Monday, January 15, 2007

Picture of the day


"The Liftport" - Platform, Lifter, and Counterweight


The Liftport - Platform, Lifter, and Counterweight


The subject of research for more than a century, the space elevator is a unique way to ferry cargo and people into space. Recent advances in technology, most notably the development of carbon nanotube composites, now appear to make building a space elevator feasible. Initial research reports on building the space elevator that draw upon these discoveries have now been completed. As proposed in these reports, the space elevator will consist of a carbon nanotube composite ribbon stretching some 62,000 miles from earth to space. The elevator will be anchored to an offshore sea platform near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, and to a small counterweight in space. Mechanical lifters (robotic elevator cars) will move up and down the ribbon, carrying such items as satellites, solar power systems, and eventually people into space.

The Space Elevator is not a tower, or even an elevator shaft. It's just the elevator cable, without even any big motors at the top to pull things up. Vehicles and their payloads have to pull themselves up the cable with their own motors and power supply.


LiftPort Group Inc., Bremerton, Wash.


See the entire LiftPort Conceptual Engineering Drawings Gallery (Focused on the Space Elevator)


As with previous pictures, I will post the others in this series over time. To see it all now, visit the Nanotechnology Now Gallery.

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