Space Elevator: May 2007

I made time a couple of days ago to listen to the excellent Space Show hosted by Dr. David Livingston as his guest was Michael Laine of Liftport. There is no doubt that Michael has poured his heart and soul into his company. And as he candidly admits he made some key mistakes along the way that put him in his current position.

So I was curious, as are so many other people, to hear where Liftport is at these days. After all, anyone interested in cheaper access to space, and what that would mean, should be interested in the Space Elevator concept.

Rutgers University will be holding a conference on lunar settlements June 3-7, 2007. The conference will cover all aspects of developing a lunar program and how best to build and establish a manned presence on the moon. This is one of the ultimate applications of the space elevator and because of this Dr. Edwards will be presenting a scenario for development of a lunar outpost that utilizes a space elevator. This presentation is based on a proposal that was submitted by a diverse team in response to NASA's early call for concepts.

EuroSpaceward was just awarded funding by The National Research Fund of Luxembourg to hold a workshop on space elevator climber and tether design primarily focusing on systems for entry in the US and German competitions. The tentative dates are Nov. 14-16, 2007 and the workshop will be held in a yet to be announced venue in Luxembourg.

The following is an announcement sent out by Detlef Mache on the 2008 German Space Elevator games.

After the great success of the first German Space-Elevator team ("Max-Born-Team") - where the team placed third among 16 international teams from different universities and institutes at the NASA-sponsored Space Elevator competition 2006 in New Mexico - the growing interest become extremely popular in Europe.

In an effort to promote awareness and activities related to the space elevator in Europe, Markus Klettner has pulled together a team of European and American leaders in the SE development. The primary goal of the organization is to promote space and space elevator activities in Europe. The website, currently under construction, is at http://www.eurospaceward.org/.