NASA confirmed in late August that two U.S. astronauts trapped at the International Space Station for nearly three months would stay in space for months.
Boeing’s first crewed flight to the ISS in June, which carried Suni Williams and Barry Wilmore, suffered many issues and was returning to Earth without humans. SpaceX’s rescue vessel couldn’t reach the crew until February 2025.
Williams and Wilmore had no choice but to wait. That may not always happen. The circumstances may evolve in a science fiction-like way.
The technology is there
Over a century in theory and at least two decades in practice, academics have considered building a “space elevator” between Earth and space. Several scientists and executives at a big Japanese corporation now think the notion can fly.
“The technology is there,” says physicist Bradley Edwards, who wrote NASA’s first viable design and engineering study for the system almost 25 years ago. He was mostly ignored respectfully.
Edwards says the missing thing is simple: A determination. Also funding.”
Yes, money. First things first. A lift to space? Not precisely. Consider a cable, ribbon, or vertical railway with freight cars that move up and down the stationary cable, conveying cargoes.
Edwards that a spacecraft carry a ribbon spool to geosynchronous orbit, 22,000 miles above Earth. The spool would fall by gravity and anchor in the Pacific Ocean. The spaceship would unspool the ribbon as it traveled up to 60,000 miles (approximately one-fourth of a Moon mission).
The spaceship would stay as a counterbalance. Climbers, large vehicles with large storage spaces, would then scale the wire and add ribbon to the first layer to make it thicker and stronger. “And you do that with about 200 climbers,” says Edwards.
The cable, likely carbon nanotubes or graphene, would extend from Earth near the equator. Similar like twirling a ball on a string fast enough around one’s head to make it taut, the earth’s rotation maintains tether tension.
Dennis Wright, president of the Seattle-based International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC), which has studied and organized conferences on the topic for two decades, says “the centrifugal force will balance the force of gravity.” It will stretch this wire taut and offer a vertical railroad for vehicles that can grab it to climb up and down and transport cargoes.
These climbers, moving at 120–200 mph, could carry a 15-ton satellite daily or every other day. Satellites and asteroid elements could be returned. Of course, it could carry passengers and be available every day without rocket launch windows based on optimum conditions. It alters everything. Edwards describes it as an entirely separate universe.
Payloads can be launched into the solar system swiftly and cheaply since the space elevator’s apex moves so fast. A rocket ship trip to Mars for settlement might take three to four months instead of six to eight. More crucially, it would extend the Mars launch window to more than six months in a 26-month cycle, compared to rockets’ two-week timeframe.
“A space elevator becomes a bridge to the entire solar system,” says Stephen Cohen, a Vanier College physics professor who has studied space elevator mechanics.
Mass-transport delivery might also pave the way for asteroid mining, moon villages, and space-based solar generation that could power New York or France. A technology that can quickly and cheaply transport vast amounts of stuff to and from orbit might start it all.
Theoretically.
If this seems like a novelist’s fantasy, it was. In 1979, Arthur C. Clarke’s novel The Fountains of Paradise focused on building a space elevator. Clark wrote to Edwards in 2001 that he had prophesied the elevator will be built “50 years after everyone stops laughing”. Clark stated, “They just stopped.” after reading Edwards’ NASA report.
Clarke was not alone. In 1895, Russian physicist and astronautics pioneer Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky proposed a tower that might reach thousands of kilometers into space. Steel, one of the strongest and most extensively used construction materials, was too heavy and weak for the idea to take off.
For a long time, material engineers struggled to develop robust ribbon or cable. Carbon nanotubes, which are stronger than steel and other materials, made space elevators possible in 1991.
“It surprised me that somebody hadn’t dumped a ton of money into carbon nanotubes, because they’re a game changer,” says Edwards. “They’re 20–30 times stronger than Kevlar and other materials. They would transform many industries.”
Edwards hopes so. His new startup, Industrial CNT, is raising funds to create longer carbon nanotubes, which might form the cable. He estimates a space elevator might be built in 8–10 years, including carbon nanotube production ramp-up. Others recommend graphene, and China has begun manufacturing huge graphene molecules.
Whoever develops this first is going to control space
“I think whoever develops this infrastructure first is going to really control space,” says ISEC’s Wright, whose next conference is in Chicago in early September. “If that message can be brought out in America, I think people will be more willing to look at the idea and say, well, some people are working on it. We must be or we’ll fall behind.”
Due to the unknown cost of numerous elements, including what equipment could ascend the rope, the space elevator was a nonstarter for a long time. The Japanese construction giant Obayashi Corp. has proposed an elevator since 2012, estimating its more complicated version at $100 billion.
Edwards disagrees: $8 billion for the first elevator. “That’s about the same cost as two Boeing SLS Rocket launches, which were $4 billion each,” the scientist says.
Tesla makes electric motors for the once-mysterious climbers for $12,000 each, with two needed per climber. Edward argues the second elevator would cost $3 billion cheaper “because you’d already have the first one up there and could use that to build the second.”
LeoLabs is also improving its ability to track space debris particles precisely enough to prevent them from hitting the elevator. Edwards intends to increase carbon nanotube manufacturing, grow CNTs (they are originally a billionth of a meter in diameter), and utilize machines to spin them into threads to create a thousands-mile-long spool.
“I think we have overcome the major problems (related to the space elevator),” says Japanese aerospace engineer Yoji Ishikawa, who helped create Obayashi’s idea. In search of international backing and “many different industries to come together,” Ishikawa has delayed the company’s 2025 construction start.
A space elevator could launch things to geosynchronous orbit (GEO) in a week. At GEO, the orbital period equals Earth’s one-day rotation, keeping things above us. Most spacecraft and missions are in low-earth orbit.
The stranded astronauts are 250 miles above us at the International Space Station. Rockets need plenty of fuel to go far, but that fuel makes them heavier, costing more fuel and money.
Fuel loads are unnecessary with the space elevator. Cohen stated, “You’ll just use whatever electrical mechanism you have (on climbers) to get you up there,” with fuel to adjust orientation. “We have astronauts 400 kilometers away and we’re saying help is coming, just wait six months.”
NASA, known for its risk aversion, heard Edwards but hasn’t acted. (The agency suggested Edwards but could not answer questions quickly.) Wright said China and Japan have researched the idea, so Obayashi Corp.’s commitment is legitimate.
It may take international cooperation to build a space elevator since without it, piracy or military use are possible. Weather issues can be reduced by putting the base, or “Earth port,” near the equator in a specified Pacific Ocean region. “None of these seems to be showstoppers,” adds Cohen. “Until someone finds one without a solution, I keep going.”
The International Academy of Astronautics said in 2019 that “a broad group of space professionals” found the space elevator practical and that “development initiation is nearer than most think.” Cohen says, “I think an appetite to build a space elevator is sort of the wildcard in this,” and there has been no public or government push for the project.
Edwards thinks more information, particularly how near the idea is to reality, would assist. “We can build it now,” he says. “Now it is an economic win.”
Not until entities invest. The space elevator has moved from sci-fi to mission-mode after nearly 150 years. Suni Williams and Barry Wilmore may have been happy to click the down button while waiting for a rocket launch home.