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A Lunar Space Elevator Is Actually Feasible & Inexpensive, Scientists Find
By Sissi Cao • 09/17/19 8:30am


The concept of a lunar space elevator isn’t new. Vladimir SmirnovTASS via Getty Images

From NASA and ESA (the European Space Agency) to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, it’s every space institute’s and tech billionaire’s dream to take return to the moon during this century. But while government agencies and space entrepreneurs all focus on building a spaceship to transport humans between Earth and the moon, a pair of young scientists from Columbia University have a distinctly sci-fi-esque idea that may actually work and cost far less than a rocket-spaceship system.

In a paper published on the online research archive arXiv in August, Columbia astronomy students Zephyr Penoyre and Emily Sandford proposed the idea of a “lunar space elevator,” which is exactly what it sounds like—a very long elevator connecting the moon and our planet.

SEE ALSO: SpaceX Is Now One Step Closer to Sending Humans to Mars


The concept of a moon elevator isn’t new. In the 1970s, similar ideas were floated in science fiction (Arthur C. Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise, for example) and by academics like Jerome Pearson and Yuri Artsutanov.

But the Columbia study differs from previous proposal in an important way: instead of building the elevator from the Earth’s surface (which is impossible with today’s technology), it would be anchored on the moon and stretch some 200,000 miles toward Earth until hitting the geostationary orbit height (about 22,236 miles above sea level), at which objects move around Earth in lockstep with the planet’s own rotation.

Dangling the space elevator at this height would eliminate the need to place a large counterweight near Earth’s orbit to balance out the planet’s massive gravitational pull if the elevator were to be built from ground up. This method would also prevent any relative motion between Earth’s surface and space below the geostationary orbit area from bending or twisting the elevator.


These won’t be problems for the moon because the lunar gravitational pull is significantly smaller and the moon’s orbit is tidally locked, meaning that the moon keeps the same face turned toward Earth during its orbit, therefore no relative motion of the anchor point.

After doing the math, the researchers estimated that the simplest version of the lunar elevator would be a cable thinner than a pencil and weigh about 88,000 pounds, which is within the payload capacity of the next-generation NASA or SpaceX rocket.

The whole project may cost a few billion dollars, which is “within the whim of one particularly motivated billionaire,” said Penoyre.


Future moon travelers will still have to ride a rocket, though, to fly up to the elevator’s dangling point, and then transfer to a robotic vehicle, which would climb up the cable all the way up to the moon.

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French start-up launches solar engine
The invention converts the energy produced by PV cells directly into mechanical motion without the need for batteries or power electronics. Its developers claim the robustness of the solar motor can drive water pumps and ventilation turbines for more than 20 years without the need for maintenance.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019 BENEDICT O’DONNELL
COMMERCIAL & INDUSTRIAL PV
COMMUNITY
ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
TECHNOLOGY AND R&D
FRANCE

The family start-up employs three generations of the Coty family.

Image: Saurea

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From pv magazine France.

Auxerre-based start-up Saurea has unveiled an electric motor technology that converts solar energy directly into mechanical rotation.

The company’s first product provides rotary motion able to draw water for agricultural irrigation and to supply fresh air to ventilate buildings.

“It’s the first solar engine in the world,” said Isabelle Gallet-Coty, one of Saurea’s founders. “It revolves entirely around renewable energy and has the particularity of never breaking down.”

Perpetual motion

Unlike conventional electric motors, Saurea’s technology directly converts solar energy to rotary motion without the need for power conversion components, giving the solar engine unusual resilience.

“Electronic power conversion components often need to be replaced,” said Gallet-Coty. Saurea claims it can guarantee maintenance-free operation of its first product for 20 years.

According to the start-up, that will offer financial savings to customers and make the engine particularly well suited for use in isolated areas. The innovative nature of the product has attracted the attention of the EDF Pulse jury, which selected Saurea as one of the finalists in the Sustainable Territories category of its annual competition – the public vote is open until September 26.

Family start-up

The solar engine is the result of research and development work spanning three generations. Inventor Alain Coty has filed five technology patents during his lifetime. His daughter-in-law Isabelle and his son took the product to market and their daughter, Louise, is in charge of business development.

The family business, officially founded three years ago, assembles the solar engines in a workshop in Burgundy in central France and is establishing a distribution network.

Isabelle Gallet-Coty said the sale price of the solar engine is €2,500-3,500, depending on the application. Saurea also offers to deliver the integrated product to pumps assembled by its partners and the start-up intends to expand its product range.

“Right now we are launching our first 130 W mechanical solar engine for pumping air and water applications,” added Isabelle, “for example, to water green walls or power city foggers [which issue clouds of spray and are widely used to combat mosquitoes]. But it’s our intermediate engine. Currently, two more are developed with powers of 50 W and 250 W.”

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BENEDICT O’DONNELL
Benedict joined pv magazine in September 2018. With a PhD in photovoltaics and a taste for technology, he has been reporting on markets and the energy transition since 2013.
More articles from Benedict O’Donnell

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The question, which goes back to at least 1955 and may have been pondered by Greek thinkers as early as the third century AD, asks, "How can you express every number between 1 and 100 as the sum of three cubes?" Or, put algebraically, how do you solve x^3 + y^3 + z^3 = k, where k equals any whole number from 1 to 100?

This deceptively simple stumper is known as a Diophantine equation, named for the ancient mathematician Diophantus of Alexandria, who proposed a similar set of problems about 1,800 years ago. Modern mathematicians who revisited the puzzle in the 1950s quickly found solutions when k equals many of the smaller numbers, but a few particularly stubborn integers soon emerged. The two trickiest numbers, which still had outstanding solutions by the beginning of 2019, were 33 and — you guessed it — 42.

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In April, mathematician Andrew Booker, of the University of Bristol in England, knocked 33 off the list. Using a computer algorithm to look for solutions to the Diophantine equation with x, y and z values that included every number between positive and negative 99 quadrillion, Booker found the solution to 33 after several weeks of computing time. (As you can see, the answer is super, super long.)

Here’s 33 expressed as the sum of three cubes. It only took one of the world’s smartest computers to solve.

(Image credit: Numberphile/ University of Bristol)
Still, this exhaustive search turned up no solutions for 42, suggesting that, if there was an answer, some of the integers must be greater than 99 quadrillion. Calculating values that large would take an insane amount of computing power; so, for his next attempt, Booker enlisted the help of Massachusetts Institute of Technology mathematician Andrew Sutherland, who helped Booker book some time with a worldwide computer network called Charity Engine.

According to a statement from the University of Bristol, this network is a "worldwide computer" that borrows idle computing power from more than 500,000 home PCs around the globe. Using this crowdsourced supercomputer and 1 million hours of processing time, Booker and Sutherland finally found an answer to the Diophantine equation where k equals 42.

And so, without further ado, the question AND answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything is:

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(-80538738812075974)^3 + (80435758145817515)^3 + (12602123297335631)^3 = 42

How does it feel? Glorious? Overwhelming? Like your brain is going to vomit a little? Just be thankful that, unlike in Adams’ search for the truth, the entire Earth wasn’t destroyed in the process.

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The World’s Most Beautiful Equations
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1 quarter cup is 4 tablespoons so this is one part cornstarch and two parts water

On Mon., Sep. 9, 2019, 4:37 p.m. Ray Hackett, <3659745> wrote:

Mix 2 Tbsp. cornstarch and 1/4 cup cold water until smooth, stir into pan, season to taste. Stirring constantly, bring to a boil over medium heat; boil 2 minutes

Ingredients
1 Tbsp Corn Starch
2 Tbsp Flour
Instructions
Cornstarch has twice the thickening power of flour. When a gravy, sauce, soup or stew recipe calls for flour, use half as much cornstarch to thicken. To thicken hot liquids, first mix cornstarch with a little cold water until smooth. Gradually stir into hot liquid until blended. Stirring constantly, bring to a boil and boil one minutes

Mix 2 Tbsp. cornstarch and 1/4 cup cold water until smooth, stir into pan, season to taste. Stirring constantly, bring to a boil over medium heat; boil 2 minutes