The real history of the space elevator
- Paper number
IAC-06-D4.3.01
- Author
Mr. Jerome Pearson, Star Technology and Research, Inc., United States
- Year
2006
- Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to describe accurately and in detail the history of the concept of the space elevator. The paper uses original letters and writings of pioneers in space elevators to clarify the origins and development of the space elevator concept. The space elevator was invented twice, independently, and many ideas about space elevators were developed by multiple authors and inventors over a period of 30 years, some without knowledge of the others. The history of the field is somewhat muddled, so much that some fairly recent papers have re-invented the concept. Some sources attribute the invention of the space elevator to Sir Arthur Clarke, who wrote the space-elevator novel, “The Fountains of Paradise” in 1978. Others attribute it to Tsiolkovsky, writing in 1895. Part of the problem is that the original inventor of the space elevator, Yuri Artsutanov of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), did not publish his invention in the engineering literature, but only in a Sunday supplement to Komsomolskaya Pravda, the youth-oriented version of the Soviet newspaper Pravda. The concept was picked up by a few participants in the Soviet space program, and a well-known Soviet space artist did a painting of the concept. However, even Sir Arthur Clarke saw the painting without realizing the significance of the idea. Even after John Isaacs and his colleagues came close to the concept of the space elevator in an article published in Science in 1966, there was no notice in the spaceflight engineering community. The British authors Collar and Flower almost re-invented the concept in the JBIS in 1972(?), but again the spaceflight engineering technical community did not pick up the idea. It was left to the independent invention by Jerome Pearson, published in Acta Astronautica in 1975, to make the concept widely known. The lack of knowledge of the history of the space elevator was made even murkier by the developments in space tethers during the 1980’s; space tethers are related to the concepts of space elevators but have their own separate history. Now that there are significant efforts underway to develop the materials required to build a real space elevator, it is worthwhile to accurately reflect upon the convoluted and somewhat mysterious history of the space elevator.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-06-D4.3.01.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.