The president of the International Space Elevator Union threatened to take the space elevator to the moon in 14 days.
CTOnews.com, November 21, according to the Science and Technology Daily, at the 2022 International Symposium on the peaceful use of Space Technology (Health) held from November 18 to 20, Peter Swan, chairman of the International Space Elevator Union and academician of the International Academy of Astronautics, proposed that the future space elevator, as a permanent logistics infrastructure, can transport materials and people into space, becoming a new channel into space.
CTOnews.com learned that the space elevator is a device conceived by humans to go into space, and its main body is a cable that permanently connects the space station to the earth's surface, which can be used to transport people and goods from the ground to the space station.
"according to the current design, the car of the space elevator weighs about 20 tons and the climbing speed is about 200 kilometers per hour," Swan said. in the future, as the cable lengthens and the car climbs faster, it is expected to reach geosynchronous orbit in 8 days, the moon in 14 days and Mars in 61 days. "
Swan said that compared with rocket transportation, space elevators are greener, cheaper and more reused, and space elevators are less likely to produce space debris. Swan believes that in the future, humans need to launch a large number of materials into space to build Martian villages and lunar villages, interstellar travel is also highly anticipated, and space elevators are very commercially competitive.
According to Swan, in terms of materials, carbon nanotubes and super-strong graphene are considered ideal materials for the construction of space elevator cables; in terms of design, scientists have put forward eight relatively robust and reasonable scientific designs; in terms of engineering, scientists in some countries have carried out some small-scale experiments and are ready for in-depth verification.
Dennis Wright, vice president of the International Space Elevator Federation, said that scientists expect the space elevator to be initially operational around 2035 and perhaps to carry people around 2045, but there is no exact timetable yet.
However, there are still many theoretical, technical and engineering challenges in building a space elevator, it is difficult to build one, and in the event of an accident, the losses will be huge. And Swan's idea of "14 days to the moon and 61 days to Mars" means building space elevators between Earth and the moon and between Earth and Mars, which feels a bit impractical.
