When historians look back at this time 500 years from now,
they will put a breaking point right
where we build a space elevator.
This is pre-space and this was post.
This is an entire new society.
Everything changes.
Imagine simply climbing a cable into space.
No rocket, just press the up button and you're there.
The concept is known as the space elevator.
Not only could it significantly change how
we leave planet Earth, but it could
also completely transform
humanity's relationship with space.
And there are scientists who think
we could have already built it.
We have the material, we have the technology,
we have the lasers, we have the climbers, we have all of it.
If a private entity wants to build it
or a government, they could build it.
It'll change society.
We have no clue how colonizing into space,
how really spreading out into space
will really change our society
over the next 50 to 200 years.
It'll be completely different.
Ideas of a space elevator-type device extend
as far back as the 19th century.
Russian and American scientists came up
with various theories for a structure built
from Earth's surface that would reach the stars.
By 1979, the concept was relayed to a larger audience
by writer Arthur C Clark in his novel
"The Fountains of Paradise."
I am happy that people are taking it more
and more seriously, and I do think
that it may be the way to space.
But these ideas struggle to advance
beyond the realms of science fiction
as we continue to rely on tried and tested methods
of getting into space.
Right now, we've got rockets. They use a lot of fuel.
They take a lot of fuel to get up into space.
They have to carry fuel to lift the fuel
to lift them into space.
If you want to go to geo-synchronous orbit, it's millions
of dollars per pound if you want to go
to the moon or Mars.
It's expensive.
With the space elevator, we reduce the cost of getting
into space to dollars per pound.
Each climber will ascend the ribbon every day,
every couple days, and it'll be taking 15,
23, 100 tons into orbit, which is comparable
to what we launch now over the course of a year.
So how does the space elevator even work?
The basic idea is a cable would be pulled taut
thanks to a counterweight.
It stays vertical because the counterweight is thrown
outward by the Earth's rotation
and the base is held down by gravity.
Take a look at this ball on the end of this string.
If you swing the ball in a circle at a sufficient speed,
the rope will become taut, revolving around your hand.
The force pulling the rope taut is centrifugal acceleration.
This force generated by the rotation of the Earth
in space will pull the space elevator tether upwards
into space and away from the Earth.
In reality, the ball would have to be a large counterweight
and positioned above geo-synchronous orbit,
that's 22,236 miles above the Earth's surface.
This is where the outward force pulling it
away from Earth is greater than the downward pull of gravity
and that keeps the elevator line taut.
Early ideas suggested building a cable from Earth
up into space, but the materials needed
to withstand such enormous weight don't exist.
Physicist Bradley Edwards breathed new life into the theory.
I've been working on the space elevator
along with a number of other space systems
and new technologies for the better part
of 30-some years.
I searched for years to find a reason
why we couldn't build a space elevator.
The materials, the climbers, the power beaming,
the low-Earth orbit debris,
radiation, just any number of things
why couldn't we build it.
There was no reason and that was where it started
and I wrote a paper up in 1998 with everything I had found,
how you would design it, how you would build it,
any problems, issues that I found.
And I published it thinking, "Well, okay,
"someone's gonna published the next paper saying,
"'Okay, great, Brad, but you know what?
"'You forgot this, this, this, and this,
"'and so we can't build it.'"
It never happened.
Brad Edwards' proposal was written
for NIAC, NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts.
NIAC wanted to look at those things
that might really change the future.
So we put out a broad call for innovative ideas.
We got an interesting batch of proposals right
off the bat, and one of those came
from a researcher, Brad Edwards.
One of NASA initial responses when we brought it
to the table as a funded study,
before we ever brought it up, they sort
of dismissively said, "We hope you're not bringing anything
"like a space elevator in as part of your funded studies."
To NASA's credit, they said, "Okay, we understand now
"why you're gonna pursue this,"
and, you know, "proceed."
The problem with earlier versions of the space elevator was
we just didn't have a way to build the cable
that was needed to maintain a space elevator.
And Brad came up with an innovative twist looking
into the future on where carbon nanotubes might go
in terms of strength.
Carbon nanotubes are something of a super material.
Despite their tiny size, they're theoretically stronger
than things like Kevlar or graphene.
Brad Edwards suggested launching a rocket
which would carry the carbon nanotube cable.
One end of the cable would then be dropped
back towards Earth.
The cable will be light enough and strong enough
to build just a thin ribbon which robots could climb
to build more ribbon, eventually becoming strong enough
to carry heavy payloads such as solar panels,
satellites, and even tourists.
So you have to launch all this mass to begin with
and then start building the elevator.
Hence, the earlier version that had
incredibly massive cables just were impractical.
But now, if the projection of the links were
to work out, then maybe you'd have something
that could become feasible.
A few years ago, the only carbon nanofibers
were microscopic.
A couple years later, they were millimeters.
Now we're talking about things that are centimeters.
And if you project that growth
because people are putting more and more interest
in carbon nanofibers, then in 20 years,
we might have carbon nanofibers that are kilometers long.
While there've been huge steps in advancing
the technology, some people still have their doubts.
Carbon nanotubes exist, they're available.
But there hasn't been money going into commercializing them.
We've made them, we have put them into plastics,
and increase it dramatically.
The strongest steel has the strength
of about five gigapascals.
Carbon fibers, Kevlar, these conventional materials,
they will have strengths of about the same,
anywhere between two and seven gigapascals.
Carbon nanotubes, these are measured
at 150 to 200 gigapascals.
What we need to build a space elevator is about 60.
So carbon nanotubes in these bags are three times
as strong as we need to make the space elevator.
And we can grow them longer.
So what about the cost of carbon nanotubes?
Is this the biggest hurdle?
Literally in our system, it costs us about $1 a gram
right now, on a small scale.
We turn that into production, the costs are gonna go down.
Now, at $1 a gram, that's pretty expensive and we need
about 1,000 tons to build the first space elevator.
That's going to be a billion dollars.
A billion dollars is a lot of money.
But when you talk about building a space elevator
for a total of $8 billion, a large chunk
of it being those carbon nanotubes,
what you can launch with that system,
we easily spend that money launching satellites.
And whatever else we might launch
over the next 10, 20 years, it's not that expensive.
To put that $8 billion figure in context,
NASA just spent 10 billion
on the recently launched James Webb telescope.
And if Brad Edwards' cost estimate is accurate,
the world's space-faring nations spent enough
to cover 10 space elevators in 2020 alone.
NASA chose not to pursue the space elevator concept
despite things like carbon nanotubes
getting longer and stronger.
So why do you think that was?
A space elevator doesn't exist in isolation.
It exists along with everything else
that's in orbit in Earth.
And while Brad came up with a very clever design
to allow his space elevator tether
to survive a few hits every now and then,
and he came up with some approaches
to allow the space elevator to do an elaborate dance
to avoid larger satellites that might be coming
through its path, the space debris issue today is a real,
real challenge for a space elevator concept.
There's an estimated 128 million objects
smaller than a centimeter orbiting the Earth
along with another 900,000 that measure one
to 10 centimeters, all with the potential
to cause significant damage.
Brad Edwards' concept would see a space elevator mounted
to a mobile oil rig-like structure
to dodge any dangerous material.
It's really hard to imagine that you could have
a space elevator that could survive the number
of collisions that one would expect
over the lifetime of a space elevator.
And if the ribbon's cut, you're having a bad day.
Brad, what do you think about the risks
of something hitting the elevator?
Tracking orbital debris, there's commercial ventures
out there that do that, so to a large extent,
we don't even have to deal with it.
There's also risks on Earth, you know,
a plane or a ship, or even a storm
could impact the structure.
If the elevator does break, that'll be pretty devastating.
You'll see the elevator in various science fiction movies,
things like that, and invariably, the space elevator comes
down and does this crashing, terrible wrap
around the planet, destroying everything in its wake.
Again, we're talking about ribbon three-feet wide,
thin as paper.
If you break it, if you break the top part off,
the counterweight, what happens is the ribbon starts
to come down and then it breaks.
Because the tension increases, it breaks a the bottom
and the entire ribbon flies out
into space, never to be seen again.
So what you get are a few pieces of this black material,
lightweight material that falls down.
But it's not going to destroy a building,
it's not going to break your neck.
If you cut it at the bottom, the entire space elevator files
off into space never to be seen again.
Another reason the elevator hasn't materialized is
the dramatic fall in price of launching
into space thanks to the likes of SpaceX
and their reusable rockets.
But as more countries and companies are sending payloads
into space, a real space economy is growing.
It's estimated the global space industry could surge
to over $1 trillion by 2040.
A space elevator could bring huge returns
for the team that builds it, which is maybe why
a Japanese construction company is funding some research.
A team from Nihon University in Tokyo are
building robot climbers that ascend synthetic cable,
focusing on increasing speed
and minimizing power consumption.
The company backing the research, Obayashi Corporation,
believes a space elevator could aid missions
to the moon and Mars.
The scientists say the biggest hurdles are
beyond their control.
The space elevator has to be operated
in a way that it benefits everyone.
It has to be that most anybody can launch on it.
Nobody launches any weapons, any military anything on it.
It sort of has to go that way, otherwise it gets destroyed.
So it comes out where it's almost forced
to be a positive thing, otherwise it goes away.
There's plenty holding back a space elevator
here, on Earth.
Some think building one on the moon might be the best way
to prove the technology.
Thanks to the moon's lack of atmosphere, it would
also mean the cable could be made
from weaker existing materials, and it'd be much cheaper.
But while still useful, it wouldn't give us
the huge savings of sending payloads into space from Earth.
Either way, the space elevator is
still a long, long way off.
I would love to be proven wrong.
If we had a space elevator, it would be awesome.
It would be paradigm-changing because it we can get
to the point of a space elevator, yes,
it provides incredible access to space.
So I'd love to be proven wrong.
Where the space elevator might take
the human species is one thing;
what we bring back to Earth might be
more important than we think.
We can colonize the moon and Mars.
We can go to the asteroids cheaply.
And we can mine them for minerals, metals
that we're running out of down here, on Earth.
And instead of digging up, tearing up a pristine rainforest
some place, to get to those metals
underneath, we can go to a barren rock that is
nothing more than a large piece
of those metals, collect them up, bring them back
to Earth without the destruction.
It's changed from back in 1998, it was science fiction.
You know, capturing asteroids, bringing them
in, building large cables.
And now we have it and we probably
could have started building it 10 years ago.