Editor’s Note

Dear Fellow Space Elevator Enthusiast,

I am publishing early because I will be out of town at my normal publishing date.

Also, I wanted one last reminder to go out regarding our Member-only Q&A Webinar in a few days! It is so important that I bumped the President's Corner down a slot for it. See the following entry...

Sandee Schaeffer
Newsletter Editor

Member-Only Webinar

The space elevator questions are in! Now it's time for answers...

On Saturday, April 30th, we'll have our member's only Q&A online session, starting at:

11 AM Eastern, 8 AM Pacific, 5 PM UTC.

For a time converter, try www.utctime.net.

The experts will answer the questions already sent in, but we will have a chat window for impromptu questions and comments during the session.

No need to register; all members will receive an invitation link.  

Not a member? We have professional and student memberships at

www.isec.org/membership.

See you there; I expect this will be fun!

President's Corner

by Pete Swan

Transformational Economic Assessment

Last month, I initiated the discussion on our remarkable transformational characteristics. Less subtle, but probably more important, is the transformation resulting from the economic impact of a permanent space access infrastructure. I am paraphrasing from an article accomplished by two space elevator enthusiasts Kevin Barry and Eduardo Alfaro. (Thanks guys, for your great paper - Barry, K., E.P. Alfaro, “Changing the Economic Paradigm for Building a Space Elevator,” presentation and soon to be published article, IAC-21, Oct 21 Dubai.) We need to help the space community transfer their thinking related to funding permanent infrastructure. Their paper is an excellent start.

From the beginning of this century, the Space Elevator Community has played the rocket game – trying to show that it will be an inexpensive transportation infrastructure. We CAN show that at so many levels, but the discussion needs to be raised to another level by actually explaining that Space Elevators reach across economic growth arenas of enterprises across the solar system. The paper by Barry and Alfaro says, “With the current global trends favoring a burgeoning space economy, it is even more crucial than ever to develop a long-term sustainable economic overview for Space Elevators to accelerate the development of this megaproject.” In addition, they move the discussion from $/kg (which they call the language of rockets) to future key elements of economics and exchange of resources.

After reading the article several times, I believe their argument is essential to the understanding of this issue. The whole paper is worth reading to transition from the early century’s discussions towards what can enable development of space elevators. If you would like a copy, please email me at pete.swan@isec.org.

“The economic paradigm of building Space Elevators needs to shift from a focus on cost to the consumer to focusing on its value to the investor. In infrastructure, this paradigm shift is especially important because the value of infrastructure comes from a reduction in transaction costs to increase the rate of utilization and thereby enhance economic productivity. To an investor, a Space Elevator is far more valuable as a departure point to the solar system and harbor for interplanetary trade than a business fighting to generate profit from selling ever-cheaper tickets to space. The true value of space is not based on merely reaching space, it is in what can be done once there. Space Elevators successfully address six of the seven major value streams for space development and creates a launching platform for extraction efforts (the final value stream) anywhere in the solar system.”

Pete’s Request: This new year will have surprises, and hopefully, Space Elevators will raise visibility and support for infrastructure development. Who knows where we will be within 12 or even 60 months. What I would like is that each of you start to re-think the arena of Space Elevators. We are no longer a simple string to space. We have become a transformational element in the movement off planet and thrust to control climate change. We have huge responsibilities surfacing to contribute significantly towards the health of the Earth and humanity’s critical movement off planet. I would love to hear back from you with further insight into this series of “thought experiments.”

Update on ISEC Virtual Conference 2022

Transformational Space Access Infrastructure
Friday, Aug 19th, 2022, and Saturday, Aug 20th, 2022

We look forward to gathering again after three years.  Please plan on supporting this conference!  The theme of the conference will reflect the magnitude of the venture with two sub-themes carrying on the tradition of supporting ongoing ISEC studies and those just starting. The major categories to be emphasized this year are:

  • Dual Space Access Architecture

  • Materials Science and Engineering

  • Tether/Climber Interface

  • Transformational Permanent Space Infrastructure

  • Significant Questions to be Answered

ISEC 2022 Conference Key Dates:

  • Abstracts Deadline: 24-May-2022

  • Draft Papers Deadline: 15-June-2022

  • Paper Approvals: 6-Jul-2022

  • Registration details to follow soon

Follow this link for paper submissions: https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/ISEC2022/

(You will need to log into the Microsoft CMT system; create an account if necessary.)

Tether Materials

by Adrian Nixon, Board Member, ISEC

How edge defects affect the tensile strength of monolayer graphene

The lives of people in the future may depend on materials being developing today. So, it will come as no surprise to you that we are paying particular attention to how tether materials behave under stress.

The leading candidate tether material is graphene, one member of a new class of two dimensional (2D) super-strong materials. Graphene is the strongest material in the world because it has a perfect repeating pattern of sp2 hybridised carbon bonds [1]. However, even the strongest material will fail if the failure conditions are met.

Dear reader, you will probably know that I am part of the ISEC climber-tether interface study group. This is a multi-disciplinary group of scientists and engineers. My role is to cover the materials science of tether materials. One of the concerns, raised in the study group, was that the repeating crystal pattern could unzip and fail catastrophically. One source of critical defects is at the edges of the single-crystal graphene sheet.

Actual laboratory tensile strength testing of single-crystal graphene is hard to find because the material is so new. However, we have found a paper that explores the tensile strength behaviour of graphene with edge defects.

tether edge defects

This tensile strength testing work was done at the City University of Hong Kong with Tsinghua University, Beijing [2]. They have done tensile strength tests on single crystal monolayer graphene at the micro scale and found the samples have a tensile strength of 50 to 60 GPa. This may seem underwhelming compared with the 130 GPa we expect for single crystal graphene; the team realised that the samples they tested had defects at the edges and this weakened the material.

Even so, these results are still orders of magnitude stronger than anything else tested and shows that defects at the edges do halve the strength of the graphene but not cause the catastrophic strength failure some were anticipating.

The fact the defects retain a lot more strength than we expected and don't seem to unzip probably is encouraging news. It is also worth noting that this work was done on monolayer single crystal graphene and the space elevator tether will be made from tens of thousands of layers of single crystal graphene layered as a Van der Waals (VdW) homostructure.

This means that we have a better understanding of the failure mode of a single layer of tether material and helps us develop many ways to mitigate edge defects, which gives us confidence that we can contribute to preserving the lives of people who travel on the space elevator in the future.

References

1. Anon, 2022. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010. [online] NobelPrize.org. Available at: <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2010/illustrated-information/> [Accessed 20 April 2022].

2. Cao, K., Feng, S., Han, Y., Gao, L., Hue Ly, T., Xu, Z. and Lu, Y., 2020. Elastic straining of free-standing monolayer graphene. Nature Communications, 11(1).

An Interplanetary Transportation System

by Paul Phister and Peter Swan

This article was Published in ROOM Space Journal of Asgardia, Issue #4 (30) 2021.

It can be reviewed at: https://room.eu.com/category/astronautics.

Introduction: To truly explore the stars, we must develop the capability to lift massive amounts of materials into space, which will require a far more efficient and capacious delivery solution than current launch vehicles, including the SpaceX Starship. Here, the authors describe their concept for a Galactic Harbour as part of a Dual Access to Space Architecture, a far-reaching idea that includes an inter-planetary transportation system or Space Train to ferry people, materials and supplies between the Earth and Mars.

Space Train and Elevator Concepts: The solution considered here effectively replaces the conventional launch vehicle with the yet-to-be-demonstrated space elevator and space train concepts. In brief, the proposed Inter-Planetary Transportation System encompasses two space elevators to move mass from Earth to a train station beyond geostationary orbit (GEO), known collectively as the Galactic Harbour; a Space Train to transfer that mass from the vicinity of Earth to Mars; and another elevator to deliver it to the Martian surface.

Upcoming Events

International Space Development Conference (ISDC)

Sponsored by the National Space Society (NSS)
http://isdc2022.nss.org/
Friday, May 27th through Sunday, May 29th, 2022
Location: Hyatt Regency Crystal City
Arlington, VA

The ISDC is the annual conference of the National Space Society bringing together NSS leaders and members with leading managers, engineers, scientists, educators, and businessmen from civilian, military, commercial, entrepreneurial, and grassroots advocacy space sectors. Information about sponsorships, exhibiting, and volunteering is available at each year’s ISDC website. As in recent years, ISEC will host a ‘Space Elevator Track’ within ISDC2022, Friday 2-5 pm.

Track Title: “Permanent Infrastructure – Space Elevators As A Transformational Capability” 

Top Level:  Explain Transformational in the Sense of Enabling Missions and Changing the Way We Do Space Access, Centered On Our Three Study Reports:

  • Green Road to Space

  • Interplanetary

  • And the newest study: Dual Space Access Architecture

Study Explanation Level: Current Climber-Tether Interface and other topics as appropriate

Cambridge Rock Festival

https://www.cambridgerockfestival.co.uk/
Thursday, June 16th through Sunday, June 19th
East of England Arena and Events Centre
Peterborough, England

Features the band called "Space Elevator" and a late-night astronomy talk. Friday evening’s talk features our very own Peter Robinson and Adrian Nixon speaking about Space Elevators! The topic is "The Space Elevator and Graphene."

Virtual Space Elevator Conference

Sponsored by the International Space Elevator Consortium
https://www.isec.org/events
Topics: Transformational Permanent Space Infrastructure; Tether/Climber interface & Dual Space Access Architecture
Friday, August 19th through Saturday, August 20th, 2022
Registration: TBD

73rd International Astronautical Congress

Sponsored by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF)
https://www.iafastro.org/events/iac/iac-2022/
Sunday, September 18th through Thursday, September 22nd, 2022
Paris, France

The Space Elevator session takes place Monday, September 19th from 3:00 PM until 5:30 PM local time. It will be Session 3 “Modern Day Space Elevators Entering Development” of the 20th IAA Symposium on Visions and Strategies for the Future.

To learn more about the topic, see our webpage at https://www.isec.org/events/iac-2022.

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