space elevator


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space elevator

n.
A hypothetical, fixed structure designed to transport people and cargo up to a platform or station in geostationary orbit above a planet or planetlike body.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
References in periodicals archive ?
(34.) Michelle Starr, Japanese Company Plans Space Elevator by 2050, CNET, Sept.
For this reason, carbon nanotubes have been hailed as the wonder material that can give us everything from better energy storage to super-strong tethers for space elevators.
The space elevator could be used as a launching pad for satellites, asteroid deflection, generating solar power without atmospheric disturbances and sending materials in space at much lower costs," said Izz in an email interview from Ontario, Canada.
The tether serving as a space elevator would be used to economically place payloads and eventually people into space using electric vehicles called climbers that drive up and down the tether at train-like speeds.
The Space Elevator Challenge, organized by the Japan Space Elevator Association, is now in its fifth year and expects to gather approximately 25 teams this time.
Future missions--which once were limited to the realm of science fiction, but today are discussed by leading scientists and engineers--include building a space elevator on the surface of the moon, deflecting a hazardous near-Earth asteroid, and traveling to Mars (perhaps even establishing colonies there).
But fans always go a step further, whether by designing and even crafting their own bricks or using Legos to craft prosthetic hands or model a potential space elevator.
New and innovative viewpoints on practical methods to building a space elevator, designing a method to cope with cat litter and some simple ways to conserve energy are presented.
A space elevator would stretch __ kilometers from Earth's surface into space.
Clarke I was fascinated to learn about Patrick's early association with the inventor of the geosynchronous communications satellite, and their combined participation in the early days of the British Interplanetary Society as two of its founding 'space cadets.' I was surprised to learn that Patrick thought the space elevator was 'not one of Arthur's better ideas.' I didn't disagree, though the space elevator is surely an idea whose time will come.
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