Can we build an elevator to space?

With the end of the shuttle program and an International Space Station still in need of supplies, the aerospace industry is working the kinks of out of a century-old idea to build a service elevator from Earth to outer space.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck
Bryant and that makes this stuff you shouldn't know? So

(00:24):
did you hear Snoop Dogg's son got a football scholarship
to I think you see? Yeah? So did h P. Diddes?
No way? Yeah? And actually Sean Combs was the first
to happen. It was about a month ago, and a
lot of people got upset because they were like, we
shouldn't you know, be paying for this millionaire multimillionaire son

(00:46):
to go to college. I should, But it was all explained.
The sports guys came out and really defended and said,
it's not you paying for it. It's athletic scholarships that
are earned by athletes. And it's as well probably, but
it was like, basically, it's not like some kid is
missing out on an education because p DDI's son earned

(01:07):
a football scholarship, he should be treated the same and
so should Snoop Dogg. Sign Where was there an outcry
about Snoop Dogg sign. Uh, not as much because he's
the g you see. No one likes Puffy going on.
I don't understand. He seems like a nice enough guy. Uh,
here's friends with Biggie Smalls. I was in his house once.
Di'd ever tell you that I had to. I was

(01:28):
working on a music video with him and I had
to deliver as a p a something to his home
in Beverly Hills. And I went to the door and
I rang the doorbell and some really large guy in
a warm up suit and like a kangol hat invited
me in and took my thing and then escorted me out.
So I was like in the little fourier and it

(01:48):
was like lots of white marble, and I mean it
looked it could have been like the King of France
living there as far as I know. Yeah, there's like
a fountain of rock. It was really like pretty plush.
Of course, you know he's rich. But I took your thing.
Is that legal? Are you talking about everything above the boards? Oh? Yeah,
it was. It was like a video cassettes for the

(02:09):
shoot or something like that. I wouldn't be delivering anything illegal. Well,
I didn't know if he did something illegal to you
by taking your things. You put it. It was all
on the up. Good go and Chuck anyway, I haven't
been to Snoop's house yet, although I did see him
one night in Atlanta. You did, Yeah, I can't tell
that story though. He let's hear a part time, doesn't he?
I'm used to, I believe. I'm not sure what a

(02:32):
weird start for the show. Yeah, it is a little weird,
especially since we're talking about space elevators. Has nothing to
do with it. This is not like we're talking about
like p Funk or George Clinton or something like that,
or even Bill Clinton. Although I bet George Clinton could
build a space elevator in his mind. You know he
has many times. Chuck. Um, Well, I've got I've got something.

(02:53):
I have an actual Yeah, it seems kind of stupid, now,
let's hear it. Uh well, okay, um five seven am.
On July twenty one, two thousand eleven. About a year ago,
something big ended, something that really helped with our childhood,
like really was an icon of our childhood. I'm not

(03:16):
even gonna let you guess. The Space Shuttle. Of course,
the program ended. It started in one and it went
all the way to two thousand eleven, thirty great years
yeah um and uh more missions um. And actually, there's
this awesome thing on Gizmoto. It's you can watch all

(03:38):
of the Space Shuttle launches at once. It's just like
a hundred and thirty five little tiles on the screen
and it's like, you know, starting from countdown to lift
off and like it's got everything. Well, they probably don't
have the one ill fated attempt. There were two accidents,
one of yeah, it's there, I think I found it,
and it just goes dark at about the time the

(04:00):
Challenger UM exploded. Yeah. Um, but it was this was
a huge deal for our childhood. But it was also
you know a huge deal for the space program because
when they launched the first shuttle, I think it was Columbia. Um,
it was the first time that anyone had ever shot
a spacecraft into space and then brought it back intact.

(04:21):
Reusable is huge. Yeah, we're not talking like a capsule
where like Larry Hagman comes down and splashes into the
sea and then gets out, because those capsules weren't reused.
This was like we have an appropriately named space shuttle
there and back. Basically exactly. It even looked like a plane.
So it was a big deal when this happened and

(04:42):
it proved like, okay, we can go to space and
back using the same equipment. It brought costs down tremendously. Sure,
they're still pretty high. Um. And then the Space Shuttle
program ends and everybody's like, how are we going to
get to space and back? Now, Obama, did you think
that's through? And uh, Obama didn't say it, but I'll
be was thinking when he was kind of skulking away

(05:02):
after being shouted at for basically closing NASA. Not true. Um,
he probably thought, have you ever heard of the space elevator? Dummy?
You should say that. Yeah. Uh, that's what we're gonna
talk about. Josh, and I thought this was a thrilling article.
You thought the article itself was thrilling. No, no, no,

(05:22):
the concept of the space elevator, well it is. Yeah,
the article self was a little it was a little
two thousand five. It's all outdated, but it's pretty cool. Um.
So you mentioned the Space Shuttle, even though the Space
Shuttle took place over the span of what do you say,
thirty years? Yeah, anyone to two thousand eleven. The price
of getting the thing going didn't change a whole lot,

(05:43):
which was pretty remarkable. Yeah, it stayed about ten dollars
per pound. Right. And they originally predicted when they were
working on the shuttle program before it started, that it
was gonna be about fifty million a mission. Yeah. It
came to about five million a mission. And every mission
they spent half a billion dollars on the shuttle the

(06:04):
Shuttle mission. Um. And uh, that ten dollars per pound
of that is fuel? Yeah? Is that the per pound
of everything on there? Yeah? I think it's just like
that kind of equation. So a lighter astronaut would be cheaper.
It's really symbolic, I think, yeah. And no, I think
it's more like like if you if you take the

(06:27):
full weight of this this, yeah, and divided by the
money spent. Yes, I get it. So in theory, a
lighter astronaut would make it cheaper, but not really not really, um,
because I think they had those astronauts like way down
to the Graham exactly what they wanted in a way,
like they would probably be like, you need to excrete
because you're about to suit up, go excrete. You need

(06:50):
to p six ounces, right, now i'd be a great
astronaut then, because I can be on command? Can you
really almost always? Okay, So I've had something for you
about six ounces? Um there, have you seen the little
diagram of a solo cup? You know the lines on
a solo cup. Yes, their measurements. The bottom one is

(07:11):
an ounce, the top one so like liquor. Yeah, the
the middle one five ounces for wine. And then I'm
not kidding that the lowest top band is that's that's
twelve ounces for beer. I never knew that that's ingenious.
It is. I love little tidbits like that, Like the

(07:33):
amount of matches in a matchbook is equal to the
amount of cigarettes in a pack. I didn't know that.
It makes sense. We should just talk about those things
all day instead of space all vators. No, let's talk
about space elevator. All right, let's talk about it, um quickly,
a space elevator, and we'll we'll get into the specifics here,
but what it basically is, it's a ribbon, a carbon

(07:56):
nano tube composite ribbon anchored to a plat form offshore
way out in the Pacific Ocean, and it's has a
counterweight way up in space and they basically would that
would be the elevator shaft, and they would send stuff
crawling up and down this ribbon. Uh two outer space. Yes,

(08:18):
have you ever seen somebody like a piano mover lift
the piano through a second story apartment that exceptance space? Yeah,
that's pretty much it. I don't like the comparison to
the game of tether ball here. I thought it was
a terrible, terrible analogy, So let's just skip it because
it didn't make much sense to me. Yeah, I think you.
I think you said it like, basically, we're connecting a

(08:39):
line between a platform in the ocean and the satellite
up in space, and we're putting something on it that
can go up and down. Yeah, and the whole thing
of we should just stop right there. The cool thing
about this is to me is that every single part
of this is feasible right now to do except for
the one thing that they need to do it, which

(09:01):
are the carbon nanotubes that go sixty miles into space. Yes,
they're around right, but we can't make them that long yet. Right.
There's um that's I think I think that's that's a
really good point. Like we all of this is just
waiting and I saw a little video that Michio Kaku
or cucku Um made about this explaining it, and he

(09:24):
was saying, like everything's been surmounted now, like now it's
all in the realm of physical possibility. There's just a
few more breakthroughs. And it's all carbon nanotubes, which are
we've talked about graphine before, right, strongest substance known demand
or humankind. That's right. Um, it's one atom thick layer
of carbon, incredibly strong. It's like a hundred times stronger

(09:47):
than steel at about one fifth of the weight. And
a carbon nanotube is a layer of graphine rolled into
a tube like it looks like chicken wire, exactly like
a soccer ball chicken wire. Yeah, it's like like if
you spread out a length of chicken wire and then
roll it up nanotube. And we say soccer ball because
the shape of the traditional soccer ball, not these crazy

(10:10):
ones are used in these days. I don't even recognize
it as a soccer ball. Yeah, but the old school
soccer ball, that shape is the same, the same shape
as as these carbon atoms, which is the key to
it it's strength. Um. I've been at I've seen it
described as um stiff but flexible like a steel guitar string,

(10:31):
So it moves, but it's still super super strong and um.
Even though it's just a few atoms across, they are
ten million times as long as they are wide. Once
you get this thing going, so like a guitar string. Yeah, well,
because these are nanotubes, so like they're diameters like a
few billionths of a meter I think one, is that right? Yeah,

(10:53):
because nano is a billion a billion yes, yeah, but
so so it's very thin. Um. That's the point. And
ultimately I saw that the sixty two thousand mile cable
would be It could be as thin as a piece
of seran wrap. Yeah, it would still be strong enough

(11:14):
to not snatch under its own weight sixty two miles. Like,
there's no quality of material outside of this that wouldn't
just snap like a hair, like pulling one of your
hairs in half. This one will. But the problem is
is you don't make carbon nanotubes. You grow them. Yeah.

(11:38):
There's a really cool Nova video too on YouTube where
it shows a guy in the lab pulling a uh
braided forest of carbon nanotubes and he starts pulling it
and you see it all like coalescing together, and he
gets like ten ft away and then it finally snaps

(11:58):
and then it just it's smaller than a human here.
It just like floats away almost. Okay, so that's that's
longer than I've I've seen. The record that I saw
was four centimeters in length. Yeah, well this was ah,
I don't think I think it was stretching. I don't
think it was the original. Okay, So they they the
carbon nanotubes grow and then after like that's the world

(12:21):
record four centimeters, which is like one point six inches, right,
that's short, and then it just stopped one of the
right exactly. One of the problems with them not being
able to figure out why it stops growing is that
scientists don't know why it grows in the first place.
Like they have no idea. They're just like, oh, this

(12:42):
happens when you when you do this, um. And they
figured out that there are some things like hydrogen gas
in certain amounts makes it grow longer. Um. If you
do a little too much hydrogen gas, it won't grow
at all. So like there's they're they're figuring this out,
but they still are really at a point where they're
not they don't understand carbon nanotubes at all. They were
only officially discovered in which is a blip in the

(13:07):
scientific community. But we're making headway. And like you said,
once the carbon nanotube technology is able to be made
into things that are maybe several meters long, or they
can figure out how to basically wrap it smaller pieces
together in like you know, how you insulate wires with
plastic something like that, without the the alloy coming away.

(13:30):
Then we'll be able to make this space ribbon ribbon
for the elevator space ribbon, which essentially is going to
be like there. They would braid these things together like
a rope, correct, yes, which would still be tiny though. Yeah,
so it'll either be like you know, several meters in
length braided together or really short ones braided together. But

(13:50):
either way, they're not just gonna make one continuous sixty
two there's sixty two mile strand yeah. The one thing
I didn't get though, if it's so small, like it
needs to be a certain size to have these lifters
attached to it, you know, like it can't be a
human hair, right like that? What what could you attach
to that they have to gain traction with it? So yeah,

(14:13):
there there. It couldn't it couldn't just be as thin
as plastic wrap, even though strengthwise it could be. So
that's one of the things they're working on, is up.
I guess so, because you have to put the lifter
on it, like you're saying, so the lifts are all
from now on, everything like this all exists. We can
make this today, you and I can make it right now, Well,

(14:35):
let's get it into space first. What what the idea
is that they would spool the sing up once they
created it, they would shoot it into space with some
kind of spacecraft. Uh. Once it's in space, they would
start lowering it back to the Earth um towards the
platform out in the middle of the sea. While it's
still going out into space, right, they'd start lowering the ribbons. Yeah,

(14:55):
so it's it's still going in. It's going in two
opposite directions. Would be like some kid walking the dog. Yeah. Uh.
And eventually it gets lowered and there's a dude standing
on a platform saying all right, back it down. Then
he would take it and clip it onto a c platform,
although it would be much more complicated than I think

(15:16):
about that operations. So this platform is going to be
like four miles from any shipping or air lanes, which
is important in the Equatorial Pacific, and a sixty two
thousand mile long strand of rope. Even say you'd say
it's it's thick as like a cable, one of the
cables holding the Golden gate Bridge. Imagine catching that. I

(15:40):
mean it's obviously not, but still like there's somebody piloting
machine that and you I don't know how you would
move the counterweight around the spool so that how are
you going to get the threat? This is the most

(16:01):
difficult aspect of the whole program, if you ask me,
I think grabbing that that ribbon and connecting it. Although
they act like they've got that all figured out. They're like,
we had this nanotube that was this long. We're all
set to trust. Like they've got a guy out on
a platform just sitting around waiting waiting for this thing
to come down from space. So they so that guy

(16:21):
catches the ribbon, ties it off probably with a pretty
decent sailors not um, and then you attach the lifter
to it. Right, that's right, Um. The lifter is a
robotic thing, and basically it's it's sort of like a
train track. It uses these traction shread rollers. Uh, and
it would clamp onto this ribbon and through something a

(16:47):
little more advanced than a gasoline engine. I think, what
are they using a free electron laser to create the
energy to do this? Basically, what they're doing is they're
gonna put solar panels but made of stuff that really
absorbs light from a laser right on the bottom or
on the top, probably on both sides, and then they're
just gonna shoot lasers up and down the ribbon and

(17:09):
then that laser just powers It's basically like directing sunlight
onto full of photovoltaic cells and then converting that to electricity.
Then it's just plain old mechanical energy. It's like a
little motor that would crawl at a hundred and eighteen
miles an hour. Mind you, it's exactly a crawl. It

(17:30):
would shoot up this ribbon into space to the final destination,
which would be anything. I think that first they talked
about capturing an asteroid to serve as the which is
just is the counterweight to um What I think is
smart which would potentially be a satellite or the spacecraft
that brought it out there. To begin with. Yeah, just

(17:52):
unfolding or reconfiguring or whatever, and of a sudden bam,
there's your counterweight. There's the other end of the string,
right dude, that's it. I mean, after they get this going,
they're saying it can basically be a constant operational elevator
to the sky, lifting as much as thirteen tons of
payload at a time in some cases humans maybe eventually. Yeah, crazy,

(18:17):
And I guess the whole point now would be to
just shuttle stuff to say this. The International Space Station
UM supplies that kind of thing, gruel food UM, or
if you had some sort of asteroid mining operation, you
could take your daily hall to the space elevator to

(18:38):
be brought down. The point is this thing could be
used for trips to UM lower Earth orbit every day,
several times a day, because I think lower Earth orbit
is UM between five and fifteen hundred miles, so that's
like UM four to twelve hours trip based. And they're

(19:00):
talking about going further than that though, right. But lower
Earth orbit is where like all of the all that's
where all the action is generally UM. The problem is
is that's also where all the space debris is. Yeah,
and I think I don't think we mentioned what the
best part about all this is is that it would
cost about the closest sestem I've seen is about two

(19:22):
d a pound to deliver stuff to outer space, and
what was the Space Shuttle costs a pound? So that's
why they're pursuing this is because it's much much more affordable.
They likened it to the Transcontinental Railroad back in the day,
linking space to Earth. Yeah, okay, so the problems Josh
avoiding um junk flying around in space, Like it would

(19:46):
suck if you got this thing all looked up and
some asteroid came flying out of nowhere and snapped this
thing and half well, not just asteroids, Apparently space debris
UM largely refers to junk man made jump and lower
Earth's orbit is a lousy with it. Um. One, there's
a satellite, an old out of use satellite, collided with

(20:07):
a new in use satellite recently and blew it up,
and all of a sudden, two pieces became four thousand pieces.
And that's and nothing. That's a drop in the bucket.
It is so um. The problem is is like even
the small like one centimeter diameter piece is a threat
to the space elevator. Um so right now, nora D

(20:28):
tracks things as small as ten centimeters. Did you know that?
I didn't once I read this, but I was pretty
I was pretty shocked. But they're gonna have to start
tracking stuff down to one centimeter. So this is another
kind of challenge that I don't think people talk about,
is tracking space debris. Or they're also proposing that we
just go up there and get rid of it, like
pay contractors to go to space and bring these things

(20:50):
down and cleanup. That'd be a unique approach, right, Um
it's called active avoidance, and UM, it's pretty amazing that
you could actually, potentially, because this thing is tethered to
a C platform, moved the C platform to dodge these things.
But that would mean that there's like some guy whose
job it is to like, yeah, joystick it. Yeah, that's crazy.

(21:12):
It sounds very far fetched, but it's supposedly not super
far fetched. I mean, this company Liftport, they're they're one
of the private firms that are have been h I
think they partnered with NASA for a while until NASA,
you know, they're funding has dried up to a large degree,
so they had to scrap things like partnering with Liftport,

(21:34):
but um Liftport as of now, I think I read
in two thousand eleven they have sort of scrapped or
not scrapped, but they put on the back burner the
space to Earth version and they're working on a lunar version.
Oh yeah, so they want to put one of these
on the Moon. Um, which can be done right now. Yeah,

(21:54):
if they had the money, that makes sense to me.
Um not as much gravity, so they don't need the
are Bonano tubes. Yeah, they could use the stuff called zylon.
It's a synthetic polymer. And apparently they could like do
this within the decade. Like everything's in place, it's just
a matter of doing it. So yeah, I thought about
having one that goes from the Earth to the Moon,

(22:16):
or one that goes from the Earth to Mars or
you know, and you just well and then from the
Moon tomorrow. You know, you could connect them like station
one is here, then you have another one that goes there.
And the ideas are going to build a bunch of these, right,
that's the idea, because if one goes down because of
some space to breathe, hey, no problem, We've got another
one that we built. Even cheaper over here in this

(22:39):
part of the ocean. So that's the idea. What's awesome
is this is I mean, this is far reaching, it
sounds futuristic, it's actually pretty smart. Simple idea like where
it's gonna build an elevator that goes to space, and
it's actually kind of an old idea. There was a
Russian UH scientists named Constantine see Yokowski who proposed this

(23:02):
in and then, um kind of what I think everybody
thought he was a crackpot for a while. They thought
da Vinci was too, though, yeah, actually did they No,
not da Vinci. They think he was a genius back
then too, probably except for his flying machine. I think
that's incredibility. Um. But then Arthur Arthur C. Clark comes

(23:23):
along and writes about this in UH Fountains of Paradise,
and he was he very clearly saw like the big
problem was the ribbon. If you could figure out the ribbon,
everything else would be fine, which is still the problem.
Arthur C. Clark way ahead of his time, man, So
that's pretty much it. I mean, if they get this

(23:43):
lunar and we're going there, they're talking about deep space
exploration from a lunar based system, which you know, the
benefit there is is it cost a lot of money
to get from here to the moon. If you could
shuttle a the components of a rocket up to the
moon and just get it going up there and be
a lot cheaper, right. We talked about that with asteroid
minding that that was another idea is you could launch

(24:06):
things from these asteroids or whatever because the a vast
majority remember the weight of his space shuttles in the fuel,
almost all of that is just used within the first
like ten miles. Then after that you start to escape
births orbit and exactly. So, um, yeah, if you could,

(24:27):
if you could get rid of all that, like you
just dropped the cost tremendously. Stuff base, I know. I mean,
I'm curious to see within a decade if we're going
to have a space elevator from the Moon to something else.
We will be riding one, you think, so, yeah, well
it all depends on funding. That's like, these ideas are
all great in practice unless you have billions of dollars

(24:50):
to get it. But think about Jeff Bezos has billions
of dollars, um can mus Kirt Cameron. That's the James
Cameron elon musk. These guys have cash too, and this
is what they're putting their money into, this kind of thing.
So I don't think it's gonna come down and NASA funding.
I think it's gonna come down to the will of
guys like Kirk Cameron. Well, Kirk Cameron does not have

(25:13):
billions of dollars, but he does have a fine collection
of faith based movies. Yeah, directive video anna that you
can check out, but not the dirty kind of directive video. No, no, no, no,
I guess it's about it, right, it's pretty much I'm
looking forward to it. Yeah, private space exploration is definitely

(25:33):
the way of the future. We should put in a
request for this article to be updated, but I'm a
free to think they'll be like, have at it. Yeah,
I'm afraid to do that. Dude. Well, if you want
to read a hilariously out of date article on how
Stuff Works that still captures what's going on with the
space elevator um and with some cool artists rendering of stuff,
you can type in space elevator that's at the handy

(25:56):
search bar and a great little website called how stuff
Works dot com. And I said search bar, which means
it's time now for a listener mail Josh, I'm gonna
call this dead Sea follow up UM, and I should
mention We got a lot of emails from Dead Sea
visitors and tourists and a lot of photos and one

(26:17):
thing we did not cover because I haven't been there
and experience this, but we said, swim in the dead
sea A lot. Ain't a lot of swimming going on
in the dead Sea. There's floating. There's a lot of
floating and flailing because they just say it's really disorienting
because you're so used to the way you move in
water and all of a sudden that's totally different. So

(26:38):
people are like gasping and eventually they'll learn to trust
and relax and float on their back. You don't want
to go in your stomach, you don't want to try
and swim um, and you don't want to get it
in your face because it will really sting your eyes
and it tastes really bad. And we had this one
approach and whose husband was suffering, They advise you not

(26:59):
to go on with huts are open source. Obviously her
husband was suffering from a little UM. It's called many
different things. When you walk a lot and you get
shaped between their legs. It goes by many different crude names.
But he had a bad case of this and uh
didn't tell his family that he was traveling with his
wife now and he went in the Dead Sea promptly

(27:21):
got out, and the family was like, where did you
know the sun in will go? And she was like,
maybe he's just not into it all right. So this
is from Daniel, but thanks to everyone else. He wrote
in just finished the Dead Sea podcast had a couple
of interesting tidbits. You briefly mentioned the Great Salt Lake
when talking about the high salinity the Dead Sea. Uh.

(27:42):
These two lakes actually have quite a bit in common.
Both lakes are located in the desert region, although the
elevation is drastically different. Like the Dead Sea, the Great
Salt Lake here in Utah has a very high salt
content about making it hard for anything but hello philic
bacteria and some brine shrimp to grow. Uh. This guy's
a graduate student. By the way to b y U.

(28:03):
Both lakes are fed mainly by a smaller freshwater lake
roughly fifty miles away, the Dead Sea being fed by
the Uh Sea of Galilee to the north by way
of the Jordan River. The Great Salt Lake is fed
by Utah Lake to the south, also by the Jordan
River coincidence, I'm not sure. In both cases, the water

(28:24):
leaves the lake only through evaporation. Uh And, like the
Dead Sea, there are many areas the Great Salt Lake
that are quite stinky at times, mainly in the muddy
waters where the level is low. The Great Salt Lake
is also dense enough for you to float with little
to no effort. Uh So, if you are not able
to ever make it over to Europe to visit the

(28:44):
Dead Sea, let's say the Middle East, wouldn't you Okay,
you can head on over for a float. And it's
little American cousin out here in Utah. Keep up the
good work, guys. I really enjoy the wide variety of
topics that it's from. Daniel. It was a grad student
at b YU studying microbiology. So good for you, my friend,

(29:06):
nice much smarter than I. Yeah, oh yeah, grad student,
it's all I have to say, English undergrad microbiology grad
as a well rounded human being with the greed. Um.
Oh wait, you're the English undergrad. Yeah. I love to
put the two of you together. You're a well grounded
human exactly. UM. If you have some ideas of how
to put me in chuck together to form another superhuman, UM,

(29:30):
we want to hear him. Also, if you just want
to say hi, or you have something cool or interesting
to tell us a great fact we love those I
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