Going Up?
I've been reading for a couple of years about an idea to transport objects into space without a launch vehicle called a 'space elevator.' The concept sounded a little '50's sci-fi to me, although pretty cool, and I never gave it much serious thought. But apparently NASA has. This article on MSNBC reports that NASA has established a prize along the lines of the Ansari X Prize (click on 'best prize ever' over there on the sidebar) to encourage people to actually build some of the needed technology to pull it off.
The concept is to hang a satellite in stationary orbit and attach a line to it that extends to the earth's surface. You then have these little crawlers that climb the thing and drag a payload into space. The crawlers are powered by a directed light source; kind of like shining a flashlight on a solar panel. NASA is encouraging people to build the crawlers, then build the light (energy) source, and also develop the materials to construct the tether.
[An aside: The entire country of Costa Rica just let out a loud yell, so I switched the tube on and CR just beat Panama in early world cup competition. I expect more fires than the lonely one on the train tracks I saw on the way home. From the brief glimpse I got before coverage went to commercial, the teams seemed to be playing in an empty stadium. I've heard of this; it's to protect the players from the crowd.]
Back in space, for all the shortcomings with the current administration, they seem to be taking the 'big' picture stuff and making it work. Nobody is more baffled at our anemic space program than I am, and there are a lot of baffled people out there. This is bold, and history suggests that once the right people get out front on things like this, something incredible usually happens. Go team!
PS. You should check out this 360 degree Quicktime panarama shot of the protests in Taiwan today. Notice the photographer at six o'clock. He's got a Canon lens on that sucker. Wish I were there.
