The creator of the space elevator: "Transit into space will appear within 10 years"

There are many reasons to build a space elevator, says space scientist Steven Cohen.

elevators for 20 years.Significant energy and cost savings are evident; it's a much more practical way to get into orbit than rockets. Another reason that is often overlooked is accessibility. The word “space mission” will be replaced by “transit”, as flights into space will become routine and will be practically independent of weather conditions. Human-powered transits will be safer than the current practice of requiring astronauts to take significant risks to their lives on each launch. The space elevator will become a bridge to the entire solar system. Release the payload at the bottom and you'll orbit the Earth, but do it at the top and you'll orbit the Sun; and all this without fuel.

Recently, at a seminar at Vanier College, where Cohen teaches physics, he presented a summary of his nearly two decades of work on space elevators. 

“Although in recent years synthesis has potentiallyof suitable materials has moved forward, we are still at least 10 years away from a material solution (something that has adequate properties and can be produced quickly enough and at a reasonable cost). It's not unusual for new technologies to await better materials science, and fortunately, materials research continues for reasons unrelated to space elevators,” notes Cohen.

According to him, the reasons for the construction of spaceelevators quite lie on the surface. For a typical space mission, up to 90 percent of the total mass of the launch pad is fuel. It's like a car without a motor, only with a pressurized 100,000 liter fuel tank. We need to replace this inefficient method of "escape" from Earth's gravity with a more sustainable way to space.

NASA Plans to Get Humans to Mars by 2040of the year. I suspect that people will indeed walk on Mars before we have a working space elevator, but for this to be a sustainable enterprise, infrastructure is needed, like a space elevator, and sooner rather than later, Cohen adds. — The famous writer and engineer Arthur C. Clarke, whose novel The Fountains of Paradise tells about the construction of the first space elevator, was asked this question in the early 1990s. His famous answer was: “Probably 50 years after everyone stops laughing.” A more modern answer might be: “We will understand that we are close when Elon Musk begins to take credit for this.”

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