A laser-powered robot took a climb up a cable in the Mohave Desert in Wednesday, and pushed ahead the sci-fi inspired notion of a space elevator capable of lifting astronauts, cargo, and even tourists up into orbit. The robot, built by LaserMotive of Seattle, whizzed up 2,953 feet (nearly 1 kilometer) in about four minutes, which qualifies the team for at least $900,000 of the $2 million in prizes offered in the NASA-backed Space Elevator Games.
Theorized in the 1960s and then popularized by Arthur C. Clarke’s 1979 novel “The Fountains of Paradise,” space elevators are envisioned as a way to gain access to space without the risk and expense of rockets. Instead, electrically powered vehicles would run up and down a cable anchored to a ground structure and extending thousands of miles up to a mass in geosynchronous orbit — the kind of orbit communications satellites are placed in to stay over a fixed spot on the Earth [AP].
The LaserMotive vehicle that climbed up the cable (held by a hovering helicopter) was powered by a system that resembles an upside-down solar power mechanism. Laser beams on the ground were fired up at the ascending craft and hit its photovoltaic cells–like those used in solar panels–in a process known as “power beaming.” LaserMotive will have a chance to improve its vehicle’s speed at another trial today, and other teams will also be vying for prizes.
Related Content:
80beats: Japanese Group Pushes for $9 Billion, 22,000-Mile Space Elevator
DISCOVER: Going Up follows U.S. engineers on the space elevator quest
Image: Space Elevator Games. The LaserMotive vehicle gets weighed in.
Five years after the dawn of the new private-sector space age, New Mexico officials broke ground on Spaceport America, the $200 million project that is destined to be a hub for wealthy space tourists and space entrepreneurs of all stripes. The new space age dates back to June 21, 2004, when the SpaceShipOne rocket plane became the first privately developed craft to carry a civilian astronaut into outer space [MSNBC]. Now, the company Virgin Galactic is hard at work on SpaceShipTwo, which may be ready to carry paying passengers to the edge of space in 2011 or 2012.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic plans to base its operations at Spaceport America, but New Mexico officials hope the space terminal will attract other innovative businesses as well. Steve Landeene, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, said: “The future is here and we are not too far off a new age of space. It is not just about private astronauts going up, it is about bringing the cost structure down and about new medicines, solar power in space and the entire range of scientific benefits that can come from it” [BBC News].
(more…)
The scrappy space start-up Xcor Aerospace is ready to begin selling tickets to tourists who have a hankering to soar 37 miles up to the edge of space, the company announced today. It also presented its first paying customer, whom they hope to send up in 2011: Danish investment banker Per Wimmer, who will pay $95,000 for his suborbital flight. Wimmer seems enthusiastic about Xcor’s plans, but he’s certainly hedging his bet. He is so keen to leave earth’s atmosphere that he has bought another two tickets to space, one with Virgin Galactic and one with rival firm Space Adventures. “It will be a real race to see which of them goes up first – but if it is Xcor, I will become the first affordable space tourist,” he said [Daily Mail].
In the small world of private space companies, Xcor is considered a cheap, no-frills provider. The announced ticket price is about half the $200,000 cost of a suborbital flight aboard Virgin Galactic’s deluxe SpaceShip Two. That vehicle is expected to bring six passengers aloft at a time, and may let them float around the cabin during the five minutes of weightlessness they’ll experience at the apogee of their flight, 62 miles above the earth’s surface. In contrast, Xcor’s small suborbital vehicle, the Lynx, is a two-seater, and the one paying passenger will stay strapped into the copilot’s seat.
(more…)
This morning, the Russian spacecraft Soyuz successfully docked with the International Space Station, and space tourist Richard Garriott was welcomed as part of the 18th space station crew. Garriott, who reportedly paid $30 million for a 10-day stay at the outpost, is the son of a former NASA astronaut and longed to follow in his father’s footsteps, but was prevented from training as an astronaut because of his poor eyesight. After making his fortune as a video game designer he brokered passage to orbit through the company Space Adventures, which arranges trips with Russia’s space agency.
Garriott’s father, Owen, applauded as he watched the docking from Russian Mission Control outside Moscow. “I’m pleased everything is going smoothly. It’s looking great and they are starting off on a fascinating new adventure…. There was not a lot of nervousness today or during the launch. We were confident it would go well,” he said [AP]. At the space station Garriott met Russian cosmonaut Yuri Volkov, who was the first man to follow his father into space.
(more…)
At an international conference in November, a group of ambitious engineers and would-be astronauts will draw up a proposal and a timeline for building the world’s first space elevator, which would give humans access to orbit via 22,000-mile-long cables. The Japan Space Elevator Association [Web site in Japanese] estimates the project’s cost at $9 billion, but according to the association’s officials, the elevator would be a bargain at that price.
A space elevator could carry people, huge solar-powered generators or even casks of radioactive waste. The point is that breaking free of Earth’s gravity will no longer require so much energy — perhaps 100 times less than launching the space shuttle. “Just like travelling abroad, anyone will be able to ride the elevator into space,” Shuichi Ono, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association, said [The Times].
(more…)
At an aircraft hangar deep in the Mojave Desert this morning, the space tourism company Virgin Galactic unveiled one of the crafts that will boost paying customers up to the edge of space. Called the “WhiteKnight Two” by British tycoon Richard Branson, the vehicle will act as a mothership by flying to 48,000 feet with a smaller spacecraft slung between its twin fuselages. Then the spacecraft, SpaceShip Two, will detach and fire its rocket engines to take the six passengers the rest of the way up.
A crowd of engineers, dignitaries and space enthusiasts gathered inside a Mojave Desert hangar for the unveiling countdown. As the hangar door flew open, White Knight Two appeared outside under the sunny desert sky with Branson and American aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan waving from the cabin. White Knight Two, billed as the world’s largest all-carbon-composite aircraft, is “one of the most beautiful and extraordinary aviation vehicles ever developed,” Branson said [AP].
(more…)
Against the classic backdrop of New York City’s Explorers Club, a brash entrepreneurial space company held a press conference today to announce its latest customers, who have pledged to pay exorbitant prices to take pleasure cruises to space. In a sign that the space tourism market is taking off, the company’s executives also declared that business is so strong that they’re leasing more seats from their partner, the Russian space agency.
The company, Space Adventures, is playing up the scientific and educational possibilities of each mission, seemingly trying to dispel the notion that astronomically wealthy folks are spending bushels of money just to take pretty pictures of Earth from the International Space Station.
(more…)
