Do Space Elevators Play Space Muzak?

bit about space elevators. We recently talked about the concept of torque on Forward Thinking and UH, and torque plays a big part in space elevators. In general. A space elevator is UH, some way for us to climb into space, as opposed to using rockets to thrust us into space. That's the general idea. Why why would we want to do that? Well, mainly because thrusting ourselves into space with the help of rockets is incredibly expensive and also more

than a little dangerous. Whenever you're trying to ride explosives into the atmosphere, there comes an element of danger associated with that. And but mainly it's cost And if you think about it, if we can get things to space, without having to have that huge cost. It'll be easier for us to get more stuff into space and then build stuff in space. You know, if we could build spacecraft or space stations in space as opposed to assemble them here on Earth and then find some way of

getting them out there, that could really speed things up. Right. Yeah, they don't have to go through the atmosphere. Yeah, you could design a spacecraft that was never meant to go through the atmosphere and to be perfectly fine because you build it out there in space. And we don't want to give the impression that we necessarily think that the rocket program was not worth what we spent on it. No, I'm giving that impression. No, No, of course it was

very pro space exploit. Yeah, yeah, pro pro rock. It's rockets. But the numbers are pretty grim like throughout the history of the rocket program. They say that it averaged about ten dollars per pound. That's expensive, more expensive than the salmon that I like to buy at my local grocery store significantly and more expensive. Well, they're they're looking at only only four or five a pound for space elevators, right, and stuff into space. Now, let's keep in mind that

of course hypathetic. And this is after we've built one of these magical space elevators, which which we haven't done yet. But but we're getting ahead of ourselves. People, Where did this idea come from? Yes, I do know. Okay, So if you want to, if you want to look at the first suggestion of building something to allow us to get into space without using rockets, you've got to go all the way back to eight And that's when a fellow by the name Konstantine silkovski H suggested, we uh

that it's kind of a thought experiment. It wasn't ever meant to be a real experiment. But so what if we were to build a tower, an actual physical tower, from the Earth's surface all the way up into space, and the idea being that if you built it high enough, you could climb to the top of that tower, step off the edge, and you would just stay there because you would you would be in orbit around the Earth,

as opposed to falling plummeting to the Earth. You would be beyond gravity in that sense, or really you'd just be falling to the Earth at the same rate as the Earth is turning, so you're constantly in free fall. Would that be geostationary orbit. Well, the tower would be in geostationary orbit because it was directly connected to the ground.

Like it's it's it's a tower, So uh, it's not really geo stationary in the since we think of a geostationary satellite, um, and you would I guess be geo stationary. I guess it would depend on what if you if you jump into the atmosphere into the non atmosphere to space, then you would be in synchronous orbit kind of. It would depend on It would depend on whether or not

you were at the equator. You should distinguish between geosyncras and geostationary right, Okay, same thing, but either way, it doesn't It all depends on whether or not you're at the equator. So it's the point is kind of mood. Uh, But anyway, Constantine suggests building a tower, as you know,

it's just a thought experiment. Again. Uh. Then you move up to about nineteen sixty and then a fellow named Urie arts a ton of boy it's I'm terrible at these these Russian names, but he suggests a the first what we would think of as a real space elevator. This is something that is using tensile strength, a taut

tether as opposed to a tower. So, in other words, instead of building a solid structure that reaches all the way up into orbit, which would obviously impossible, Yeah, the compression that you would the compressive forces that would act upon the base of this tower would be so great as nothing, nothing we know of could withstand that that amount of pressure. The tallest manmade structure in Dubai right now is only it comes in under three thousand feet,

so fewer than the multiple miles exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So so this suggestion would be, well, what if instead of building a tower, we had the equivalent of a very long rope, and that rope where was attached to something out beyond uh the initial orbit of the Earth and allow or you know, something that would be an orbit around the Earth go beyond that point and tie off to another object, and then you have essentially centrifugal force

keeping that that line taut. You have it anchored on the ground on one side, anchored to some object that's circling the Earth on the other side, and that's what's keeping the rope taut. And then you find some way of being able to climb that rope, and that was the very basic idea that became the space elevator notion. There were a few other people who worked independently, uh and also came up with the same idea around the

same time, but his was the first. And uh, the idea started getting some traction in the general public beyond just you know, physicists and engineers around nineteen nine, and that's when Sir Arthur C. Clark wrote The Fountains of Paradise, which was a fictional account of this sort of idea of building a space elevator. And once that entered into the the the circle of science fiction nerds out there, uh, the idea started to kind of filter into the general population.

I'd still say that there are a lot of people who don't know what a space elevator is or have never heard of this term. But um, but it's it's something that is not completely foreign to everyone. A lot of sci fi. Yeah. Yeah, And because it's again for the idea, the same ideas that we've talked about before, it really helps the with a cutting down the cost and well, one of the big problems we have with our space exploration programs is that they cost a pretty

good amount of money. Now. Granted, if you compare that amount of money to other programs in the United States, for example, it's a tiny, tiny amount, but it's still an amount you have to convince politicians to spend for us to to be able to fund these programs, and that gets tough. It's a you could say that there's a large return on investment, right, I mean, any scientific endeavor is bound to turn out lots of good benefits for the future. But sure, even if it's not just

the space elevator. You know, all kinds of carbon nanotube technology and other fascinating things could be created around this,

which would also be worth the research dollars. But but but convincing a politician of that, you say, hey, we could get some ideas from this, and they go, who well, well, And and not to put all the how soon in the next two months, right, And not not to put all the blame on politicians because they are answering their inswering, because they're innswering to people, and the people are saying, I'm paying taxes, where are you spending my tax money on?

And the politicians says, I'm spending tax money on this thing. That may not ever work, and the taxpayer says, why am I paying my taxes? So I don't put all the blame on the politicians. I hold them accountable, but I don't necessarily blame them because I'm not in that position. So I'm not the one aging ten years for every actual human year. Um. Some of those people seem really comfortable, though, so I do blame them a little bit. Anyway, That's

that kind of covers the history of it. So let's talk about what the actual design of one of these things would be. And we kind of talked about a little bit about that anchor point. But well, essentially, like you said, um, it would rely on centrifugal force, but not just centrifugal force, right, So you're saying that they're essentially two parts. There is a tether and there is

a climber. Now, if we talk about the tether first, this is imagine a long, very thin ribbon going from the surface of the Earth at the equator um miles out into space right um or sixty very far out past geo geostationary orbit um and it would have to have something really heavy at the end of it to keep it pulled taut. So some ideas have included things like, well, let's lasso an asteroid. I'm going to just stop you for one second and say we probably should say massive

rather than heavy. M there you go. Point excellent, but that's but but continue, but thanks for breaking my flow there. Yeah, you're welcome. So they're going to be writing to me, Joe exactly exactly a very massive object like a massive asteroid um, or we could just build something really heavy out there or one thing massive massive. One idea I like a lot that I've heard is just to use all of the massive garbage left behind from building things in space and make a big trash ball out of it.

Um that's very massive. So you coalesced all the all the trash into one mask, you make a weight out of the garbage. Or or for example, a space station could be used something that you know, people could live on and grow pretty things in or something well, especially if you're using that to you know, deliver materials directly to the space station. Or the space station is also like a space port if we're looking far off into

the future where you want to build stuff out there. Okay, but so what you have to imagine now is that it's not just so the centrifugal force acts on that. And you just imagine like if you stand somewhere and you hold a string with a ball on the end of it and spin around in a circle, the weight of the ball will pull the string right if you If you spin fast enough you start, the ball will

lift off the ground. And if you're spinning quite fast enough, then it'll it'll be pulled taut and almost horizontal out from you. Yeah, and but so there are actually two forces acting on the tether. So there's the centrifugal force pulling the tether outward, and then there's the gravity, just the weight of the tether in the Earth's atmosphere pulling down on the tether. And these two forces pulling in each direction keep the tether straight so something can climate.

So the the designs I've seen this very thin ribbon, it actually has a tapered um element to it has to be thickest in the middle. Right in the middle it's thickest, and then it tapers down to the thinnest points at either end. And it's very much for that reason too, in order for it to be strong enough to not only withstand the pull from the centrifugal force, but also withstand the massive amount of gravity that's pulling

down on it as well. Um. It's it's interesting too that these designs are looking at this this incredibly thin ribbon that has to support a huge amount of weight. So that's one of the big challenges, right what kind of materials could possibly be stretched that thin? Well we'll get into that in a minute. But um, I mean, because that's the real question, right that that's the central can we do it? Well? Anyway, that's the tether, right, Yeah, So that's the tether um And another part of the

tether is the question about where do you put it? Right? I mean you say that it has to be it has to be active equator, but can you make a base that holds it down at the bottom. One thing I've seen is that a lot of people propose making a mobile sea base, like one that floats in the ocean and can move around. And the reason for that is, um, what if something is flying towards the tether and you

need to move it? Oh you know, um, interesting you you would want neither a rocket, nor an airplane, nor a very large bird to h to run into this. So therefore, it can also it's that can help but avoid like weather events, you know, yeah, like something in the in the Pacific is what I've heard people talk about that. So so anyway, so you have the tether, it's anchored at this mobile station at the bottom. It's

got a big weight out in space. And then you have the climber and that's the part that's going to be most familiar to us. That's just like the elevator climber that we're used to. It's a pod or some kind of carrying device but rolls up the tether, some sort of container that has a means of gripping onto that ribbon and climbing it. Uh. Usually we talk about

it just being using the force of friction. So it has to have something has a lot of torque to it that can grip onto that ribbon tightly enough to be able to climb up from the surface of the Earth all the way up with rollers or Yeah. The further up it goes, the less it has to deal with gravity. But then the centrical force can actually take

over ultimately. But while you're trying to get it up that high, you have to have something that's gonna grip on quite tightly and uh so it's interesting also about how do you power something like that, how do you give energy to this climber so it keeps on going up. And by the way, these climbers can be of various sizes.

There's there's some talk about some of the designs I've read talked about climbers that would carry a certain amount of like certain number of hundreds of pounds of material and you would be able to send up around six or so per day, um on every few hours, you'd

be able to send another one up. Well, now let's clarify, that doesn't mean six there and back none six you could launch essentially, so you could in this scenario you'd have multiple climbers going up the tether at the same time, right, or you might do it over the course of six days. One per day is being sent up. Because one of the issues about a space elevator, you know, one of the downsides compared to rockets, is it takes a lot longer for you to get out there than it would

if you were on a rocket. You don't have that terrific initial burst you're talking about weeks. Yeah, you're not traveling at you know, thirty thousand miles per hour or whatever. It's it's climbing at a steady rate, but it could take several days or several weeks for it to get

to where it's going. It's like driving across country. Yeah, but more Yes, agreed, And and that means that if we're using it to transport people, it would essentially be like a hotel room or probably more likely cruise quarters on a like a naval vessel, where you would have a cramped but serviceable amount of space to yourself that would be climate controlled and protected from the elements so that you could survive, especially once you start getting out

beyond the breathable atmosphere to have a pressurized cabin and everything. I've heard concerns about how these pods, if they carried passengers, would be subject to possible radiation and sure the atmosphere, Yeah, once you get beyond the Earth's protective atmosphere, that would definitely be a concern. It's you would have to have the right kind of shielding on these pods, even if you were just transporting uh, you know, just just raw material.

Depending on that raw material, if you had created any circuit boards or anything. Yeah, they're they're electronics that could definitely be affected by by any tight of cosmic radiation. So you would definitely want to have shielding on your pods, whether they're going to be moving life people or whatever or inanimate objects. So now with the radiation, we're getting into talking about some of the challenges, but I think

it's time to get to the big challenge. It's the one big thing that is making some people say, will never have this, it'll never work. Finding a material that has the tensile strength to be able to make one of these ribbons, that's the big challenge. It's it's just mind boggling how strong this tether would have to be. I mean, you've never seen a string that's thousands of

miles long. Uh, it's just impossible to imagine that it could withstand the forces, right yeah, And and it would have to be uh, incredibly resilient and without it being super super super dense and heavy, because you know, the heavier it gets, the stronger it has to be in order for it to to withstand the the the eensine strength from its ownty you know, so uh yeah, And not to mention the fact that you're gonna have stuff climbing on it. So you you have to have something

that's both very strong and not super dense. The most promising material that we have happens to be carbon nanotubes. Yeah, well but but but right right now, I mean, okay, well there's some different research being done classically, carbon nanotubes, once you get them into a into a long string, have only been about a millimeter long, right, yeah, so yeah, that's not quite long enough to get into space. I need a lot of those. Well let's stop for a second,

just quick definition. What is a carbon nanotube? Okay, you take a sheet of graphing. This is a sheet of carbon atoms that are all bound together. It looks like a bunch of a hexagons, right, that are all bound on each side with other hexagons. And it's a sheet of graphing. And then you roll that sheet of graphing into a tight tube and the edges buying together. That's

a carbon nanotube. And depending on the way you roll that sheet of graphene, so that you know, the various edges of those hexagons line up, depending on on what direction you roll it, the carbon nanotube will have different uh features. It'll if you roll it one way, it's an incredible semiconductor. If you roll it another way, it's as stronger than steel and many more times lighter than steel.

So it's a it's kind of talked about as a miracle material because there's so many different potential applications for it. It shows up a lot in these like well if we could do this, yeah, right, carbonanotubes a right kind of like that's that's where yeah, except it's real stuff. It is real stuff. Yeah. Yeah. They were discovered back in by Sameo E Jima UM. But but you know, research into this kind of stuff goes back to the nineteen fifties and uh, some some new research continuing today.

Rice University back in January of this year started talking about this UM this lamp that they had suspended for um A a wet spooled carbon nanotube string that could be hundreds of meters long, UM being being suspended and powered by this carbon nanotube string due to the electromagnetic properties and the kind of the fact that's strong and strong enough to yeah, and its online. It's incredible. Yeah,

this is neat stuff. And so that's very promising. The the I've seen some recent criticisms that say that even at the proposed strongest that we could make a a carbon nanotube right now based upon what we know right now, it's still would not meet the requirements of what we

would need if we were to build this tether. That that the tensile strength is not quite what we would require, and also that carbon nanitubes, while they be very strong in one direction, are very weak in other directions, So an impact along the side or some other uh compromising event could end up having it just read apart. You get a snowstorm or a kite or something and right, yeah,

or some some some naughty person with scissors. What I've seen described is like the chemical bonds on zipping sort of zipping the word. The analogy I saw would be it would be like getting a run in your stockings, which I hate when that happens to me. I know you do, Yeah, well, I mean don't don't we all you also hate it when it happens to me. That's very sweet you, um so? But well okay, so, but

that's one challenge right there is the biggest one. Well not we're not even done with carbon nanotubes, um so, okay, No, we're not down earlier, isn't it, Joe. Some experts say, like, you can't do the carbon, they're not strong enough. Let's imagine that they are strong enough. Some experts disagree, right, there's there's materials who say that, yeah, it is strong enough, and so obviously we don't know enough to arbitrate on

that um. But Eve, and if they are strong enough, do you know how long it takes to make these things and how tiny the amounts we can make at one time are. Well, it's like the ways that we make them earlier. You describe this hypothetical thing where you're rolling up graphinge and that sounds like, oh, it's like a big thing of wrapping paper you just rolled out the way they make these the atomic scale for that

to work. But yes, for these extremely uh intense reactions you do in some controlled chamber in a lab, like you you create arcs of hot electricity between two pieces of graphine and some chamber or not graphing graphite and uh and that causes like these little pieces of soot to come off that that have carbon nanotubes in them, and you can collect them. I mean it's it's a

tiny scale operation. Sure, Yeah, and also there's the problem where they cause cancer a lot um in it's it's it's it's worse than asbestos when they get into year lungs. Never breathing carbon nanotubes if you can avoid it, it's a it's it's thought that perhaps um a lot of the air pollution UM diseases that are caused are caused

by carbon nanotubes from naturally occurring processes. Right well, I would also go ahead and say that that while that's a limiting factor right now, one of the wonderful things about technology is that if we see that there's the potential for a really transformative material out there, it gives lots of companies the incentive to find new and better processes for producing it. I mean, otherwise, we wouldn't even

have microprocessors because transistors were really hard to make. As we've said many times before, this is not a statement of don't try, no, no, it's just one of those things how hard it is right now, exactly right now, right now. Space elevators are a super cool idea. There is no way we could start building one right away, like well, we just we're just not the air the to be clear, the tether is like that the climber

were pretty good on right. Yeah, yeah, I mean we there's still the question of how you deliver the energy to it. The most common answer I see to that is that the climbers, the pods themselves would have solar panels on one side to help collect solar energy and use that or generating electricity. And also they would have sensors that you would aim lasers at, and the lasers would provide the energy necessary to convert into the electricity it would need to climb the ribbon. So, uh neither

of those things are impossible. Obviously, we have solar panels, and we can do things like that with lasers. I mean, there are other people who say that you could use microwaves instead of lasers, but I mean, these are the various ways that we could use to power the thing. All of that is not just in theoretical. We could build that. We just don't have anything for it to climb, and that's kind of a problem. And climbing infrastructure is

clearly the hardest part. And uh so it's not just how difficult it is to make the material for the tether, but it's also even if we had the super strong

material actually implementing it. And I'm talking about having this tether stretching from the Earth to space without the force like the Coriolis force that would be caused by the spinning of the Earth um that would create drag on the tether or on the climber um that could cause these dreadful bends in the tether, which is another another issue, another reason why people say carbonano tubes are a bad idea because while it can be very strong if you're pulling on it, if you were to push it in

any way, if you were to insert a bend, that's where things you start running into problems. And then there's then there's this issue of apparently space right outside the Earth's atmosphere is kind of a junkyard. Yeah, we've left a lot of stuff up there as we've gone exploring, and uh, because of the speed with which things fly

around the Earth, they gather ma massive kinetic energy. Even just a tiny little paint chip in orbit if it hits you going you know how many however many thousands of miles per hour something in orbit like that is going that it's a huge impact, even if it has almost no mass, because momentum is mass times you know, the force the speed. So if your speed is really high and your mass is really low, it's still a

big impact. So we'd have all this story about having something stretching from the Earth into space is a liability. If something hits it, it could very well sever it. Well if it if it only damages that. The answer I've seen to that is that every space elevator would have as part of the Space elevator repair climbers. So these would be climbers that would do regular maintenance on a daily basis, climbing up and down the the the ribbon and reinforcing it or repairing it. Uh, so that

those sort of dangers would be minimized. Uh, it's still something that you have to be concerned about because if it's if it's hitting just right, which you know, let's be fair, space is big, so it the odds are low, but it's not impossible, you know. If so, if it hits it just right, you could still end up with

a disaster as far as the Space elevator is concerned. Also, you do have the you know, unpleasant but not entirely unlikely suggestion that um that terrorists would see this, you know, sixty two thousand mile long target and say, hey, this is a thing that we can mess with right now if you're but if you're space elevator, if it's mainly used to to move materials around, uh, and if it's anchored to something like an asteroid, then you know, it

would be a huge economic loss. But at least it would just be an economic loss, as opposed to if if you have a space station on the other end, or there are people on transport obviously, then the cost is much higher because you're talking about human lives that are at risk. Um. Although I guess depending on what you can imagine, any attack would be good. No attack would be good. I'm saying there's some attacks that are

by their very nature way worse well. But but but also there would be you know, this would probably be the kind of thing that global scientific communities would come together to work on, and so it would probably be very well protected. This is not something that I think

one nation would be behind. This is something that would require a consortium of of nations too, And in fact, there are consortiums that are working on this where it's you know, European Union, United States, Japan, lots of countries. Well that brings me to so, um, we've talked about in theory what would it look like, what are the challenges? But is anybody doing any work, Like have we designed

prototypes for this? Well, there are there are lots of organizations that are working on the problem, whether or not prototypes for things like climbers definitely exist. Yeah, I've seen stuff about that, Like they've had contests, um to have people design climbers. You know, the question is how fast can you get this thing up the tether? Right right? In two thousand and twelve, a company called lift port UM, which if you happen to look up the how Stuff

Works article UM how space elevators work. Lift port is the main company that we were talking about their their concepts for in that article. Um. They just in September of two twelve raised over sixty two dollars on Kickstarter for building robot climbers on a two kilometer skyboard cable. Um. That's that's going to be held aloft by helium balloons

hypothetically trusted to test stuff out. And then there's the International Space Elevator Consortium, which is kind of what I was referring to earlier or Isaac as some people may know it, that are all about looking into promoting and developing space elevator technology, and they make the point that kind of like what we had mentioned earlier, especially you, Lauren, you brought it up, that there's a lot of things we can associate with developing space elevators that could end

up giving us enormous benefits, and they are not necessarily they won't necessarily directly lead to a space elevator, but we'll still be able to use that that kind of material or technology that we developed in other ways that we can't necessarily anticipate right now, and therefore it's a valuable process even if ultimately we come to the conclusion that a space elevator is not feasible, Because yeah, that's our motto around here, right, even if you can't do it,

you can learn something from it, that's right. Even if the only thing you learned is that you can't do it, that's still learning something. I mean, it really is. That's that's kind of the way science is, um and I want to talk a bit about about. All right, So let's let's assume we reach a point where we can do this. It's all doable, we've built it, it's working, and uh, and we can move stuff into space. What would this mean We kind of touched on it before.

We could build things directly in space, not building them here on Earth, which allows me to move into my rant that I told Lauren I was going to do. Yes, that there might There was a documentary that Jonathan has seen that came out in two thousand nine, directed by J. J. Abrams, the re launch of a beloved franchise called Star Trek and uh and this is where I have my rent. There is a scene in this movie where, uh, you get to see the Starship Enterprise as it's being built.

This is early, early, early in the movie, and it's being built on the surface of the Earth, which makes no sense whatsoever. Okay, the Enterprise is not designed to fly in atmospheres, so why would you build it on the surface of a planet. Anyway, It's going to have to withstand stresses that it wouldn't withstand within space, so it makes no sense to do it. From that sense, Then you have to figure out how to get this

huge thing out into space. Wouldn't it just be easier since there are spaceports orbiting the Earth at this in this universe. Wouldn't it be easier to just build the whole thing in space in a space doc And that way it doesn't have the stresses of being built on a planet. You don't have to worry about getting it to escape the planet's atmosphere or gravity, and uh, everything's really easy to move around. It makes no sense. But if you build it in space, you don't get to

have a little like clan clan workshop sound effects. This that's why people's arguments always come back to but it looks so cool, like no, no, no, I'm sorry. I want you want your clean clang workshop sound effects, just like anybody else. When somebody's knocking on the exterior of the starship Enterprise, you want to hear the little clean clangs, right and and and also I'm sure a politician you know, I positive that the politicians kid really wanted something to

play on while you know, in their backyard. Whether and then the skeleton of you know, star class. None of this makes sense. The whole reason why we want something like talking about this because when the counselor Troy inevitably crashes that ship into a planet later, it will have been already power tested Uh, your argument is invalid because we're talking the original series, not next generation. That's Enterprise

D you're talking about. I'm talking about seventeen o one, not even Enterprise A. Hey, y'all heard about those space elevators, So that's why I'm saying though with the space elevator, one of the reasons we would want one is because we would be able to build things in space directly as opposed to having to construct them here on Earth. That's a big deal. That is a huge deal because it means that we can build things that are just meant for travel through space or adjustment to be in space.

They're never meant to be on a planet that has gravity or atmosphere, and that that moves a lot of limitations we have. Well, this contrast actually brings up something interesting, which is that while so the material science challenges and making the tether from Earth are really big, but basically from what I've read, we could make a space elevator

on the Moon. It could be done. That's a lot different. Yeah, because you're not the gravity is one sixth that of what's on Earth, so you would at least be able to take that into account. So if you're talking about like hardcore lunar exploration or using the Moon as a base for further space exploration, which a lot of people think we will because it's easier to launch from the Moon, even if you're using rockets and stuff. Um, that that's a good possibility, except that, how do you get the

stuff to the Moon in the first place? You still so yeah, so even if you're talking about building things into space, you still would have to get the materials to the Moon first, unless you could use the material on the Moon itself that regularly in some way to actually construct useful things for space exploration. If you could, If you could use the stuff that's on the Moon and use that as raw materials, then designing something like

a base station on the Moon would be amazing. Otherwise, all you've really done and said, Okay, instead of trying to get all this huge amount of material into orbit, we have to actually get all this huge amount of material to the Moon and then from there we'll put it on a space elevator and then get into somebody wants all that helium three. By the way, what I'm saying is that the Starship Enterprise, it makes no sense

for it to be built on the planet. Okay, no, but what what else would a future with space elevators

look like. I mean, one thing that it almost goes without saying it is that it would open the floodgates for and colonization down the road, but exploration certainly, like, especially if you're talking about unmanned spacecraft, it would make it so much easier to launch unmanned spacecraft so that you could you know, you wouldn't have to look at some company that it's the only company in the world that makes these rockets, and therefore you are stuck at

whatever price it's going to be set there. If you had a way of getting stuff up into space without having to rely on rockets, then the cost of launching a vehicle drops so dramatically that I think we would see many more probes being sent out, which is fantastic because we've seen uh programs that NASA has has suggested be shelved because the costs were so high costs, Yeah, the launch cost being a huge part of any missions cost. Uh, they were so high that they were canceled. So that's

really what the future would look like. It would look like a lot more space exploration and a lot more space elevators. Right, once you've got one up there, exactly, it becomes that much easier to build the next one and the next one. Um. Yeah, to the point where the equator just becomes a hub and there's like spokes coming out of it everywhere. Yeah, it turns into like a little grass skirt kind of thing. It would be like a giant planetary tilta whirl, which is awesome. Now.

I think it's really an interesting idea, and I really think that if we can, if we can master this technology and actually make it happen, it will have such a dramatic impact on the space exploration industry that it's hard to even imagine it right now. Um, but that's a big if if we can conquer it, because it's the challenges are not you know, they're not trivial. No, I want to caution the challenges, but I want it

so bad. Yeah. Well, I I'm glad that there are people who are determined and slash or crazy enough to pursue this because it means that again, we are going to benefit from this even if it doesn't work, ultimately, we will still benefit from the whole process. So uh, that's really what I would leave off with saying that no matter what things are going to we're gonna learn stuff and we're going to benefit from this, uh this process,

even if it ultimately doesn't work. Research is winning, Knowledge is power, and knowing is half the battle and etcetera, etcetera. All right, well, that wraps up this episode Forward Thinking. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Remember you can get in touch with us and let us know what you think, make suggestions for future topics. We have an email address that is FW thinking at discovery dot com. You can go to f w thinking dot com and see all of the videos, the blog posts, you can listen to

the podcasts. You can find our social media and interact with us that way. I highly recommend it FW thinking dot com. Come visit us, Come be part of the conversation. We look forward to hearing from you, and we will talk to you again really soon. For more on this topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places