Editor’s Note

Dear Fellow Space Elevator enthusiast,

We have so many items in store for you this month!

Our President, Pete Swan, will introduce to you a new Technical Lead who in not actually new to us, just his position and we are excited to have him on board!

Our Space Elevator architect, Michael Fitzgerald, graces us with his latest installment in a series of Architectural Notes with No. 22 about robots!

We are not done talking about the Space Elevator Conference. There is so much to say about it and what happened there that we couldn’t possibly put it all in one, so we are spreading it out over a few editions. John Knapman will fill you in on one of our workshops, where all members were able to brainstorm ideas around a table as equal contributors. Read below for his initial installment on this session!

Some of our members have been travelling all over the world to represent ISEC at various Space-Related events. John Knapman will talk about his visit to Bremen, Germany for the International Astronautical Congress and Pete Swan was at the ISDC in Los Angeles where he met some students from the Republic of Ireland and was invited to speak at their college.

We will also introduce you to one of last year’s interns and learn what his contribution was to ISEC this year that earned him $500!

Scroll down for details!

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 for reading and lending your support in the development of Space Elevators!

Sandee Schaeffer
ISEC Newsletter Editor

President’s Corner

by Pete Swan

President helps Architect Pick Leads

ISEC has some very skilled players within its active members. They come from so many backgrounds, but have a common thread - they want to contribute towards the development of a Space Elevator transportation infrastructure. As such, Fitzer and I have come up with a preliminary list of technical leads - to be developed further as more people become involved and want to help. As of now, we have the following leads for technical topics. These individuals will work within ISEC to help focus our efforts on specific topics, and will be tasked with the leadership role within these technical areas. They will be a natural location for questions and information relevant to the individual topics with periodic updates at our annual conference, and others around the world:

  • Michael Fitzgerald - overall architecture layout and lead for GEO Node

  • John Knapman - multi-stage space elevator design

  • Vern Hall - Earth Port

  • Pete Swan - Apex Anchor

  • Dennis Wright - space environment

  • Bryan Laubsher - Carbon NanoTubes

  • Adrian Nixon - Single Crystal Graphene

  • Martin Lades - Mars space elevators

In addition, we would like to welcome Peter Robinson, a long time friend of ISEC, to the role of Lead Project Engineer for Tether Climbers. We discussed this new role and his responsibilities at the 2018 IAC in Bemen Germany. He is excited about becoming a focal point for tether climbers and a lead project engineer responsible for the development of multiple concepts relating to this topic.

  • Peter Robinson - Tether Climbers

Architecture Note #22

Space Elevator Transportation System

by Michael A. Fitzgerald, Chief Architect

Robots and the Space Elevator

Personal Prolog

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

Background

By late October 2018, our story was out. There will be a Space Elevator Transportation System. The ISEC position that …” the Space Elevator is closer than you think” … isn’t argued so much. It is inevitable… there will be a Space Elevator. It will shepherd us into the last half of this century and on to interplanetary travel. We will be watching, closely. 

Watching the Space Elevator arrive

As usual, I was thinking about the coming dawn…the Space Elevator is coming--watch for it. The recent spate of stories has caused some to take notice; the stories are in techy news for the most part. So, the doubt is being erased. The expectations are growing. The Elevator will be here…sooner than you might think. However, the story has an invisible element: Who is driving? Who are the elevator operators? Even elevators in tall buildings had operators. That was before…

Recently, I was sitting at my favorite happy hour spot, waiting for my good friend to arrive. I have been meeting Paul every month for nearly 30 years. We rarely cancel. He slid onto the bar stool easily; he is well practiced. “How’s it going?” he asked, as always. My answer was a little different. “The Space Elevator is going to happen – without a doubt”. Paul, ever the smart ass I have known for nearly 50 years, said, “Great, whose doing your elevator music?” I smiled at my friend and tried to match his humor, “No music, robots have no sense of melody”. 

A new kind of arrival

That is correct. The first Space Elevator will be operated by robots; or more correctly, operated remotely and robotically. But, it will be different; different from the revolutionary aerospace achievements that preceded it.

Do you think we all would remember a robot on the moon reciting “… a giant leap for mankind”? Imagine if a tall, skinny robot had climbed out of the “Spirit of St. Louis” after landing in Paris. Do you figure a ticker tape parade would have followed? Do you figure we would hail the pilot had the “Right Stuff” for breaking sound barrier if Chuck Yeager was a robot? Yet each of those were monumental accomplishments. The first successful trip on the Space Elevator will stand with those three, as a monumental accomplishment. But all it will earn is a little more barstool humor.

My friend Paul smiled--not so much at my humor but rather at the realistic irony of it all. Paul has been around for a while and holds a few unregistered records from his time in the space business. In the 1960’s, he worked at Space Launch Complex #3 at Vandenberg AFB in California. We called it “Slick 3” and it had a certain ring to it. It was a busy place in the ‘60’s. In one 52-week period, 26 launches departed from Slick 6. Paul tells of the hustle & bustle of his team getting those important payloads to orbit. It was a human story.

The Slick 3 performance, in retrospect, was remarkable. But -- it is noted here – from those critical moments at launch until mission success and de-orbit, it was operated remotely and robotically. So will it be with the Space Elevator. Humans will slide the payload into the Climber, conduct final safety checks, and off it will go -- operated remotely and robotically. What would you expect? The Space Elevator is the basis for safe, reliable, routine, environmentally clean access to space. It is a job made for robots.

The Galactic Harbour is not alone

Some will accuse me of understating the role of humans will need to play. Nope. Take a close look at the re-invention of the U. S. retail marketplace: Amazon and their distribution centers. A few proper clicks on your home computer and everything from books to bathroom products show up at your front door, operated remotely and robotically (almost). When Mr. Bezos gets the last step of distribution by drones and/or driverless trucks sorted out, the entire cycle will be operated remotely and robotically, and by the customer!  He’ll do it using AI technology like the type we will use. My hope and vision is similar to Amazon and FedEx; a transportation system servicing the customers safely and reliably.

In a sense then we are not really changing anything. Our launch moment will be quieter, our passage to an operating location will be slower but less stressful, and we will leave no chemicals or debris in our wake. We will be doing so without fanfare, remotely and robotically.

In closing,

I’ll ask my friend Paul for more insights.

Fitzer

Space Elevator Conference Mini Workshop

by John Knapman

The workshop held Friday the 17th of August during the 2018 Space Elevator Conference, addressed a set of questions about the multi-stage space elevator, which is the subject of the forthcoming ISEC 2018 report. Here are the questions:

1.  What prototype phases should we plan?

  • How big does a prototype need to be to be convincing?

2.  What should the funding balance be between strong materials and multi-stage technology?

  • Suppose we had $1 million, $10 million or $100 million.

3.  What are good methods of descent?

  • Falling, gliding, retro rockets?

  • Coming down the tether?

  • What about jumping or crossing over ascending climbers?

4.  Propose good operating procedures

  • Use automation and remote control as much as possible

There were so many good suggestions that it’s a shame to leave a lot out, so here are answers to the first question. The others will follow later.

Prototyping

1.  Component prototypes for each bit, particularly bolt and ambit

2.  Magnetic friction to be tested in a continuous ring (5m, 50m) in vacuum at high speeds

3.  Destructive testing to understand where things break

a.  When things hit the bolts from the side (deflections)

b.  When the bolt hits the ambit (misses the entrance)

4.  The acceleration phase, getting the bolts up to speed. Build an accelerator to inject bolts into the ring. Suggested a horizontal, linear accelerator

5.  Prototypes do not necessarily need to be complete, but representative.

6.  Testing the bend in the plane of accelerated bolts from horizontal to vertical to send up to the ambits

7.  How to scale the smaller prototypes to the larger in providing the currents for the magnetic fields. At some point you need to prototype superconducting technology to accelerate the bolts. There will be a jump in how to provide the increase in energy.

8.  Each prototype needs to be simulated and then backed up with lab data

9.  Define what it is we are prototyping

10.  Prototype the deployment approach (adding the tubes to raise the upper ambit).

11.  Build an amusement park ride based on the bolt/ambit concept

12.  Demonstrate how long the system runs without power.

13.  What happens when the vacuum fails in the tubes (another failure mode to test)

14.  Demonstrate climber transfer between stages

15.  Maintaining vacuum at depth (6km?) in the sea

16.  How big should a prototype be to convince people?

a.  Not too big that press can’t see the top

b.  Big enough to demo superconducting magnets to imply scale from there

c.  Some people may never be convinced, even after you build the real thing

Contributors: Dennis Wright, Adrian Nixon, Phil Swan, Sean Sun, Scott Snowden, David Horn, Michael Fitzgerald

Report on the International Astronautical Congress (IAC)

Held in Bremen, Germany, October 1st through 5th

by John Knapman

There was an interesting series of presentations on the space elevator, with several from our friends in Japan and China.

There were some excellent plenary talks, including:

Steve Chien of JPL on the growing role of artificial intelligence in space exploration

Karsten Danzmann of the Max Planck Institute, Hanover, on detecting gravitational waves.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock is well known to British audiences as the host of the BBC series The Sky at Night. She did a great job of compering the opening session, when we heard from the heads of NASA, ESA and the Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Canadian space agencies. It was the first time I’d heard Jim Bridenstine, who set out the goal of establishing a base on the moon.

She also ran a public outreach session to which thousands of local people came. (It was a public holiday.) I was astonished to find that the proceedings were conducted in English. I couldn’t imagine many people going to an event spoken in German, held in London.

We heard exciting reports from the major private space companies: Blue Origin, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbital. They’re all on the verge of great things.

Swan at IAC

Dr. Swan, Tara McInerney, Aodha Marrinah, Clan Wall. Photo credit: Arthur Ellis.

Pete Swan was invited to speak at St. Flannan’s College in Ennis, Ireland, by a group of students he met while attending the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Los Angeles this last May. The students and their professor were the recipients of the second-place prize in the NASA Ames Settlement Design Competition.

Pete travelled to Ireland, and while there, he spoke as a guest lecturer for the physics department at the college. Eoghan Moloney, a journalist from the local paper, The Clare Champion, wrote an article for the October 5th edition titled, "Dr Pete Swan, a world-leading authority on commercial space travel, talked to the physics students of St Flannan’s College, Ennis, last week."

In his article, he emphasizes how delighted they were when he accepted their invitation.

“The physics department in St Flannan’s College were privileged to host a speaker of the calibre of Dr Pete Swan, the president of the International Space elevator consortium. He was able to give students insights into the workings and developments of space technology, which come from decades involved in the arena of space research and development.”

He called this visit, “…a serious feather in their cap for St Flannan’s…” and spoke of the excitement surrounding the NASA competition results. In his concluding paragraph, Mr. Maloney predicts, “With the talent pool that is emerging from St Flannan’s, it is not too far-fetched to assume that some of these students will be working in the exciting area of space travel in the coming years."

We wish them the luck of the Irish and hope to see their names included in future endeavors regarding space travel and the colonization of space!

Yuri Shimane Completes 2018 ISEC Summer Internship

by Pete Swan

Yuri Shimane

Mr. Shimane is an Engineering Student at Imperial College London. During his summer internship, he interviewed Mr. Shuichi Ohno and Dr. Yoji Ishikawa with reference to their contributions within the space elevator community. He was also required to accomplish research and provide a short thesis on a designated topic. He chose a topic related to forces upon the tether climber.

Mr. Shimane’s Title and Abstract follow:

“COMPARISON OF GRAVITATIONAL FORCES OF CELESTIAL BODIES AROUND THE SPACE ELEVATOR TETHER CLIMBER,”

Abstract—My research as an intern at ISEC focused on the Space Elevator Tether Climber, which serves as the key component of the infrastructure that enables transportation in and out of Earth’s gravity well, as well as beyond to interplanetary trajectories.

Initially, the research focused on the gravitational force contributions of celestial bodies around the Earth on the climber at varying altitude from the surface of the Earth.

Then, the energy of the climber was investigated in order to consider the possibility of Hohmann Transfers at varying altitudes. The significant rotational velocity at high altitudes was reconfirmed to result in considerable excess in kinetic energy, enabling insertion of objects into transfer orbits with various transfer times.


Volunteers Wanted

In our modern world, the web and social media are the most common ways that people get their news and information about, well, everything!  ISEC wants to take fuller advantage of this trend to reach new audiences that we haven't been able to before, and spread the word about space elevators.

If you are excited about space elevators (as we know you are!) and are savvy in how to use web and social media tools, we want to talk with you!  We have the following volunteer positions open at ISEC:

  1. ISEC Social Media Guru -- We are looking for someone to help us drive further engagement with current and new space elevator enthusiasts in the social media arenas of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. We would love to have someone come on board to help us maximize the use of these technologies.

  2. ISEC Board Member for Web and Social Media efforts -- We are looking for a liaison between the ISEC Board of Directors and the Webmaster, Newsletter, and Social Media Guru. This person could also help out with any special efforts along these lines as they want. Being on the ISEC Board means that you can influence what topics we study and how we go about educating the larger public about all the benefits of space elevators.

If either of these sound interesting, please send email to sandee.schaeffer@isec.org, with your interest!

Thanks!

Sandee Schaeffer,
Newsletter Editor

Upcoming Space Elevator Related Events:

International Space Development Conference
Washington, D. C.
June 6-9, 2019

International Astronautical Congress
Washington, D. C.
October 21-25, 2019