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Posted on 09/01/2026 5:02:14 AM PDT by Libloather
On a visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston last week, President Trump promised American astronauts would establish a permanent presence on the Moon before pushing forward to Mars.
“Our nation will conquer … this vast frontier that we have before us … We will explore it, we will tame it, and we will win it,” he said of America’s present “golden age” of space exploration.
But researchers thinking of truly big ideas say we’ll never get there with today’s inefficient chemical rocket technology. And they point to an important breakthrough.
“We’re really pushing for permanent infrastructure, like a bridge replacing ferries to cross a river,” Pete Swan, president of the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC), a nonprofit research and advocacy hub, told The Post.
It’s a simple yet mind-bending concept: an ultra-strong electrified cable running from a point on the ground at Earth’s equator, extended out beyond geostationary orbit (GEO), where a counterweight will float in space keeping it taut. Vessels then climb the cable to deliver goods, people and machines, passing through the atmosphere and into space.
“The beauty is that raising it with electricity saves our atmosphere from pollution, it doesn’t leave any debris along the way and it will be routine, daily, inexpensive, safe. It’s gonna be a bridge to space.”
Crazy as it sounds, the engineering checks out, according to researchers who spoke to The Post.
However, the bottleneck to the space elevator idea has always been the tether material, because it must be scalable, 100 times stronger than steel, exceptionally lightweight and capable of efficient spooling in order to get the whole thing in place.
Next month, the ISEC is set to announce they have their most promising candidate yet—a two-dimensional material called polycrystalline graphene, already widely used in the consumer electronics industry.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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Robert Heinlein wrote of the elevator that is being herein described.
He wrote all about it in “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.”
As I recall, the Loonies shipped ore to earth from the moon and received supplies on the space elevator.
I recently reread “Stranger in a Strange Land” and much to my surprise learned that many of the things that Heinlein wrote about as future History are now actually in progress in various stages by Elon Musk. Elon Musk is in fact implementing the future Heinlein fortold
Willie Green would like it.
It’s a railroad to Space.
I frequently mention in threads about helicopters or VERTOL airplanes that both from an engineering standpoint and the physics involved, vertical take-off (or landing) is a hideously expensive proposition. Sputnik 1 was one of the smallest packages ever put into orbit (184 lbs) but it still needed more than 3/4ths of a million pounds of thrust to get there. The fuel alone on the space Shuttle weighed 4 million pounds.
Compounding the problem of gravity, reaching low earth orbit takes a velocity of at least 17,000 mph (7.8 km/s) and wind resistance increases AT THE SQUARE of velocity.
On the other hand, reeling the package aloft on an infinitely light cable means overcoming vastly less wind resistance and only one times (1x) the force of gravity. And both wind resistance and force of gravity decrease all the way to the top.
It’s an absolutely brilliant concept but one that probably never had any hope of realization ... before graphene.
I’m thinking of three words from France.
Treb - u - chet
👍
AI illustration.
IF THE EQUATOR ===ABOUT 25,000 MILES-——
THE EARTH IS ROTATING AT OVER ,000 MILES AN HOUR THERE
ROTATING COUNTERCLOCKWISE AT NORTH POLE-—LESS ROTATION-—SLOWER SPEEDS-—SHORTER DISTANCE.
There has been evidence found of physical equator shift in the earths history. There have been theories that when the earths magnetic poles flipped (not shifted) that the earth “tumbled” until it regained equilibrium. Regardless, as you said, if that happened the space elevator would be the least of our problems.
What happens when a passenger plane flies into it?
geosynchronous. How does one do that over the pole.
“ a two-dimensional material ”
Yeah, I’m calling BS.”
Mathematically, you’re 100% correct.
This means a material where the atoms are bonded horizontally, with no vertical bonds, like graphene. The bonds are much stronger in this format.
It does have a non-zero height dimension, but it is so small, you can treat it as zero.
Ideas like this is from legalizing pot.
Magnetic poles shift quite bit, wandering over thousands of miles, but the true poles only wobble a few inches a year, and stay within a ~30ft range.
I cant even imagine the damage when (not if) a cable like this were ever to break and fall.
It cuts the plane in half...
I miss ART BELL
” I’m curious about the implications on the rotation of the planet. “
pretty sure the planet masses about 5.9 sextillion tonnes
the elevator will be insignificant, but if you are worried maybe we should build 2 of them.
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