The concept of the elevator into space has often been mentioned in various works of science fiction, but never really looked into reality. Yet it has aroused the interest of scientists from the International Academy of Astronautics, explaining that such a project is feasible.
In this 300-page report , scientists studying concretely so the possibility of setting up such a project.Better they even raise the question of whether such a solution does not present more benefits than the current system of rockets used to travel in space. Rockets have the drawback of being constituted 80% of the mass of a clean fuel, the rest generally becoming a new space debris once the mission is completed, and can not take a limited cargo . An elevator as that imagined by scientists system would free of these constraints and energy loading to some extent.
The true complexity of such a project obviously lies in its construction and implementation. The general idea would be to hang a cable carbon at the equator, it is down to a counterweight that would maintain a geostationary orbit. The cable shown in the example is nearly 99,750 kilometers, which involves many calculations regarding its mass to maintain the orbit and the tension of said cable. If this project seems crazy, the report take it very seriously. Of course, the idea is yet nowhere else in the imagination of its creators, but all the elements seem to be present for it to be feasible. In the late 90s, NASA had already presented a type of cable that could correspond to that required in the report.
