I’ve got a story in today’s New York Times on NASA’s Centennial Challenges — the contests designed to lure innovators and innovation into the space agency. Here’s how it starts:
Steve Jones doesn’t have a workshop, exactly, for his miniature space elevator; he is designing it in his dorm room and in four labs scattered across the University of British Columbia. He doesn’t have a staff, either; a collection of friends and fellow space enthusiasts volunteer to help. And his budget, in the low five figures, comes mostly from the school activities fund, although Red Bull is donating some energy drinks.
But he might soon have a chance to join the ranks of the aerospace establishment — getting money from NASA and, in his own way, helping explore the solar system. To get ready, he is spending 60 hours a week on his elevator, which is meant to haul people and gear into orbit without a rocket. He has even put off graduation until the project is done.
Until recently, the chances that a college senior like Mr. Jones would contribute to the NASA space program were remote. Contracts belonged mostly to the Boeings of the world. Tinkerers and students were kept at the far edge of the periphery. But with budgets tightening and the obstacles to human space exploration looking more daunting, NASA is enlisting the expertise of outsiders.
For example, the agency is offering 13 contests, which it calls Centennial Challenges, that anyone can enter. The prizes range from $200,000 to more than $5 million, for building gear as diverse as solar sails, lunar excavators and the tiny elevators.
But more important than the cash prizes, contestants and administrators say, is the opportunity to sidestep the traditional ways NASA has done business and bring some fresh faces to its ranks.
“With a regular contract, a small group of students like us wouldn’t have a chance,” Mr. Jones said. “This way, anyone with a good idea can contribute.“
Click over here to read this rest. And if you’re interested in space, be sure to check in regularly at Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log. When I want space news, it’s the first place I click.
UPDATE 04/08/06: News.com has a sweet photo montage of the challengers.
|
The Games NASA PlaysLeave a Reply |
|
They’ve picked a bad example. Space-a-vator research is pretty low on the scale of “things likely to pay off”. I’m personally much more hopeful for the other technologies mentioned.
huh?
The Space Elevator should be at the very top of the list, with the highest paying prizes…there isn’t one other thing that would revolutionize space like the elevator would.
Absolutely so, Murc, as would antigravity paint, a machine that builds prime rib out of wastewater, and a raygun capable of turning asteroids into basketball shoes. But the engineering problems are non-trivial and the construction itself requires the kind of heavy spacelift capability which, if available in the quantities needed to complete the project, would make the elevator unnecessary to start with. There are other issues but they’re rather abstruse and you can learn about them elsewhere.
I’m much more interested in what the Low Cost Space Pressure Suit and the Micro Reentry Vehicle competitions will produce. These are, IMHO, better bets– more likely to pay off, and with immediate applications.
Unfortunately I don’t see any challenges which might produce something better than stupid ol’ chemical rockets. I think we can agree that there needs to be a cheaper way of getting mass into orbit!
When are they offering a similar contest on developing automobiles with greatly improved efficiency and/or alternate sources of energy?
Or would that step on Big Toes and probably run into legal patent battlegrounds too quickly? I know tech gets moved into the public sector from space/mil use but sure seems like this would be a worthy exception… or maybe such contests already exist?
The Space Elevator isn’t some far fetched idea, like your “anti-grav paint”. And there is no theororetical limit as to how big you can make them. you could lift virtually anything into space at a very very affordable price.
The elevator would basically open up space to everyone. The number in probes being sent to other planets could over double by the saving this would produce. as well as more satellites for telecommunications, weather, military, etc.
Space stations would finally be affordable, SO space hotels would be poping up no more then 10 years after the elevator is operational.
People could live on the moon and mars as well…once we build a elevator on earth, and the moon, and Mars.
Anyone that thinks the Space Elevator is a “Pie in the Sky” type of idea.….is simply uninformed.
Murc, it sounds like you’re arguing from consequences. A space elevator would be a nifty thing to have; sure. I don’t debate that, although I do see some serious safety problems. But that’s assuming you can get one up. I find the engineering problems to be a little greater. Here are some big ones:
1.) How do you propose to move those thousands of tons of carbon nanotubes into geosynchronous orbit? If we could do that on the scale required, we wouldn’t have to build a space elevator in the first place.
2.) How will you deal with lateral forces once you have the main cable deployed? There’s no quick way to explain it, but sending mass or down the elevator will put huge stresses on the top and bottom “anchorage points” and a big bend in the cable due to angular momentum. Stress at the ground can be dealt with, but pulling the counterweight out of orbit is no laughing matter.
3.) How do you prevent fiber breakage from cascading into a catastrophic failure? Even Wikipedia acknowledges this one.
These aren’t something you can just dismiss– they’re real problems that don’t go away when you distract your audience from them. I’m reminded of plans for an interstellar spacecraft mapped out in grand detail, bathrooms to hyrdoponics, with a blank spot saying “warp drive goes here”.
You would have to use rockets to start its constructionhopefully under a dozen. At least one rocket would have to be strictly weighta big slab of metal, the other would need to be the carbon nanotube ribbon, which every rocket would haul up another large chunk of the cable, and the ends of each cable would be attached to one in other. Until all 62,000 miles are complete, and the last cable would be fastened to the oil-platform-like floating ground station, in the pacific by the equator.
Once that is done the cable is partially complete. Its to weak to haul loads into space, it can barely hold the vehicle which will travel up it, and while the vehicle travels up it, it will be making the ribbon stronger, by making the nanotubes, and 62,000 miles later it will reach the end of its journey, and it wont head back down, it will stay there, several hundred of those will be built, and all have a one way triponce their there, they will all stay there, all adding to the counterweights pull.
The whole cable will stay taught, by gravity trying to pull the cable down, and the counter weights trying to pull the cable up and into space.
As for the fear of breakage.
If say a meteoroid happened to hit it snapping it in two, it would cause next to no damage, the counterweight would fly off into space, while the remaining cable gently fell back to earthat about the speed of a leave falls off of a tree.
But if there was a minor breakage, they would send up a elevator designed to fix the cable on site.
Some of the best info you can find on the net is at Liftport.com which is a company that is planning on constructing one by 2018.
Murc,
I don’t imagine Noah and company meant the comment system to be an open forum for space technology speculations, but I would like to continue this discussion. Feel free to e-mail me at backcurseyou@lycos.com if you care to.
By the way, TG, I suspect it’s because there are already sufficient commercial incentives for developing that type of technology.
I think I’ve said all I needed to say.
What I have said refers to Noahs article, The Space Elevator is one of Nasa’s Centennial Challenges.
And these type of blog/forums are for that exact purpose.