Edwards is not the first to contemplate a great structure rising from Earth’s equator, flinging payloads into space like David’s sling. That distinction probably goes to Russian space visionary Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who in 1895 imagined a tower so tall that when an elevator occupant reached 22,000 miles, gravity “would be completely annihilated, and then it would again be detected . . . but its direction would be reversed, so that a person would have his head turned towards the earth.” Throughout the 20th century, the visions came thick and fast, replete with fanciful names: Skyhook, Heavenly Ladder, Beanstalk, Orbital Tower, even Cosmic Funicular. But every serious study concluded that the elevator’s track could not be built, because no known material was strong enough to support itself, much less legions of freight-hauling elevators, over such a yawning expanse.

Then in 1991, while studying the unique atomic structures called buckyballs, which are created by electrically charging carbon soot, Sumio Iijima of Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan, discovered the first nanotubes—fantastically strong cylindrical carbon-atom constructions less than two nanometers wide and of varying lengths. If such nanotubes could be chained together with no loss of strength, a piece as thin as sewing thread could lift a large automobile.

During the 1990s, several scientists speculated that a space elevator ribbon could be made from nanotubes, but “it was just an idea mentioned in passing,” says Edwards. Then came a day in 1998 when Edwards chanced to read a interview with a scientist—he does not recall the name—who declared that the space elevator would be completed in “300 years to never.”


 “Yet he didn’t give any reasons why it couldn’t be done,” says Edwards. “That got me going.” A wunderkind of astronautical engineering during his 11 years at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Edwards led the development of the world’s first optical cryocooler, a breakthrough device that achieved supercold temperatures with no moving parts (“It breaks two, if not all three, laws of thermodynamics,” he says), and designed missions to the moon and Jupiter’s moon Europa. Intense and energetic, he used to hang glide for fun and wanted to be an astronaut. NASA rejected him because he has asthma. “I’m not timid. My feeling is, you can do a nine-to-five job, or you can take on something larger. At 29, I designed a lunar mission to map out all the elements and look for water. This seemed like a natural progression.”

In 1999 Edwards published a paper on the space elevator in the journal Astronautica, then spent two years writing a detailed plan for NASA. The plan calls for using a deployment booster assembled in low Earth orbit to carry two spools of 5- to 10-inch-wide pilot ribbon into geosynchronous orbit, 22,000 miles above the equator. The ribbons will unwind down toward Earth as the spools simultaneously ascend to 62,000 miles into space, always keeping the center of the ribbons’ mass near the geosynchronous point. The dangling ends of the ribbons will be anchored to a platform similar to an offshore oil rig in the Pacific Ocean. From there, an unmanned device called a climber, equipped with traction treads, will “zip” the ribbons together as it is powered heavenward by lasers focused on solar cells.

INSIDE THE EXPRESS CAR

The space shuttle is an ear-splitting, bone-rattling ride, beginning with eight minutes of inertial forces peaking at three g’s (three times an individual astronaut’s weight) followed by a near-instant, stomach-churning flip to zero gravity.

 

By contrast, the space elevator would offer gracious access from Earth to space.

 

The first five miles would seem familiar to air travelers, but at the seven-mile mark, Earth’s curvature would become noticeable, and by 30 miles the sky would turn black and the stars would become visible, even in daytime, on the climber’s shaded side. Windows would need to be thick and coated for pressure containment and radiation protection, but a tourist-oriented climber would no doubt feature a high-resolution television screen providing panoramic views.

 

At 100 miles, Earth would clearly appear as a partial sphere. By 215 miles, gravity would drop by a noticeable 10 percent; by 456 miles, it would drop 20 percent. And at around 1,642 miles—roughly 13 hours into the trip—it would drop by 50 percent. “We can’t test it before we actually build a ribbon, but the slow reduction of gravity during a multiday trip may well serve to significantly reduce the number of people adversely affected by zero gravity by the time they get to the geosynchronous orbit station,” Brad Edwards says.

 

At the 22,000-mile-high geosynchronous orbit stop, Earth would appear the size of a baseball held at arm’s length. A permanent station floating nearby could offer a variety of tourist attractions, such as wild zero-gravity versions of ball-and-stick sports, or even the possibility of a visitor flying like a bird though large open spaces using wings strapped to the arms.

 

Someday, Edwards says, an entire ribbon might be devoted to the tourist trade with a hotel permanently affixed at 8,700 miles, where there is one-tenth of Earth’s gravity for comfort. By that point, he says, a ribbon would cost just $2 billion to build, bringing the price of a trip to roughly $6,000 in today’s dollars.    

—B. L.