Emily Chan
By 2050, one of the top construction companies in Japan hopes to successfully build an elevator into space. The company in question is the Obayashi Corporation, and their plan is for the massive elevator to be able to send humans to the International Space Station in just two and a half hours.
The “space elevator” would launch humans out of the Earth’s atmosphere at record-breaking speeds, reducing travel time to Mars by 40 days to six to eight months. It connects the Earth’s surface to a geostationary orbit in space.
Currently, the corporation is testing carbon nanotubes, which will help scientists construct the elevator.
According to blueprints by Obayashi Corporation, the elevator would have a 22,000-mile-long tether and look like a giant tube that expands to a total length of almost 60,000 miles. It would use wheeled lifts called “climbers” to transport people and materials.
Rockets will deliver materials as experts work on building a spaceship at low Earth orbit for the construction of the space elevator. The spaceship will employ electric propulsion to travel upward as it circles the planet until reaching geostationary Earth orbit. At that point, it would begin to orbit at the same rate as the rotation of the Earth.
When the spaceship is about 22,000 miles away from Earth, it will deploy the carbon nanotube, which will have a thruster attached to its tip. The carbon nanotube would reach the surface of the Earth eight months later, where it will get to its final altitude of 60,000 miles. A climber will stretch out from the tube and be reinforced with cables.
After being reinforced 500 times, the tube should be able to support a climber weighing 100 tons. The climber would then be used to transport materials to finish the Geostationary Orbit Station.
On Earth, the company will construct the Earth Port, which will provide two gateways to space. One would be on land, and the other one would be at sea. These sections will be connected by an undersea tunnel.
From the Earth Port, the climbers will soar up the carbon nanotube at approximately 93 miles per hour. In about two-and-a-half hours, they will arrive at the International Space Station.
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