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Sir Arthur Clarke and the Space Elevator

Jerome Pearson

President, Star Technology and Research, Inc.

jp@star-tech-inc.com

ISEC Space Elevator Conference

Seattle, Washington

23-25 August 2013

Sir Arthur C. Clarke

16 Dec 1917-19 March 2008

Royal Air Force radio and comm, 1945

British Interplanetary Society, 1946

Science and science fiction writer

Sri Lanka and diving business, 1956

Comsats and Clarke Orbit fame, 1963

Space elevator research, 1976-79

Space elevator novels, 1978, 1997

Knighted, 1998

“Sage of Science Fiction,” 2000

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Clarke and My Teenage Inspirations

The “big three” of science fiction: Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke (plus Bradbury)

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Arthur Began it in 1945

1945 2013

416 active satellites

in Clarke Orbit

Arthur Clarke, “Extra-terrestrial

Relays,” Wireless World

1963

Syncom 2 4

Arthur Inspired Me on the Orbital Tower

1969 description of GEOSats on “imaginary towers”

1975, “The Orbital Tower” in Acta Astronautica

1976, Arthur begins our correspondence

1978, “The Fountains of Paradise”

The Orbital Tower

Arthur in 1964

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The U.S. Bicentennial IAC, 1976

Great conference, and my first presentation on the Orbital Tower

Met Robert Forward, Georg von Tiesenhausen (who suggested looking at the lunar space elevator, since the Earth elevator was so hard)

Received Arthur’s letter, article, and questions on the space elevator

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Clarke’s First Letter to Me, 1976

His paper addressed the collision problem

He expected 104-106 objects

Space Command now tracking 21,000

He wondered how to propel high-speed climbers

Suggested power conducted through the tower, or radiation from solar power satellites

He asked where to locate the base for stability

He recognized the low geopotential point at 75° east longitude

I replied, suggesting a horizontal base in Mexico, at the other stable point of 105° west

Orbital pipelines and radiation belt absorption 7

Walter Morgan and Tower Stability

Arthur asked Comsat Corporation for analysis

Walter Morgan and colleague analyzed it

Discovered the 24-hour north-south oscillation

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Clarke’s Space Elevator Research

Yuri Artsutanov

Arthur discovered Yuri’s

Pravda article, but didn’t

meet Yuri until 1982 (seen here)

Collar and Flower

Arthur discovered their near-invention

I found US authors who did the same

Hans Moravec

Discovered his marvelous “rolling satellite”

I found Paul Birch’s “orbital rings,” Keith Lofstrom’s “launch loop,” and Rod Hyde’s “space fountain”

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The Fountains of Paradise, 1978

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Arthur’s Space Elevator Base

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Buckminster Fuller and FOP Album

Arthur did LP album of Fountains of Paradise

Caedmon recording, with a cover by Bucky Fuller shown here

Fuller designed a free-floating tensegrity ring-bridge in space above Earth’s equator, rotating at its own rate, allowing traffic to ascend and descend

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First Chance to Meet Arthur

Arthur gave plenary address at the 1979 IAC in Munich, Germany

My asteroid retrieval paper was late

Missed my first chance to meet Arthur in person

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Lunar Space Elevator, 1979

• Tramway from polar ice deposits to

the lunar space elevator

• Climbs lunar space elevator to beyond L1

• Flies as spacecraft to Earth orbit using ion rockets

• Returns from Earth orbit with supplies, again using ion propulsion

Climbs with solar power by

day, beamed power by night

Solar Arrays

Climbing

wheels

Cargo

tanks

Lunar Tramway

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Space Flight Without Rockets

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Reagan’s SDI, Clarke and Heinlein

President Reagan’s SDI advisory

group met at Barney Oliver’s “Star

Wars” party in 1984

Heinlein, Dan Graham, Lowell

Wood, Hans Mark, Arthur Clarke,

and others attended

Clarke strongly objected to Heinlein’s support

Berlin Wall fell, 1989

Soviet Union “Evil Empire” collapsed, 1991

Clarke and Heinlein never reconciled, as Arthur retold the story to me at our meeting in 1996

w/John Paul II, 1984

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Second Chance to Meet Arthur

Sputnik 30th anniversary celebration, Moscow, 1987

Arthur was invited, but declined because of work

I was invited, and offered free flight and hotel

As an Air Force employee, I sought permission

The request went all the way to the Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger

Weinberger thought that it might be anti-SDI, and said that no DoD employees could attend

Bottom line: in the military, it is better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission!

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The “Space Elevator Boys” Finally Meet

Jerome Pearson and Sir Arthur Clarke

Singapore, 1996

IAC Beijing

Sri Lanka, 1988

IAC Bangalore

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The Search for Strong Materials

Arthur followed carbon nanotube research

Richard Smalley breakthroughs, Rice University

Boris Yakobson proudly called me

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Implications of Strong Materials

From The Fountains of Paradise:

Morgan uses fiber in handheld climber Mentions cutting trees with the fiber

From my orbital tower research:

SE material enables Single Stage To Orbit

SSTO would compete with space elevator

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Space Elevators and Orbital Rings

Arthur’s 3001: The Final Odyssey

4 orbital towers 90° apart around the equator

A geostationary ring of attached satellites

He realized that a rigid ring like the one in Larry Niven’s Ringworld would be unstable

I mentioned orbital rings in a letter to Arthur

Paul Birch’s “orbital rings and Jacob’s ladders”

Arnold and Kingsbury’s electrodynamic tube accelerator in orbit to catch payloads from Earth

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Arthur Clarke and Extraterrestrials

Arthur’s Fountains of Paradise has “Starglider,” an alien robotic craft going from star to star, that passes our sun while the orbital tower is being built, and communicates with Earth

His Rendezvous with Rama has a similar theme

But recent exo-planet discoveries raise questions

You are here;

200 billion stars

In our galaxy

200 billion planets In our galaxy,

Many of them billions of years older than Earth,

And No One Has Called!

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Fermi’s Paradox: Where Is ET?

The Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes

have found nearly 2000 planets

Most stars seem to have planets

Earth is just half the age of the galaxy

Aliens could colonize the galaxy in just a billion

years at reasonable speeds

So Enrico Fermi asked, “Where are they?”

He had 3 answers:

1. They exist, they’re here, and we’re in a zoo;

2. Civilizations destroy themselves or lose

interest in space; or

3. Extraterrestrials don’t exist, and this galaxy is

ours!

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Accolades for Arthur

Von Karman Award, 1996

Many Sci-Fi Awards Hugo Nebula

Asteroid 4923 named “Clarke” There is an asteroid “Asimov,” but “Heinlein” was taken

“Sage of Science Fiction” Award, 2000 Knighthood conferred by Queen Elizabeth, 1998

Circa 1996

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Arthur Clarke, Selected Works

Non-Fiction:

“Electromagnetic Launching as a Major Contributor to Space-Flight,” JBIS, November 1940

“Extra-Terrestrial Relays,” Wireless World, October 1945

Interplanetary Flight, 1950; The Exploration of Space, 1952

“The Space Elevator: ‘Thought Experiment’, or Key to the Universe?” Plenary Address to the 30th IAC, Munich, 1979

Fiction:

Childhood’s End, 1950; The Sands of Mars, 1951

Expedition to Earth, 1953; The City and the Stars, 1956

2001: A Space Odyssey, motion picture with Stanley Kubrick, 1968

The Fountains of Paradise, 1978

2010: Odyssey Two, 1982

3001: The Final Odyssey, 1997

1950’s

1960’s 25

Space Elevators in Fiction

The Last Theorem

“Prominence,”

Curtis Brubaker

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Summary of Arthur’s Impacts

Arthur was a giant in the science fiction world

Many influential novels and awards

Arthur was also influential in the technical world of comsats and Clarke Orbit

Arthur was a tireless force in developing and publicizing the space elevator

We lost one of our guiding lights with his death in 2008

With Nalaka Gunawardene,

Feb 2007

Still working,

Dec 2007 27