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Disclaimer: I am not an expert on the ideas in this post. However, I would love to discuss them in further detail with anyone who is interested, so feel free to reach out.
I really wish I could go to Tokyo, Japan next year. Of all of the reasons 2020 C.E. will be important, I find the Olympics to be the most striking. The faces of the world turn to the five rings of Olympic glory with the hope of nations to watch their greatest specimen compete for the title of the best. In poetic fashion, the citizens of humanity join hands to host an event that shows how special we are. There is one sport more important than the rest though. You may have never heard of it, but it undoubtedly takes the cake: the hammer throw. It consists of the athlete walking into the cage and spinning a hammer(a heavy ball attached to rope which the athlete holds), and releasing it at the perfect moment to make it fly as far as possible. I actually don’t enjoy watching it that much, but we need to pay attention to it more. Mainly because we need to build an elevator to space.
Hear me out. Yes, it will be expensive Ron Paul. However, it is the single most important piece of infrastructure that can be built by humanity. Whether we know it or not, the race to build one has already begun.
The reason the hammer throw and a space elevator are related is because a space elevator is basically a global hammer throw. We can’t just build a steel framed elevator shaft into space like an enlarged Eiffel Tower, just ask the folks down at the Tower of Babel. For one, it would collapse under its own weight, and two it would be knocked over by a slight breeze, creating a debris field the size of a small country.
What we CAN build is a “hammer,” like the ones used in the Olympics. A rope with a space station at the end being spun around the world hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. The space station is like the ball at the end of the hammer, it will be placed in geostationary orbit (geostationary means it will be rotating at the same speed and location as a spot of the surface of the earth). The rope will be made of a material, likely some kind of nanotube capable of withstanding the forces of weather, space, and being pulled on by the weight of a rotating space station whipping around the planet every 24 hours. The actual escalating device will be a buggy attached to the rope which climbs the rope like a vertical zipline. The final piece of the elevator is the counterweight in the ground. It will anchor the cord and the station to the planet, it is the hands of the hammer thrower. All of these parts together make up the space elevator, in one single rocket launch the entire elevator would be made operational. The rocket launch would simply be a grappling hook, attaching the rope to geostationary orbit. After that, the elevator cart could deliver limitless amounts of payloads, scientific equipment, and people into orbit many miles above earth in a few hours.
By this point you can probably see some of the benefits, so allow me to elaborate. First, the US economy, climate, and military industrial complex will benefit drastically. The economy will benefit from decreased cost of putting things into space. Global internet and GPS service would be almost immediate as satellites would cost a few thousand dollars to place. New ventures like asteroid mining, interplanetary colonization, and space tourism will immediately become relevant and viable increasing the amount of raw materials available by hundreds of percent. The climate will benefit from an extreme decrease in the amount of rocket fuel that is purified and burned every year to launch a few tons of payload into space. Not to mention easier access to the atmosphere will provide countless opportunities for new research which could help the fight against climate change. The military would benefit from easier access to surveillance. Giving us the upper hand in any conflict, even nuclear, by doubling as an umbrella using anti-ICBM technologies. These are just a few of the many benefits of building a space elevator.
The expense of a space elevator is admittedly mind-boggling, at the lower end, estimates place the cost at tens of trillions of dollars. However, the benefits far outweigh the cost. Especially, if instead of using it selfishly, we take another page from the Olympics and unite the world to work on it. The combined power of the industrial and technological might of the entire world would make this project exponentially more feasible. Regardless of whether or not it collaborates with the rest of the world, our country must begin working on an elevator. A new space race has begun. Private companies around the world, and larger players like the Chinese government have plans to fund operational elevators by as early as the 2030’s. The advantages described before will place whichever nation or group completes the project first at the top of the global totem pole. To be quite frank, whoever brings this project to competition will have the means to achieve world domination. For years, global analysts have predicted that the US will be obligated to bend the knee to emerging powers like India and China, will this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Not if we start today.
Whether collaborating with other nations like with the International Space Station, or all on our own like the moon landing, we must get to work. As John F. Kennedy said of the Apollo program, we must begin to construct the pieces of this great new infrastructure “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” In 1903 mankind took its first flight, by 2005 we had put a probe on the moon of a planet, Saturn, almost 1 billion miles away. If humanity can achieve that in just 102 years, we can put a rope in space. 2020 C.E. will be important to me because of the Olympics in Japan. The question remains: in the coming Olympics beginning around the world, who will in the gold medal in the global hammer throw? Whoever wins takes the cake.
Tanner Morrow is a McConnell Scholar in the Class of 2023. He is studying Asian studies, political science, Chinese, and Russian.