In this month's President's Corner article, Pete talks about the environmental impact of rockets, but he is not the only one concerned about the amount of exhaust that spews from the back end of them when they launch! Check out this BBC article by Mark Piesing called "The Pollution Caused by Rockets."
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There are two presentations that will enlighten the audience as to the status, the Why and the How of the current Space Elevator Development Program. Bottom Line: The Space Elevator Transportation System (SETS) has Started Development. The Space Elevator Transportation System (SETS) is inarguably part of the future space transportation architecture; joining advanced rockets. The Modern-Day Space Elevator has evolved from a dream to a scientific reality and has moved into the second phase of development (Engineering Validation). The Space Elevator, as the green road to space, has started! As such, there are two videos that explain the Space Elevator 101 (what it is all about) on youtube. They are:
“On NextGen travel to Space.” Dr. Peter Swan. President - International Space Elevator Consortium. 5 August 2022 on JayaTalkShow. This is a discussion around the simple concept of a space elevator and when it should be operational.
“Modern Day Space Elevator’s 101 – Transforming the Future” by Peter Swan, Ph.D. ISEC Webinar 25 June 2022. This is a presentation of both Why and How for the current concept of space elevators.
Last year our study “Green Road to Space” addressed the positive side of Space Elevators by pointing out how they will raise everything with electricity while not leaving debris in Low Earth Orbit as we go to GEO and beyond. The temptation was to also point out the new concern around the world that rockets pollute the atmosphere and the impacts will only grow as they increase from 146 launches (135 successful) globally during 2021 (Wikipedia 24 July 2022) to a thousand per year (as stated by Elon Musk). We did not have the team to do an exhaustive study on the topic, so we had a draft chapter accomplished (thanks team!) but left it out of the finished product. We did emphasize the “goodness” of missions we could achieve to improve the situation with respect to global warming by enabling Space Solar Power and many others. However, the question about rocket pollution is still facing the community. As we started along the route with Dual Space Access as our baseline strategy [collaboration and cooperation between advanced rockets and space elevators], we needed to support advanced rocket development and recognize their shortfalls. Don’t worry, we also have our shortfalls (the principle one being operations do not start until about 2037.) It has been suggested that we should keep up with this arena – costs to the atmosphere as payloads are delivered to mission locations. I agree, we need to be cognizant of the situation, so, inside our Green Road to Space committee, we will keep collecting articles and scientific analysis on the topic. In addition, I will start these discussions with the “Plain Language Summary” of a major study accomplished by the University of Cambridge and released this month. The title is: “Impact of Rocket Launch and Space Debris Air Pollutant Emissions on Stratospheric Ozone and Global Climate.”
It is imperative that we understand the current and future risks to Earth's atmosphere posed by pollution from rocket launches and re-entry heating of reusable and discarded rocket parts and historical debris. Rockets, unlike other anthropogenic pollution sources, emit gaseous and solid chemicals directly into the upper atmosphere. We compile inventories of these chemicals from rocket launches in 2019 and projections of future growth and speculative space tourism activity. We incorporate these in a 3D atmospheric chemistry model to simulate the impact on climate and the protective stratospheric ozone layer. We find that loss of ozone due to current rockets is small, but that routine space tourism launches may undermine progress made by the Montreal Protocol in reversing ozone depletion in the Arctic springtime upper stratosphere. The BC (black carbon or soot) particles from rockets are also of great concern, as these are almost five hundred times more efficient at warming the atmosphere than all other sources of soot combined. These findings demonstrate an urgent need to develop environmental regulation to mitigate damage from this rapidly growing industry.
As you can see, the arena of pollution from space rockets is becoming a topic of interest. We (ISEC) should keep track of the activities (focus by our Green Road to Space Committee and looking for volunteers who would like to lead this focused activity). It is definitely of interest for us. Let me know if you have additional ideas in this arena.
The Green Road to Space Committee (a committee that grew out of the study of the same name) has a few objectives, but the most important is to spread the word that Space Elevators are environmentally neutral in operations and will enable many critically important missions. One such thrust is to have an academic challenge reaching around the world to discuss the attributes of space elevators to transform our access to space in cooperation with advanced rockets. This will be a spring of 2023 academic challenge where students will enter competitive papers and videos in a quest to become one of top three winners. The below draft announcement will look similar to our announcement for the competition. We are looking for someone to join the Green Road to Space Committee and lead this activity. Please contact Pete Swan (pete.swan@isec.org) to volunteer or just discuss this opportunity.
Improving Humanity’s Future:
Space Elevator Challenge
Your Challenge: Select one Mission that would be important for humanity's future which would be enormously enhanced by relying on Space Elevators as a robust and "green" access to space. Explain how the Space Elevators’ transformational characteristics will achieve your chosen Mission at GEO or beyond.
Approach: ISEC will conduct a competition for students (ages 17-25) from around the world that would focus on the strengths of Space Elevators Green Road to Space. This reach-out Challenge would enable many young people to study and contribute towards the new ideas that humanity should not significantly impact the environment as its dreams for space are fulfilled.
Process: Announcement of Challenge: Q3 2022 -- Abstract submission and selection (400 words, by 1 Jan 2023)
Paper submission and selection: Q1 2023 -- 15-page paper in PDF form
Video submission: Q2 2023 -- ten-minute mp4 file
Selection Process: First place earns $2,000, second place earns $1,000, and third place earns $500.
Current Need: A volunteer is needed to lead this global effort encouraging students to study space and space elevators. The working website is established with a core of helper.
I found this fascinating book on the second-hand book stall in Leiden, the Netherlands, in early July titled, “Soviet Writings on Earth Satellites and Space Travel: The authoritative post-Sputnik picture of Space Science in the USSR presented by the leading Soviet specialists in the field of Astronautics“ published in 1959 by MacGibbon & Kee. The accompanying images show the book cover, the table of contents and the list of illustrations - some of which are incredible (see two included here).
What does it have to do with space elevators you may well ask? Well, not a lot! But, although it just predates Yuri Artsutanov and his piece in Komsomolskaya Pravda in 1960, it does contain several interesting snippets about Konstantin Tsiolkovsky - the early forerunner of the space elevator. For example, the Preface commences: “When the first artificial Earth satellite (Sputnik 1) was launched in the USSR on October 4, 1957, mankind entered the age of interplanetary travel which was brilliantly forecast by Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky.”
An introductory chapter entitled “From Legends to Science of Space Travel” mentions Icarus, Alexander the Great who wanted to visit heaven in a chariot driven by eagles, the Indian epic Ramayana whose main character travelled to the heavens, Cyrano de Bergerac, Jules Verne and fantasy novels dealing with life on other worlds. “A number of novels and stories on space flight were also written by scientists, among them K. E. Tsiolkovsky.” Turning to rocket flying machines, “The theory of the motion of a rocket in space was elaborated by the famous Russian scientist K. E. Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), who also designed the first liquid- fuelled rocket.”
Chapter 1: “Space Ships” starts with the problem of escape from the Earth before moving on to design of rockets, satellites and spaceships, including satellite space stations. “Satellites will not of course suffer a shortage of solar energy. K. E. Tsiolkovsky proposed that the vast streams of sunbeams be captured in outer space hothouses and utilized for growing plants that space island inhabitants might use for food…….We Russians are naturally pleased that technical thought continues to find stimulation in the ideas of K. E. Tsiolkovsky, “father of astronautics”, on populating space with entire “cities” having artificial gravity.”
In the chapter on “Man in Outer Space”, we read “According to an idea which K. E. Tsiolkovsky advanced as early as the end of the last century (1895), the space vehicle (for example, the ship pictured in Fig. 11) must be made up of two inter-locking sections.”
Later, in “Utilisation of Artificial Satellites”, he is mentioned again: “On a satellite can be verified the hypothesis advanced by K. E. Tsiolkovsky that in the absence of gravity, plants and organisms from the simplest to the most complex will grow and develop a great deal faster than they do where gravity exists.” In the same chapter it says that “To reach the Moon, Venus, Mars…..the interplanetary space ship must develop at take-off a speed over thirty times greater that the speed of sound. It is beyond the possibilities of contemporary technology to construct such an interplanetary ship. For easier solution of this problem, the cosmic voyage can be divided into stages, as K. E. Tsiolkovsky proposed in the Eighteen-Nineties. For this purpose an artificial Earth satellite can be employed as a kind of transfer station in space.”
The last mention of Tsiolkovsky is in the chapter entitled “From Man-Made Satellites to Moon-Based Voyages”. “Manned rocket satellites will be able to switch from one orbit to another and to link up with each other. The crew will be able to emerge onto the outer surface of the flying machine, thus making possible the establishment of large, earth-girdling “space stations,” of which K. E. Tsiolkovsky himself spoke. These flying stations could provide the take-off field for distance space voyages and also be used for the assembling of space ships.” (Shades of the Galactic Harbour?)
The book is a good historical read about space science and dynamics and space vehicle design at a time when the space age was just starting despite the imaginative lurid cover art and stories in scifi pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories, Galaxy Science Fiction, Thrilling Wonder Stories and the like - some going back to the late 1920s. Well-worth trying to find in a library or online.
Veteran readers of the ISEC newsletter will know that we have a good idea what a tether made of graphene will look like. It will be a shiny metallic ribbon a metre wide, 100,000 km long and as thin as Saran wrap (the plastic film used for food wrapping). A tether like this can support seven 20 tonne climbers at evenly spaced intervals.
All good so far. However, as we engage with audiences less familiar with this new tether technology, we are encountering misunderstandings that get in the way of communicating the message about the state of the art of graphene manufacturing and its application as a tether material.
Powders and large-area sheet graphene
When starting to get into the technical detail this is where some confusion can set in. Graphene is made in two forms: powders and large area sheets. Graphene nanoplate powders are being used in a variety of industries from electronics to polymers to concrete. Many people are first encountering this new material as a powder. Large area sheet graphene is the more promising form from the point of view of a candidate material for the tether. You will know from previous newsletter entries just how fast the industrial manufacture of large area sheet graphene is progressing.
Crystallinity
Having made clear that large area sheet graphene is the material of choice, the next step is to address the quality of the graphene. The term crystalline is used. In this context the word crystal means a repeating pattern at the molecular scale rather than the sparkling, brittle material of everyday experience.
Monolayer graphene is made on a growth substrate, usually copper. The metal contains crystal defects that influence the way the graphene layer grows on the surface. Also, when manufacturing graphene as a monolayer the sheet starts to grow from many origins simultaneously. These factors give rise to multiple crystal domains in the monolayer. Where the domains meet crystal grain boundaries and vacancies are created. These defects can weaken the material, and so the ideal for the tether will be to create a sheet of graphene as a continuous single molecule. This is known as single crystal graphene.
Multiple layers
We know from calculations done by the ISEC team that we will need over 12,000 layers of single crystal graphene to make a tether. Layered or stacked structures come in a variety of forms depending how they are made. The current method makes a stack of graphene by separating the graphene from the metal substrate with a bath of etchant solution. This dissolves the metal leaving the graphene floating on the surface of the liquid. The graphene can then be transferred on to another substrate such as a plastic and the process repeated many times to build up a stack on graphene layers on the transfer substrate. The substrate is finally removed leaving a stack of graphene [1].
Graphene layers
A feature of this wet transfer method is that the process contaminates the individual layers of graphene with material from the process such as water vapour and other residues. This prevents the graphene layers from engaging closely and weakens the overall structure.
Graphene Van der Waals homostructure
When the graphene layers are formed without contaminants present each atomic layer can engage with the others. An electrostatic attraction called the Van der Waals (VdW) force helps bond the layers together creating a much stronger structure than would otherwise be expected. This bonding strength increases the rigidity with the cube of the number of layers [1]. Also, a VdW homostructure of single crystal graphene will be much stronger than one made from polycrystalline graphene.
Naming convention for describing tether quality graphene
To describe tether quality graphene in technical terms we will need to name it:
“A Van der Waals homostructure of large-area single-crystal multi-layer graphene”
This clumsy term could invite people to question what the material is. This can lead some people to think: “multilayer graphene – that’s just graphite”. This makes it easy to dismiss this new material without properly thinking through its properties.
In the absence of a technical terminology, we have developed a new naming convention:
Graphene layers: Graphene that is not a VdW homostructure
Graphene laminate: A VdW homostructure of polycrystalline graphene
Graphene super-laminate: A VdW homostructure of single-crystal graphene
These definitions are intended to make it easier to communicate with technical precision the type of multi-layered graphene structures that we will encounter in the coming years, so expect to hear more of these terms, especially graphene super-laminate.
References:
[1] Nixon. A., 2021. The graphene and graphite landscape: Indications of unexplored territory. Nixene Journal, 5(10), pp.9-20
One of the significant questions about space elevators has always been – can we make a tether long enough and strong enough for the dynamic stresses of a 100,000 km tether. The question was evaluated by Matt Williams on 18 July 2022 and presented in his website: Universe Today [space and astronomy news] in an article titled “A New Method for Making Graphene has an Awesome Application: A Space Elevator!” From our viewpoint, he accomplished what he set out to do – layout the situation with graphene today and show some history of how we got here. It shows the historical growth of tether material and reaches some remarkable conclusions. It is well worth the read – and even some of the videos tied to his article.
One of the problems with some of my good ideas is the originator “gets it,” but then others do not. It seemed obvious to me that the value of the Apex Anchor was not being appreciated as most thought of it as the end mass to keep the tether taught. I have often thought of the Apex Anchor (and named it many years ago) as a launching pad for so many dreams. As such, I have just come up with an idea on how to explain its value. The title should be something like: Assembly at the top of the gravity well.
The idea is simple – raise payloads with solar energy to 100,000 km altitude and then assemble them in a robotic factory at the Apex Anchor. This leads to an operational capability which will release any size spacecraft, with appropriate rocket motors, to reach any planet in any inclination daily and safely – all while being environmentally safe. The concept relies upon the fact that the Space Elevator operations will raise tether climber payloads of 14 tonnes to a rotating location with a potential energy of 100,000 km altitude and kinetic energy of 7.76 km/sec. Each payload can then be assembled into a much larger scientific mission spacecraft. The combination of massive energy given to any size scientific mission and assembled at the Apex Anchor leads to the realization that the universe opens up to anyone who operates a factory at the Apex Anchor. Can you image enabling scientists to dream of space systems that can be of any size and reach any solar system body with significant velocity? The enabling factor is a Space Elevator Transportation System with a robotic assembly factory at the Apex Anchor.
Sunday, September 18th through Thursday, September 22nd, 2022
Paris, France
The Space Elevator session takes place Monday, September 19th from 3:00 PM until 5:30 PM local time. It will be Session 3 “Modern Day Space Elevators Entering Development” of the 20th IAA Symposium on Visions and Strategies for the Future.
Does your place of employment do matching funds for donations or volunteer time through Benevity? If so, you can make ISEC your recipient. Our 501(c)(3) number is 80-0302896.
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