Company Plans To Build Space Elevator

Apr 26, 2005 2:13 pm US/Pacific
BREMERTON, WA (AP) A company in Washington State wants to send an elevator into space.

The LiftPort company says it will open a plant this summer in Millville, New Jersey, to start producing nanotube fibers, which are 60-times stronger than steel.

The company plans to create an eight-inch wide ribbon that would stretch from an ocean platform 62-thousand miles into space.

A robotic elevator would crawl up and down the elevator to carry satellites and eventually people into orbit.

The city of Millville and a county development project provided 100-thousand dollars to build the plant, which will have six employees. The three-year-old company, which has nine employees in Bremerton, Washington, also plans to sell nanotubes fibers to strengthen glass and plastic products.


(© 2005 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. )


http://cbs2.com/water/watercooler_story_116173449.html

Well I sure hope they improve the elevator music cause that gonna be a long ride

This has been in talks for so many years now. Looks like its getting closer to becoming a reality. Hopefuly we'll have the elevator done by 2015-2020 atleast

Hope no one gets diarrhea half way

I've been keeping my eye one the nanotube situation. I haven't yet seen a model capable of producing the lengths and quantity that would be needed for a project such as this. I am cautiously curious.

and then what? You get to the top, look around, and have to go the WHOLE way back down?

WHen the U.S was colonized they didnt just say " lets look around and go back home and forget about this land "

Space will be colonized.

have you never seen star wars!

probably need a space suit and some spray paint......

Is it even possible?Speaking of the physics involved?

yes its possible and reduces the cost by millions when taking up payload

Hopefully the project helps bring the cost of the nanotubes so they can be used as completely bullet proof armor. Anyways, will the first elevator be owned by the government or a private firm?


....I sure hope no one falls off.

This will be good, it will advance our ability ot go into space,

THE HUMAN RACE WILL SET FORTH AND REACH INTO THE DEPTHS OF THE UNKNOWN!!!!


~Thanato

ALways wonderd how they would actually go about building this.

Do we have the materials?

I think there is a breif description of a space elevator in "2010" thye used Diamond from the centre of Jupitor

Also do you think they will do a "red dwarf" and keep suicide pills onbaord incase of elevator failiure?

I think the best example of a space elevator is in the MARS trillagy (Red, Green, Blue) That thing was made of steel, i think cant remember been a few years since i read RED MARS, but when it was cut that thing wrapped around the entire planet a few times, It took 5 days to climb up it.

~Thanato

Science-wise, the only thing keeping this from happening is the elevator cable. A nanotube cable about six feet wide at the top would be sufficient, and weight less than a sheet of newsprint, however the production of nanotubes is currently in the micrometer stage. It isn't as if you could just glue a bunch of them together; they have to be long enough to at least braid together, although that would defeat the entire purpose of molecular construction.

y though... i dont see the need..

The need is paying $40 a pound to lift things into space, as opposed to $4000 that we pay using the shuttle.

As history has proven, brave men will discover new lands, but it is the search for profit that will lead us to colonize it.

is'nt this really totally imposibble?what is gonna stop the winds and weather in the upper atmosphere from tearing the elevator to shreds?if they thought they were gonna have a hard time stopping a bunch of fanatical maniacs fling into buildings,this is really gonna be fun to keep secure.who's gonna fund it for the world?let me guess,us taxpayers?what is this gonna cost us,half a trillion dollars?

cost about 2 billion dollars... I think really were looking at anything from 2 - 7 billion probably.

ALso I believe it will reduce the cost by 1000x's of times, Instead of costing millions to send up satilites it will cost only a few thousand

it's just gonna be a really expensive freight elevator?i'd still like to know how the atmosphere is'nt gonna tear the thing to shreds?

The materials used in the construction of the elevator are supposed to be super strong and will be able to survive in just about any conditions!

Hopefully this does become a reality sooner rather than later, it will allow us to far easily extend our reach into the stars at a much cheaper cost than what it currently costs us to launch payloads up into space!

because they are the strongest material know in the known universe at this point in time.

look up " carbon nanotubes "

For example. If you made a bullet proof vest out of pure nano carbon tubes. You could have that t-shirt to be flexible, thiner than a piece of paper and about 100 x stronger than steel and 1/6 the weight of steel

Another big advantage is that we won't spew nearly as much rocket exhaust into the atmosphere. Some rocket fuel is hydrogen and oxygen, which make water - no problem. Some other fuels, such as solid boosters, are pretty toxic. We're better off not spraying it into the air.
Almost all of a rocket is fuel. Only a tiny fraction of the original weight is payload. With the space elevator, all of it is payload.
People riding it won't be crushed by massive acceleration on takeoff. You'll want reasonable acceleration because you have a very long way to travel, but it can be much milder than a rocket. It would be easy to ferry up components of a deep-space ship one elevator load at a time and assemble them in orbit. Then make many elevator trips carrying rocket fuel to the ship. A ship taking off from orbit needs a small fraction of the fuel the same ship would need taking off from earth.
Another thing is safety. Reentry is very dangerous. It would be much safer to dock your ship on the cable and ride the elevator down. If your ship is reuseable, just leave it docked and refuel in orbit. If it's a one-use ship, bring it down into the ocean by remote control.

Less than a year ago, LiftPort Group says they will begin operating the first space elevator on April 12, 2018.

Now the company has announced that they will open a manufacturing plant this summer to make carbon nanotubes -- which will be used to form the 8-inch wide ribbon that will stretch 62,000 miles from Earth to space, carrying the robotic elevator cars.

This, they predict, can be done without the benefit of molecular manufacturing (MM). We agree that it may be possible, and we wish them well in their endeavor.

If successful, the space elevator will be by far the world's greatest engineering feat... that is, unless MM arrives first and enables even more astounding projects.

Fasten your seatbelts, kids, the 21st century is going to be a wild ride!

http://crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/2005/05/going_up.html

Here is an artist image of the Liftport Elevator:

Thanks for them pictures.

Isn't it amazing that we are going to see these kinds of projects in the next 10 + years !

Just think how amazing this will be, Space travel will go down in price so much that space will open for almost anyone ! It will speed up the colonization of near earth orbit and the colonization of the moon etc..

This kind of project is beyond words in how far it could speed up colonization. Mainly because its very cheap to go into space if this is built

here is a link to their website http://www.liftport.com/about.php

The future will indeed be an amazing place.

Lets hope that teh first attempt at building one of these space elevators is a success because if it fails and lives are lost then other elevator projects may be pushed back with a wait of many many years before another attept is made. If we are trully to go out and inhabit the stars these space ellvators will be one of our first steps in doing so and are a key to us leaving this planet.