Space elevator: audacious idea will open space to entrepreneurs By Dick Pelletier “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the Space Elevator. Your first stop will be ‘Hotel Row’ where we will enjoy a 2-hour dinner under the stars; then we continue on to the Geosynchronous Way Station where most of you will transfer to an L-5 Colony shuttlecraft. This entire ride takes 8 days, so sit back and enjoy the trip from your luxury sleeping quarters”. This scene may sound like science fiction, but it is not. According to visionaries, the Space Elevator, a revolutionary means of transport from Earth to space could become reality by as early as 2030 or before. Join discussion...

I’ve been attending the 2008 Space Elevator Conference being held at Microsoft’s Redmond campus this weekend. The many talks and papers given there clearly demonstrate the tremendous dedication and creative engineering that can be found in this nascent field. For those of you who are fuzzy on the concept, the general idea of the space elevator involves running a tether from the surface of the earth to geosynchronous orbit and beyond. A mechanical “climber” then ascends and descends the tether, delivering payloads into orbit. If this sounds like science fiction, that’s because until recently, it was. Independently conceived by a Russian (Artsutanov) and an American (Pearson), the space elevator concept was popularized by the late science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke in his 1979 novel, “The Fountains of Paradise”. At that time, no material was light enough and strong enough to make it possible. But with the developing field of nanotechnology and the discovery of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), a number of people have begun to take the idea more seriously. (For the record, Clarke is also credited with originating the idea of using geosynchronous satellites as telecommunications relays back in 1945, a concept that completely revolutionized communications.) Join discussion...

A space elevator is a type of surface-to-orbit transport, utilising a solid link to the surface of a planet and a counterweight placed beyond geosynchronous orbit at the other end. It would necessarily be at least 45,000 km (28,000 mi) high, and would, except in special circumstances, need to be constructed at the Earth's equator. Join discussion...