Editor's Note

Dear Space Elevator Enthusiasts,

In the September 2024 special edition of the newsletter, we told you about the 2024 Space Elevator Conference and a special guest author named Douglas Phillips. In that same issue, Douglas Phillips contributed an article endorsing our conference and giving a sneak preview of his next book. At that time, the book’s working title was Ascending Carbon but, while working on the project, it became apparent that there would be more books in the series, so the first book in the Ascending Carbon series is called First Ascent which is now available on Amazon!

First Ascent book

For further information, visit Douglas Phillips’ website at https://douglasphillipsbooks.com/books.  

Sandee Schaeffer
Newsletter Editor

President’s Note

by Dennis Wright

Top Five Challenges for the Space Elevator - Dynamic Control

The space elevator, in the absence of very large disturbances, is stable. This means that once deployed, it will stay in place and mostly upright without intervention. External forces such as atmospheric winds, gravitational pulls from the Sun and Moon, electromagnetic interactions in the ionosphere, and solar wind will perturb this condition. The tether climber itself will induce side-to-side motions in the tether, and some climber lift-off methods require pulling on the tether from its base. Moving the space elevator base to avoid space debris will also set up oscillations.

These forces will not degrade stability as long as they are prevented from combining and growing. Thus, dynamic control of the tether is required. This will take the form of motions induced at the tether base or apex anchor, timed release of multiple climbers, currents induced in the tether to counteract electrodynamic forces and even actuators (thrusters) placed at intervals along the tether. Some of these controls will be intermittent and some continuous, but all of them will need to be coordinated in order to damp out undesired oscillations.

The challenges for space elevator development are then to: 1) achieve a detailed understanding of space elevator motions under a variety of conditions, 2) design controllers and actuators to counteract undesired motions, 3) develop a control system to coordinate actuators, climber launches, debris avoidance maneuvers, and so on, and 4) incorporate methods which predict events in the space environment and recommend space elevator responses to them.

ISEC is currently working on developing a simulation which can be used to understand and predict tether motion. Once this is done, the equipment which will actually induce corrective motions can be designed. Challenges exist here, too, as the novel nature of graphene-based tethers must be taken into account.

The issues of developing a comprehensive control system and a motion predictor are intertwined. The control system must have data to decide which motions to induce and the induced motions must be fed into the predictor so that it has accurate position information. This circular dependence is exactly what is handled by digital twin technology. The complexity of the system and the conditions it will meet will likely require management by artificial intelligence.

Many of these issues would be excellent topics for ISEC studies. People with expertise in these areas or who have interest should feel free to contact me (dennis.wright@isec.org).

The fifth and final installment of the Top Five challenges will deal with the “bottom end”, which includes the Earth connection point and atmospheric forces on the tether.

Dennis Wright

Chief Architect’s Corner

by Pete Swan

My New Favorite Number: 70% Delivery Efficiency

Space Elevators will have a 70% delivery of the mass on the ocean at liftoff to the customer’s destination (such as Geosynchronous [GEO], Apex Anchor, Lunar orbit, Mars orbit, or anywhere else in the solar system). This is because the tether climber uses outside energy collected by large arrays (from sun, laser, or radio frequency sources) to raise itself; it does not leave debris along its path. The other 30% (other than customer payload) is the reusable tether climber. The bottom line is, Space Elevators will be delivering 70% of the mass on the ocean (customer’s payload) to the desired location in a daily, routine, safe, and environmentally neutral operational approach. Once the customer’s payload, for example, a mission spacecraft destined for Mars, is released from the tether at either GEO, along the tether, or at the Apex Anchor, it is tossed towards its destination with great velocity and leaves the pull of Earth’s gravity.

customer delivery percentage

The Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation, which drives the efficiency of delivery of today’s and future rockets, is the limiting factor space elevators conquer. When reading about the theoretical efficiencies of rockets, one realizes just in getting into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), they consume (or maybe reuse) 96% of the mass on the pad. To then move the payload to higher locations takes more spacecraft and fuel thus cutting down the delivery efficiency. Delivery to GEO at 2% and delivery to lunar orbit or Mars orbit approaching 1% while landing payload on the Moon or Mars consumes more rocket fuel, thus leaving the delivery statistic around half of one percent of the launch pad mass. The main example is the Apollo 11 space system that made it to the lunar surface; however, the lander was only 0.05% of the pad mass.

As a result, the delivery statistic of customer payloads using space elevators is now my favorite number – roughly 70% of liftoff mass at the Earth Port reaches the customer’s desired locations.

Once customers realize they can deliver 70% of their Earth Port mass to any of their desired locations, they will also fall in love with my new favorite number – 70%!

Mid-year Internship Program 

ISEC is pleased to announce that ISEC’s Intern Program is off and running for 2025. We have selected five research proposals that the students will work on over the summer with an ISEC Mentor. Additionally, they will be invited to present the results of their research at this year’s ISEC Conference on October 25th.

We did something different for 2025 in that we proposed nine specific topic areas to which we’d like to have research performed. They were:

1. Understanding the forces of the Tether Climber from Earth to the Apex Anchor.

2. Potential Tether Climber configurations to cover: Earth surface to 100Km; 100Km to GEO; and GEO to Apex Anchor.

3. Methodology and process regarding the Installation of the 1st Tether.

4. Research the limitations of the torque-to-mass ratio of an electric motor that would be used on the Space Elevator’s Climber.

5. Research the thermodynamics of the space elevator’s climber from the surface of the Earth to the Apex Anchor.

6. Research battery technology to determine the highest power density and lowest mass for the needs of the space elevator’s climber.

7. Research the application of space tribology to understand how to modify/redesign the commercial gear boxes shown on the climber conceptual design model to work in a vacuum.

8. Research potential techniques of carbon fiber reinforced polymer structural design.

9. Open Topic addressing a particular aspect of the Modern-Day Space Elevator Transportation System.

As with other years the schedule for 2025 is:

intern topics

Paul W. Phister, Jr., Ph.D., P.E.
Chair, ISEC Intern Program

Tether Materials

by Adrian Nixon

How Isotopes of Carbon Would Affect a Tether Made from Graphene Super Laminate

I had an interesting conversation recently about isotopes of carbon. How would these isotopes affect the properties of a space elevator tether made from Graphene Super Laminate?

To answer this question, we need to become familiar with isotopes. You will be aware that atoms contain positively charged protons and neutrons (that have no charge) in a nucleus. Orbiting this, are negatively charged electrons.

The number of protons determines the element. Carbon has six protons, Nitrogen seven, Oxygen eight, and so on. In atoms, the number of electrons is the same as the number of protons, balancing out the charges. When atoms gain or lose electrons, they gain an overall charge and are termed ions. Whether it has a positive, negative, or neutral charge, the atom remains the same element.

When atoms have one or more extra neutrons in the nucleus, they are termed isotopes. The main difference is that the extra neutrons mean the isotope has a different mass. Isotopes are the same element; they react the same.

Carbon has three main isotopes. Carbon 12, 13 and 14. However carbon 14 is radioactive and extremely rare. 99% of all carbon is the 12 C form with 13 C making up the remaining 1% [1]. Figure 1 illustrates the subtle difference between 12 C and 13 C.

carbon 12 and 13

Fig 1. Stable isotopes of carbon 12 C and 13 C.

Most methods of making graphene use methane and other carbon containing gases as the feedstock. These gases will contain approximately 99% 12 C and 1% 13 C and the end graphene material will have the same composition.

Most material properties of graphene assume it is composed of 12 C. Industrial materials are likely to contain 1% 13 C, so what would be the effect on the properties of the graphene?

The most obvious one is the mass of a mole of carbon 13 weighs slightly more than a mole of carbon 12. However, industrial processes for making graphene use kg and tonnes of feedstock. A kg of carbon 12 weighs exactly the same as a kg of carbon containing 99% carbon 12 and 1% carbon 13. A kilogram is a kilogram.

The tensile strength of graphene containing a small amount of 13 C is unlikely to be different from pure 12 C graphene. This is because the strength of the bonds is governed by electron interactions, not nuclear mass [2]. The strength of graphene is also affected by defects in the crystal lattice, with vacancy defects being the biggest contributor to a loss of strength in the single crystal molecule. Again, substituting 13 C for some of the 12 C is unlikely to affect the lattice structure.

The electrical conductivity of the graphene is also a property of the π electron cloud and Dirac cone. The nucleus has no influence on electrical conductivity so this is likely to be unaffected [3, 4].

The thermal conductivity of graphene is affected by the introduction of a small amount of 13 C into the graphene. Graphene is the world’s best conductor of heat. Isotopically pure graphene (containing just one type of isotope) has a thermal conductivity exceeding 4000 W/m-1K-1. Introducing 1% 13 C lowers the thermal conductivity to 2500 – 2600 W/m-1K-1 [5].

graphene-thermal-conductivity

Fig 2. Acoustic phonons and thermal conductivity in graphene.

This lowering of thermal conductivity with such a small amount of carbon 13 in the graphene crystal lattice can be understood when you consider how heat is transported through graphene. Heat moves through the graphene crystal lattice by acoustic phonons. Think about flicking a bed sheet and watching the wave travel through the material and you will get the idea. Figure 2 illustrates this process.

We now have the answer to our brief travel through the world of isotopically modified graphene. Industrial processes use carbon feedstocks that will naturally contain 1% carbon 13. This will end up in the final graphene product. This isotopically modified product does not affect the strength or the electrical properties of the graphene. However, 1% of carbon 13 does dramatically lower the thermal conductivity by almost a half.

So, when manufacturing graphene laminate and Graphene Super Laminate made by industrial processes, we need to think carefully about how the material will be used. If we want the tether just for strength and electrical conductivity, then we don’t need to worry about the amount of carbon 13 in the feedstock. However, if thermal conductivity is important then we would need to view the carbon 13 as an impurity and develop processes for removing it, leaving the pure carbon 12 isotope in the feedstock gas we use to make the tether material.

References:

1. Anon (2023). Global Monitoring Laboratory - Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases. [online] gml.noaa.gov. Available at: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/isotopes/chemistry.html [Accessed 25 Apr. 2025].

2. Zakarian, A. (2004). PROPERTIES OF ATOMS, RADICALS, AND BONDS. [online] University of California, Santa Barbara. Available at: https://labs.chem.ucsb.edu/zakarian/armen/11---bonddissociationenergy.pdf [Accessed 26 Apr. 2025].

3. Nixon, A. (2020). 2020 December International Space Elevator Consortium Newsletter. [online] isec.org. Available at: https://www.isec.org/space-elevator-newsletter-2020-december/#geic [Accessed 26 Apr. 2025].

4. Evgenij Zhmurikov (2015). Electronic structure and physical properties of 13C carbon composite. arXiv (Cornell University). doi:https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1510.07214.

5. Chen, S., Wu, Q., Mishra, C., Kang, J., Zhang, H., Cho, K., Cai, W., Balandin, A.A. and Ruoff, R.S. (2012). Thermal conductivity of isotopically modified graphene. Nature Materials, 11(3), pp.203–207. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3207.

History Corner

by David Raitt

Titles Tagged “Space Elevator”

Recently I came across the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) – a community effort to catalogue works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. The ISFDB links together various types of bibliographic data such as author bibliographies, publication bibliographies, award listings, magazine content listings, anthology and collection content listings, literature reviews, and forthcoming books. The website (https://www.isfdb.org) also includes a wiki, an FAQ, and an interactive calendar that lists authors who were either born or died on any given day.

Out of curiosity I did a search for "space elevator" and found sixteen titles marked with that tag dating between 2020 (Firewalkers by Adrian Tchaikovsky) and 1979 (Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke). All were in English, and all were novels except for one which was classed as Short Fiction (Murder on the Zenith Express by Simon Petrie in 2007). Clicking on any of the titles gives fairly detailed information; for example, the title Firewalkers (the most recent book in the database tagged with “space elevator”) gives the exact publication date, the series and number in the series, the publisher, price, format, cover artist, the estimated word count per page, and number of pages. It also includes where you can find reviews of the novel. For Fountains of Paradise, other titles of the work are given in German, Serbian, French, Dutch and Portuguese. Awards for the book are listed, variant titles are shown with details, and there are many more reviews available. Clicking on the name of the cover artist brings up a page devoted to that person along with all the titles in the database which have cover art by that artist. While the database does not seem to provide a brief synopsis of the book (the reviews would give this, of course), the cover art is shown for any given title and variant.

While many of the novels tagged with “space elevator” are familiar (such as Red, Green and Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, Pillar to the Sky by William R. Fort, and The Songs of Distance Earth by Clarke), others will be perhaps not so well-known. In Murder of the Zenith Express, Gordon Mamon was the lift operator in a hotel that didn't have a lift. The hotel, the Skyward Suites 270, was the lift. Gordon just wanted a quiet life, but people keep inconsiderately dying of unnatural causes during their stay aboard his lift-module on the Skyward space elevator. In The Mirrored Heavens by David J. Williams, published in 2008, set in the 22nd century, the first wonder of a brave new world is the Phoenix Space Elevator which was built by the United States and the Eurasian Coalition following a second cold war as a grand symbol of the new alliance of the superpowers – and it had just been destroyed.

As interesting and potentially useful as this database is, there are many more novels and tales featuring space elevators as Wikipedia reveals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevators_in_fiction). Running the cursor over any title will give a very brief outline (though not usually mentioning how space elevators are part of the story) and a cover picture, while clicking on the title will usually open a new page about the work. Plenty of tales and plots to keep you busy!

Solar System Space Elevators

by Peter Robinson

Part 10: Pluto, Charon, and the Kuiper Belt

This is the tenth article of the “Solar System Space Elevators” series. Earlier articles covered Mercury & Venus, the Asteroids, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and the moons of the Gas and Ice Giants.

1. INTRODUCTION

Pluto [1] was discovered in 1930 and designated the solar system’s 9th planet but was re-classified as a ‘dwarf planet’ in 2006 by the IAU…except in the US states of New Mexico and Illinois, where (in 2007 and 2009) state legislatures declared it to still be a planet while in their skies!

Pluto is (dimensionally) the largest known Kuiper Belt [2] object, though not quite as massive as more-distant Eris. Part of Pluto’s orbit is within that of Neptune (lastly from 1979 to 1999), but a stable 2:3 orbital resonance has eliminated any risk of collision for millions of years.

Some question the ‘dwarf planet’ classification, given that Pluto’s largest moon Charon [3] is sufficiently massive to position their barycenter some 845km above Pluto’s surface. This means the pair could technically be considered a double-dwarf or binary-dwarf planet, although that official designation was rejected at the same 2006 IAU assembly that removed the ‘planet’ status.

Pluto and Charon

Figure 1: Pluto and Charon from New Horizons. Credit: NASA / Public Domain

An unusual characteristic of the Pluto-Charon binary system is that each is tidally locked to the other, meaning that Charon always presents the same face to Pluto and is static in Pluto’s sky. This characteristic creates unusual possible configurations for Space Elevators, as described in 2.1 below.

Beyond Charon there are four small ‘circum-binary’ moons (Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra) all 50km or less in diameter.

2. ELEVATOR CONCEPTS

2.1 Pluto to Charon

The mutual tidal lock of Pluto and Charon means that a 17,775 km tether could be attached between the two, as shown in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2: Pluto & Charon photo from New Horizons approach (Credit: NASA / Public Domain) with line added to depict a tether connection.

A tether as imagined above would yield the benefits of any space elevator, with rocket-free surface access to and from the surfaces of Pluto and Charon. Visiting spacecraft could berth at the zero-g L1 point (5,275km above Charon’s surface) and shorter transit times could result from points closer to either body with the effective gravity being less than 0.01g for approximately 87% of the tether length.

One major advantage of this arrangement is of course the lack of an Apex Anchor, removing the need for deployment of significant mass as needed for elevators elsewhere. The total tether mass could be similar to the cargo capacity of spacecraft already under development, although additional material would be needed for anchoring to Charon and for a tension control system on Pluto.

A further benefit of a Pluto-Charon tether might be as an energy storage system. It can be shown that a 5mm2 tether of length 17,775 km stressed to 49GPa, less than the working stress of Graphene Super Laminate (GSL), would have elastic potential energy of 1.07E+11 J, or just under 30 MW.hr. This energy could be put into the tether using the tensioning motor(s) and recovered by running those in reverse as generators. This could be of value to any base on Pluto as an intermittent supplement to its power source, although whether it would be a cost or mass-effective Peak Lopping power supply is a question I will not address here.

It may even be possible to use the tether to extract gravitational ‘tidal’ energy from other solar system bodies as they influence the orbit of Charon, but more analysis is needed to quantify this effect.

2.2 Pluto, away from Charon

A conventional centrifugal-type space elevator system could be connected to other locations around Pluto’s equator but would be more challenging than the Pluto-Charon solution with a relatively long tether due to the slow 6.39-day system rotation speed.

Figure 3: Pluto & Charon photo from New Horizons approach (Credit: NASA / Public Domain) with line added to depict a tether outward from Pluto.

At the point diametrically opposite Charon the stationary (synchronous) altitude is 17,194 km above Pluto’s surface, so the Apex Anchor would need to be far higher. The greater length means more tether mass, but the overall mass is far higher due to the need for the Anchor itself.

For a tether attached to any other point on Pluto’s equator the situation is more complex as the Apex Anchor would be rotating around the Pluto-Charon barycenter (845 km above Pluto’s surface), not around Pluto itself. This means the suspended tether would be deflected in some catenary to the surface of Pluto. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to calculate the precise shape.

2.3 Charon, away from Pluto

A centrifugal-type elevator system could also be built outward from Charon, though again the only vertical configuration would be from the point diametrically opposite Pluto. In this direction the stationary altitude is 6,717 km, meaning that a tether could be somewhat shorter than the Pluto-Charon tether described in 2.1 above, but the total system mass would be, again, considerably higher as an Apex Anchor would be required.

Figure 4: Pluto & Charon photo from New Horizons approach (Credit: NASA / Public Domain) with line added to depict a tether outward from Charon.

The surface gravity of Charon is 0.288 m/s2 (0.029 g) with an escape velocity of 0.59 km/sec, so surface access would be relatively straightforward by spacecraft without the need for an elevator system. I have therefore not evaluated this option in any greater detail.

2.4 Other Moons of Pluto

Pluto has four other known moons [4] in addition to Charon, depicted in Figure 5 below.

Figure 5: Charon and the Small Moons of Pluto. Image credit: NASA / Public Domain.

These four lesser ‘circum-binary’ moons are not tidally locked and so are unlikely to be suitable candidates for space elevators, with strong tidal forces and orbital resonances likely to impact the stability of any tether system.

2.5 The Kuiper Belt

The Kuiper Belt [5] extends from the orbit of Neptune at 30 astronomical units (AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt but 20 times as wide and up to 200 times the mass and contains many dwarf planets in addition to Pluto/Charon.

The remote nature of the Kuiper Belt, and the surrounding Oort Cloud, means that constructing any space elevators is unlikely in the foreseeable future. The feasibility of any elevator systems would depend on object’s rotation rates and other factors. At present this information is poorly defined in most cases.

3. ANALYSIS

Limited analysis of the Pluto-to-Charon tether is as follows, making use of my spreadsheet technique as described in my 2022 IAC paper [5].

Figure 6 below shows the effective gravity on the tether, falling from 0.06g at Pluto’s surface to zero at the Pluto-Charon L1 point (where Pluto’s gravity is matched by Charon’s gravity plus the centrifugal force from the 6.4 day system rotation).

effective-gravity-on-Pluto-Charon-tether

Figure 6: Effective Gravity on Pluto-Charon Tether. Analysis: P. Robinson.

As discussed earlier, the low effective gravity over much of the tether length means visiting spacecraft may not necessarily need to dock exactly at the L1 point. The optimum point will perhaps be determined by considering the extra cost of a non-zero-g berth and the benefit from shorter climber transit times. These factors might well depend on the nature of the payload; I suspect humans would prefer a shorter journey time!

Figure 7 below shows the tether stress along a Pluto-Charon tether, with data for zero surface stress and nominal working stress. As with earlier work I have assumed a 5 mm2 constant-area tether of  GSL of density 2260 kg/m3, resulting in a total tether mass of 200.9 tonnes. The nominal tether stress is based on a surface retention force equivalent to a 5-tonne climber accelerating at 0.5 g. The calculated stress values can be simply scaled in proportion to the climber mass, acceleration, or inverse of tether area.

stress-on-Pluto-Charon-tether

Figure 7: Tether Stress in Pluto-Charon Tether. Analysis: P. Robinson.

With zero Pluto surface tension, the stress is simply what is required to support the weight of the tether in the effective gravity field (as plotted in Figure 6), which depends on the tether material density. Any additional tension that is applied at Pluto’s surface is simply added to this zero-force baseline at all altitudes.

The peak stress value (6.4 GPa) at the L1 point is very considerably less than the assumed 88 GPa working stress for GSL, indicating that a less strong material could potentially be used or that a GSL tether could be less massive or could operate with higher loads. That said, 6.4 GPa is on or beyond the limit for existing strong materials. For example, Zylon (used for the ‘house’ tether in the 2007 ‘Spaceward’ Space Elevator games) is 1.6 times the strength of Kevlar, but it only has a tensile (breaking) strength of 5.8 GPa and may be significantly less strong at the low temperatures of the Pluto system.

4. CONCLUSIONS and SUMMARY

The unusual mutual tidal-locking of the Pluto-Charon binary system would enable construction of a space elevator between the two dwarf planets without the need for the heavy Apex Anchor required for other systems. A tether capable of supporting useful climber sizes might have a mass to the order of 200 tonnes, so could potentially be transported from Earth.

Other rotating Kuiper-belt objects could also potentially host space elevator systems, but their remoteness means that any construction project is likely to be in the distant future.

NEXT TIME: A Summary of the 10-article ‘Solar System Elevators’ series.

REFERENCES

[1] ‘Pluto’ Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto

[2] ‘Kuiper Belt’ Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt

[3] ‘Charon’ Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon_(moon)

[4] ‘Moons of Pluto’ Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Pluto

[5] “Space Elevator Climber Dynamics Analysis and Climb Frequency Optimisation.”, P. Robinson, IAC2022 paper IAC-22,D4,3,8,x68299: https://www.isec.org/s/ISEC-2022-IAC-space-elevator-climber-dynamics-paper.pdf

 Dr. Swan Recognized for:

Encouraging Participation and Volunteerism Around Space Elevators…Over 41 years

Dr. Peter Swan was awarded the International Astronautical Federation’s Distinguished Service Award on the 8th of April. The citation started with “to honor his lifetime commitment to Engineering and Technology, HIS VISION AND LEADERSHIP, as the founder of the IAC D4 IAA Far Future/Space Elevator Symposia.”

Clay Mowry, IAF President, presents Distinguished Service Award to Dr. Swan.

Words by Pete Swan:

There were many reasons for my desire to participate across the space community each year, but the desire to stimulate and encourage those bright minds who wanted to ask, "why?" and "how?" across so many disciplines – dominated. The interaction across the international space community is stimulating and continues to challenge me to reach out beyond the current and look for the future. My approach was to share my ideas in the form of presentations (over 65) and several follow-on articles. I would like to encourage the young and new-to-space-professionals to participate within the IAF’s yearly congress (and of course their own local societies) and be part of the exciting future each of us sees within our own vision. In my case, I started with a topic of interest in 1983 – “Space: A unique educational motivator,” switched to supporting a communications constellation in 1993 – “77 to 66, The IRIDIUM Improvement,” then in 2006 – “Space Elevator Vision, An Enabler,” and recently in 2024 – “Green Road to Space Leads to Dual Space Access Strategy.” During those years, I have worked with, co-authored, and supported so many young professionals. Indeed, I encouraged participation and volunteerism and enjoyed every minute of it. I do not plan on stopping in the near future, with three presentations in Sydney, and I am looking forward to what’s next!

The amazing part of my professional career was the involvement with so many challenging mega-projects leading up to the Modern-Day Space Elevator. After working for over 30 years in program development within the Air Force, then Motorola, and after that, teaching, I went into the arena of Space Elevators after it was revitalized by Dr. Edwards. He encouraged me to “internationalize” the research we were conducting in 2002-2004 so I started a series of technical sessions at the yearly IAC in various locations around the world with the help of Dr. David Raitt, another believer in space elevators, from within the European Space Agency. We have had a continuous series of one or two technical sessions in IACs around the world – so 22 years in a row if you count Sydney coming up soon. For me that meant about 54 presentations and papers as space elevators developed (2+ per year at the IACs). What a wonderful opportunity to share updated information on the maturation of space elevators. We consider those IAC technical sessions as essential windows towards the expanding space arena. Others have contributed greatly, especially Dr. Ishikawa and Dr. Raitt (as co-chairs and presenters). This recognition is appreciated as I truly loved participating as a volunteer inside the remarkable mega-project called space elevators.

Pete Swan

 Leverage the Body of Knowledge for the Modern-Day Space Elevator 

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Over 800 references and citations with access to videos and articles/papers/studies and more!

Around the Web

The editor of the Nixene Journal, James Baker, interviewed Adrian Nixon in a Fireside Chat style format. According to Adrian Nixon, “We reflected on a decade of working with graphene to some of the stand-out applications even including the space elevator.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snUfBIaO_tE

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