An Elevator to the Moon in Eight Years?

 Space Elevators  

LiftPort, a company headed by a former NASA researcher claims it now has the fundamental technology to build a space elevator from the Moon to an orbiting station.  The venture could pave the way for economical mining of the Lunar body.

The LiftPort Group, a US-based privately-owned company, headed by former NASA researcher Michael Laine, is planning to build a space elevator to the Moon. A space elevator allows for a potential a rocket-free way to transport people and cargoes into orbit with the use of a special cable.

The idea of ​​a space elevator is not new. For the first time, it was put forward by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1895.

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The California-based company founded by former NASA engineer has developed a cheap and easy way to get to the lunar surface. The project is based on a special ribbon cable, on which transport modules and autonomous robots will travel. At first, the researchers plan to test the system on the planet: the test elevator will be two kilometers high.

The test project, has already been funded by a Kickstarter campaign. Initially, the company will use a space elevator to connect the Moon with a specially designed space station.

According to the campaign:

Before we can build Earth’s Elevator, we’ll need to build one on the Moon. It is significantly easier, and much much cheaper. Importantly - we can build it with current technology – in about eight years.

The station will then be connected to a platform on Earth. While the project was essentially mothballed during the recent economic recession, he claims there has been a fundamental technological breakthrough that has made the feasibility more likely than ever.

The construction will require only a single launch of a spacecraft that would technically resemble the famous Soviet Sputnik-1. It is assumed that such an elevator can already become a part of modern-day reality taking into consideration the current level of the technological development.

The space elevator, scientists say, will help people build manned bases on the Earth's natural satellite and organize the extraction of helium-3 there - a raw material that will potentially solve global problems of the shortage of energy resources.  According to most pessimistic estimates, the reserves of helium-3 on the Moon will be enough for Earth's population for at least 1,000 years.




SOURCE  My Science Academy

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