Earth-Moon Network = Maturing Space Industries

On Monday, September 2, 2002, at 01:00 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote:

> The SE [space elevator], now in the last Phase of theoretical reserch
> (we need only to obtain
> carbon nanotubes with enought strenght and at a lower cost - a enterely
> doable enterprise) can reduce the cost/kg to Earth-GEO to a 1/100th of
> actual cost, paragonable to the cost of airplane transport.

With all due respect, the longest carbon nanotube created to date is
about 9 orders of magnitude too short. Nor have carbon nanotubes ever
been manufactured with the necessary orderly orientation. Furthermore,
the stregth-of-materials problems are only the first fatal problem for
SE. Deployment is going to be VERY hard. Avoiding space junk is
another really tough one. There are many more.

We should certainly keep working on SE, but don't count on it working,
particularly not in the next few decades.

The International Space Station (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr. Tito
going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was old, smelly, crowded and
probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shinny, much more
roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts of how
great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html