space elevator

First proposed in 1895, and popularized by the Arthur C. Clarke book The Fountains of Paradise, space elevators have a rich history in the culture of space travel. Unfortunately, the history of their engineering success is far less impressive. But if the results from this week's Space Elevator Games are any indication, that might be about to change.

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NASA has again thrown down a $2-million space elevator challenge that Scotty of Star Trek fame would relish. Three teams must somehow move vehicles up a 1-kilometer tether by using only energy beamed to the vehicle from the ground.

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The future wasn’t supposed to look like this. Here we are, one month from the very futuristic-sounding 2009, still waiting for robot armies to do our bidding, nuclear fusion to power our homes and a space elevator to zip us up through the atmosphere. Decades, even centuries ago scientists were promising that certain life changing technologies would be ready to go any day.

It might seem that the future is running a little behind schedule. But never fear! It is, indeed, only a matter of time.

So today, allow us to present to you eight technologies that were supposed to be up and running by now, but still haven’t become part of daily life; along with info on when we can expect the technologies to actually arrive.

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One of the most promising technologies for the aspiring outer-space commuter is the space elevator. The concept, like quite a few others, was pressed into the public imagination by Arthur C. Clarke, who in his 1979 novel The Fountains of Paradise described a incredibly thin, incredibly strong carbon filament with one end anchored on Earth and the other extending up to a satellite in geostationary orbit. Now, a group of Japanese scientists are convinced that they can build a space elevator more quickly and cheaply than has been believed possible.

Such a cable could convey cargo into space very cheaply and easily. Carriages would travel up and down the cable under modest power, not the vast expenditures of energy that are currently needed to send anything into orbit.

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Nanocomp Technologies Inc. of Concord, New Hampshire has managed to make the largest sheet of carbon nanotubing ever, rekindling the long-standing dream of a fantastical space elevator that lifts us into orbit along an ultra-light yet ultra-strong carbon nanotube cable. Sure, at 18 square feet, the sheet is smaller than a beach blanket but it contains a billion billion nanotubes, which makes it 200 times as strong as steel and 30 times less dense.

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Space travel is relatively cheap compared with the cost of leaving Earth. The space shuttle, for instance, burns more than half a million gallons of fuel blasting into orbit, making every pound of payload cost $10,000. Now the nonprofit Spaceward Foundation, with a $400,000 grant from NASA, hopes to fast-track the technology to reach space on the cheap, without rockets.

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In 2004, Matthew Teague traveled to Arthur C. Clarke's Sri Lankan home for a Popular Science profile. They candidly discussed Clarke's incredible legacy as well as his insatiable thirst—even at age 87—for the next Big Idea. Here we present again this feature in tribute to a man whose visions still continue to profoundly influence the world of science and technology today.

The gate to Arthur C. Clarke's compound stood tall, white and blast-proof. We ran our hands over its surface, poking around for some secret doorbell. "Hello? Can anybody hear us?"

I wasn't trespassing—I'd called ahead, and Clarke agreed to see me, apparently curious why an American would track him down to this doorstep in Sri Lanka, the tiny, troubled island nation off the coast of India. But the place spooked Thilac, my Sri Lankan driver. "Maybe wrong house," he said, looking around. "OK?"

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