Critical Technologies for Building the Space Elevator

Into Space Using a Thread and a Laser - Blue DartWhat did the world think when Sputnik was launched? The United States clearly thought it needed to take up the challenge. Twelve years later, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon the world was breathless. That sort of imagination and hard work combined to make the United States' space program the premier exploration effort of the 20th century. The next great impossible task is to make space access affordable. Building a space elevator will generate the largest improvement in cost and capacity of any new space access technology. Space exploration is now a second rate topic. The media is more interested in stories about Britney Spears' latest folly or in reporting how many casualties occurred in Iraq or Afghanistan today. What will it take to reignite the public thirst for space exploration that everyone felt in 1969? Unfortunately the reasons for scaling back space exploration are too easy. It's too expensive. It doesn't offer enough benefits. It's a waste of time. Most reasons have their roots in the difficulty of getting to space in the first place. To cap it off, rockets are horribly inefficient in terms of fuel and weight. About 95% of what is on the launch pad is spent accelerating the remaining 5% into orbit. Subtract the structure of the rocket, and you can put a payload of 1-2% of launch weight into orbit. All that fuel costs a lot of money and rocket reusability has never been cheap or easy. A much more efficient concept is to have a tether stretching from the Earth out into space that electric vehicles climb and descend.

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