One of the biggest challenges for space travel escape from Earth’s orbit. Whether it travels to the orbital space station, goes to the moon, or departs for another planet, freeing Earth’s orbit is the first step, and the biggest.
Space elevator, long principal science fiction, promised an innovative way to overcome Earth’s orbits. According to the premise, a long cable, anchored to earth in the equatorial line, provides a way to move people, supply, and vehicles into space. By offsetting the tip of the top of the moorings, centrifugal forces created by the rotation of the earth will overcome the gravity of the earth, resulting in the remaining and vertical cable.
Although illustrated in early 1895 by Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (through NASA), the material that was strong enough to build a traditional space lift had not yet existed or play a role in the amount needed. However, with some modifications, the elevator is possible. Scientists have worked on how to make space lifts realize technology and material today. These efforts have fallen into at least two separate camps.
Multi-cable method
The most promising method is one of George Zhu proposed by George Zhu, a machine engineering professor who jointly wrote the study of the idea, according to Mashable. This method will involve using two cables, not, like a cable car system.
“It’s like a hanging car, moving from a lower spacecraft on the top spacecraft,” Zhu explained. “They continue to leave, they remain stable. In technical terms, it’s almost finished … I’m very sure we will have it in the 22nd century.”
Using two cables, instead of one single, it will make it easier to keep the elevator stable and prevent cross winds in the atmosphere of the earth starting from combining it. The two cables will be suspended above the earth’s surface, instead of docking, further reducing pressure. Even with the rocket needed to reach a low level of lifts, the overall cost will still be significantly lower than using rockets for the entire trip.
While Zhu believes that this design might occur in the 22nd century, Tin Project, Brendan Quine, Associate Professor from the York Department of Earth Sciences and Space and Engineering, seems more optimistic about the time frame.
“I don’t want to downplay technology problems (but) I think it will be realized in 10 years,” he told Toronto.com.
Upside down space lift
Another more ambitious project, is one that will reverse the direction of the space elevator. Instead of docking on earth, Zephyr Penoyre from the University of Cambridge and Emily Sandford at Columbia University, proposed anchor lift space on the moon.
When MIT technology review explains, the cable will pass the Lagrange point, the point between the earth and the month where their gravitational forces cancel each other. This will be an ideal place to build a kind of “base camp” where construction projects and scientific experiments can be done safely. Unlike Earth’s orbits, the area will offer a true zero, without an interesting gravitational style in all directions.
This special type of lift space will not be useful as a traditional proposal to violate the Earth’s orbit, or the immediate activity around it. However, it will significantly reduce the costs and challenges involved in the journey to and from the moon, making colonization of very real possibilities.
The best thing about these two proposals is that they can be built fully with materials – such as titanium and aluminum – which are widely available, making very real space lifts using current technology.