NASA Considers Space Elevators

Sept. 14 -- It’s an idea that’s been imagined for millennia.

In the Bible, Moses describes a civilization that tried to build a tower to heaven out of brick and tar. In 1895, a Russian scientist proposed constructing a “celestial castle” in geosynchronous orbit that would connect to Earth by a spindle. More than 60 years later, a Soviet scientist wrote about a space elevator that would hum back and forth between Earth and space along a thin diamond fiber.

When American physicist Jerome Pearson outlined another space elevator concept in 1970, the only positive reaction he got was from a science fiction writer.

“It took me five years to find an editor self-assured enough to say that, yeah, the physics of this is possible,” says Pearson.

Now the dream of building a bridge to space is a little bit closer to becoming reality.

NASA Report: Only 50 Years Away

This August, NASA scientists put the concept on paper for the first time in a report designed to assess if building an elevator to space is possible and what technologies would be needed to make it possible. The verdict? In a little over 50 years, with a little bit of luck and a lot of research, people could be paying the future equivalent of $5 a pound to take the longest, most exciting elevator ride of their lives.

Scientists estimate the journey to literally the beyond would take just over 24 hours.

“The idea is to work on intermediate concepts and then in 50 years we’ll hopefully start working on building this thing,” says David Smitherman, a scientist working in the Advanced Projects office of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

Smitherman admits his 50-year prediction is a little optimistic. The scope of the proposal is unprecedented and daunting. Construction would entail extending a 22,000-mile-long cable from a 20-mile-high or higher tower at the Earth’s equator to a level in space known as geosynchronous orbit.