges that must be overcome and hurdles that seem insurmountable. However, the perseverance and desire push me to continue playing golf - for that near perfect game will occur eventually.  

It seems to me that the quest to prepare for a space elevator program has many similarities. We all know that the material is projected to be ready by the mid 20's. We believe in our hearts that a successful space elevator development will change humanity by providing access to space in a routinely and inexpensively. With these two beliefs, we continue to strive to understand and improve our body of knowledge for the space elevator challenge. As such, there needs to be a focal point for this diverse set of efforts. We have a three-pronged approach, in Japan with the Japanese Space Elevator Association, the IAA study, and Obayashi Corporation's efforts. The ISEC studies each year, coupled with the conference focused upon the latest in space elevators, are our future. In addition, there are efforts spread out around the world that are looking at the potential of space elevators.

Therefore, the reason to have an International Space Elevator Consortium is to ensure that these diverse efforts periodically come together and share knowledge. ISEC is the focal point of the preparation for a future space elevator project. Each activity around the world has its own approach to space elevators - two vs. one cable, maximum strength tethers, minimum strength tethers, small climbers, large climbers, land based vs. ocean centered, laser power or solar powered, and near term vs. long term operational start.                  

Systems architects have their own concept of the future. This is all good. At this stage in the creation of a new space transportation mode, innovation and creativity are king. The beauty of ISEC is that it is open to new ideas and hopes to support, encourage and endorse project designs as they mature. The reality is that in the end, the space elevator will leverage many parts of several designs for a wining architecture. ISEC hopes to be the spark plug that ignites the final conceptual acceptance and project initiation. ISEC is necessary to ensure that the community of space elevator enthusiasts is ready for the development once the material matures.

Pete Swan

We invite anyone to contribute to the newsletter by answering this question.
Please send your inputs to: pete.swan@isec.org.
[note: your submission is permission to print.]

Help Wanted

ISEC is very happy to announce positions for volunteers within its organization.  The following roles are available today.  Please coordinate with pete.swan@isec.org. 

Graphic Artists

ISEC is constantly working to develop new and increasingly accurate portrayals of the space elevator system. If you are interested in helping us produce new graphics we are happy to showcase your work through social media, our website, and in conference materials. If you need specific ideas or technical details to work from please contact sandy.curth@isec.org.

Image inputs to Wikipedia

The ISEC needs someone with the skill set to input images from our space elevator community to the Wiki - most of those on there now are 10 years old. We can provide the images [pdf, jpeg, word], just need someone to input them in the proper manner. 

ISEC History Committee Member

The ISEC History Committee is looking for oral interviewers or ones who want to transcribe accomplished oral interviews into word.

Space Elevator Blog

We would love to have someone contribute to the knowledge buildup of space elevators by inputting to a space elevator blog. After nine years of continuous coverage of the space elevator arena, the blog was paused. Ted Semon accomplished much, ensured that communications continued across the world with his continuous and energetic efforts, and was instrumental in ISEC's success.  The community needs this constant recording of its events and recognition of the players in the space elevator development.  The blog would be transferred to a new "blogger" with encouragement and support.