perfidy

A while back – too long, to be honest, I posted the first part of my interview with Brian Dunbar of the Liftport Company (where you can now buy a one ounce ticket to space) - those magnificent crazies who are attempting to build a Space Elevator. Part one just got us started, so without any sort of further ado, here is the balance of the interview:

Beyond the technical issues, some other questions:

What obstacles do you see in the way of building a space elevator, assuming a technical solution is available – what legal, bureaucratic and safety issues will have to be overcome before we see a beanstalk?

We'll need to assure ourselves and whatever government agencies that evolve to regulate us that the thing is safe for normal operation and that when it fails it does so in a safe and controlled manner.

There are legal and bureaucratic issues that encumber a launch operator. These are probably evolved to deal with an industry that pokes along with a low launch rate; the appropriate agencies are going to have to perk up and move faster or that will be a bottleneck.

If I invented a strong enough material this evening, how quickly could your company build a beanstalk?

If you do that you should contact us soonest. We can offer you a heckuva deal.

About twenty years. It's not just about the material - we need to evolve an organization, design the power delivery system, the lifters, the platform, run tests to make sure this all works in the Real World. The good news is that the further down this track we go the more work we're doing that back fills the effort so when the ribbon is done ..

Think of it this way. You're at work, waiting for a lengthy process to finish so you can get busy. You can just sit around playing Solitaire or you can be productive and get other stuff done in the meantime. We're doing other stuff right now.

Do you see some sort of threshold for large scale access to space (via rocket) or experience in space construction that needs to be crossed before we can consider constructing a beanstalk?

It would be nice if we had massive experience with construction and assembly in orbit. We do have MIR, ISS and the lessons learned there are valuable but the work there is somewhat odd in that it's not being done by 'construction' guys but by middle-aged PhDs. This isn't bad but what we (as a culture) need are a lot of young guys with experience in
orbit.

We don't have that. We'll have to hire the guys from NASA who have ISS experience and think hard about our choices.

But now - no threshold for heavy lift rockets - the initial seed ribbon can get there using the rockets we've got.

Your website has a countdown timer – with a date in 2018. How do you get that date?

You'll note this was changed after you emailed these questions to 2031.

We chose 2018 after running some numbers and making best guesses about the tasks that needed to be done.

We calculated 2031 after sitting down this summer with interns, business guys and some terrifically smart skeptics. State of the art was evaluated, tests were designed, assumptions questioned and we emerged with a road map and a date of 2031. Which pleased no one (I'll be OLD) but is, we think, a more realistic date.

The road map is (PDF file) at http://www.liftport.com/papers/SE_Roadmap_v1beta.pdf

How cheap do you think space access can get (price per pound to orbit) with a working space elevator? On the order of air freight?

Eventually the cost to get to orbit will drop to match the cost of air freight, but air freight for what year?

We're aiming for an initial cost of $400 per pound. This value may change depending on how expensive it really turns out to be to build the first space elevator. It's not going to become 'cheap' for a while, but that depends on so many factors that I'd won't venture a guess as to the amount.

I like to think that we're working to get the transaction cost equivalent to transporting cargo to Australia. Maybe an Australian Cargo Equivalent (ACE) unit can be devised for a given year ....

What would be the effects of a working beanstalk? I know that's a big question, but how do you think the beanstalk will change the world?

It will change everything. Two minutes after that no one will notice and 'change' will be the new status quo. A few years later you'll notice that movies made before 20xx set in the future have a comical quality to them - something like watching James Bond in Moonraker flying with a fleet of Shuttles and doing battle in orbit with space Marines wearing MMU rocket packs.

The effects will be to lower the transaction cost to space. Soon after that we'll see if stuff like solar power from space (SPS), making 'stuff' in orbit and colonies of people living off earth are as viable an idea we might hope they are.

In real-life and non-snarking terms lowering the cost to orbit and ramping up the throughput will affect the satellite industry and what we do in orbit. The industry is built around a low launch rate and high reliability. When it's dirt cheap to make satellites and they can be replaced quickly and easily you might see done to them what happened to IBM and DEC when microcomputers took the world by storm.

Were the founders of the company inspired by Clarke and Sheffield's novels, and how have science fictional portrayals of space elevators affected what you're doing?

Eh. Speaking only for myself I read the Clarke book in high school and I liked it well enough but just another book. When the opportunity presented itself to work with Michael I got here via an interest in CNT and nano-tech.

SF has had an impact on us all, certainly. I'm reasonably sure that the other guys at Liftport are SF readers from way back and reading imaginative literature as a young child will warp you (smile) in ways odd and strange.

Does LiftPort have any plans for developing other, variant forms of beanstalks in the future, such as rotovators, lunar beanstalks, rotating free space tethers, or the like? If LiftPort is successful in building a terrestrial beanstalk, do you plan on creating a solar system wide mass transportation system?

Any thinking along those lines is years off and so speculative as to be in the realm of fantasy. However ...

The first company to build a space elevator is going to discover that they are the de-facto experts in civil engineering outside of the atmosphere. This will present some interesting challenges to the companies growth and it's natural desire to grow and do better than the competition.

Probably best to say that if there are customers and we can build it, we'll bid on the project.

How rich do you think you'll get as a early employee of a space elevator company? (Be honest.)

This question gives me the most trouble. Being objective, if this all works and I'm still working for Liftport in twenty or thirty years then 'rich beyond the dreams of avarice' might be a good description. But it's really hard for me to imagine having that much wealth. What would I DO with it all?

If it happens then I imagine I'll deal with it.

Finally, my co blogger had a question – what do you plan on naming the first operational space elevator? And a request – please, please don't name it "BeanstalkOne" or SpaceElevatorOne." What kind of nomenclature can we expect from LiftPort?

We're a small company working on a project that is barely on the fringes of respect in some circles. We can't really be too frivolous - it will cost us cred.

On the other hand we can't be too dour and serious. There has to be a balance between 'gonzo' and 'staid corporate blah'.

One of our prototype lifters was named 'Squeek' - I've attached the artwork Nyein created for her. The monikers we gave the others escapes me for the moment but that's a good example.

Will it always be like that? I hope so; you have to keep your perspective.

That was a fantastic interview, and thanks to Brian Dunbar for taking the time to answer my perhaps overly long list of questions. There are many things going on right now, of which most people are unaware. Now, that is always true, of course, but one of the unique things about the time we find ourselves in is that in dark corners of hidden laboratories, very bright people are inventing things – as we speak – that have the potential to utterly transform our world. Not just one or two. Any number of developments in the realms of genetic engineering, computing, nanotechnology (or the confluence of any two – like the Remote Control Pigeons of Doom) could overnight transform not just our world, but our perceptions of it, ourselves, and our place in it.

Liftport, and Brian, are certainly of that caliber and potential. Brian says that two minutes after the first cable car goes up the magic rope trick, everyone will forget that things were different, and in that he’s right. But things will be different, more than we can imagine. Just yesterday, I was talking with a friend about life before cell phones, ten years ago. Life after space travel is as easy (or, given the nature of train travel in this country, easier) as hopping an Amtrak train will be what? Wonderful, unimaginable, horrific? What it will be, is bigger. A bigger world to play in, war in, think in. Our horizons will be expanded, even if most of us aren’t exactly aware how they got expanded.

I’d like to comment on a couple items that we discussed. In part one, I asked Brian if he thought that there is any similarity between the historical development of railroads and the future growth of space elevators. Brian responded,

blockquote > The railroad analogy is flawed, I believe, if you look at the American West in the 19th century. There the railroad companies gained wealth by owning sections of land adjacent to the tracks, and selling them at a profit. Towns were created by virtue of their being a railroad stop. This falls down with a space elevator - there isn’t any value in owning space next to the ribbon. It’s all about the anchor, GEO and the bitter end.

I think his last sentence is arguing with the ones before. The space elevator, should it be built, is not just a transportation system. It will be, in itself, real estate. Bigelow, with his funding of the orbital space prize and his own development of space habitats, realizes this as well. In orbit, it is very nearly true that there is no “there” there. We have to build our own. Real estate will be constructed habitat space. At the top of the beanstalk, there will be a space station, and whoever built it will own that land, and control who can rent it.

That may well prove to be a greater profit engine (as it was for the railroad barons) than the mere transportation of goods along the rails.

The other thing is from this half of the interview. Of all the rocky planets in our solar system, ours is the biggest, and therefore has the steepest gravity well. Building a beanstalk here is harder than anywhere else. I think there’s a decent chance that space elevator technologies might actually come into common use elsewhere before we actually get around to building a beanstalk on earth.

If we assume (and it’s even now a big assumption) that commercial activities like Rutan’s or Jeff Bezos’ will lower the cost of rocket travel to space significantly, then we can project that people will start heading into space in a big way. (Imagine lumbering and clumsy Conestoga wagons from before the railroads…) If we have a large presence in space, and start moving out to the moon, the near Earth asteroids, the belt and Mars, tether technology could provide a huge boost to our capabilities.

First, imagine that we could cut half of the rockets out of getting to the surface of the Moon by building a Lunar beanstalk. With only a sixth of the gravity of Earth, a lunar beanstalk would be within even current materials technology – requiring only the development of crawlers and such.

More likely, I think, is the use of rotating tethers as launch mechanisms. A free spinning orbital tether, spun up with solar power and maintaining its orbit with electromagnetic force, could launch payloads in a very cost effective manner. Dock your payload at the middle, lower it to the end of the cable, and wait for the right moment to let go. A flinger like that could be very useful.

More to the point, developing these tools would give us the experience to build a Earthly beanstalk so that we can ride to the stars in comfort and safety.

Thanks again to Brian, and Liftport, for giving us this exclusive interview.