Japan wants to build something in space, it’s not a space station, but a strange tower

The strange concept seems like a bizarre idea, but its creators say it is possible to carry out.

Some say that you can reach the Moon by folding a piece of paper, although when it comes to space exploration, the most common thing is to rely on rockets to launch astronauts and cargo. There are numerous satellites orbiting the Earth and, perhaps, in a few decades We can also talk about one structure that would be the entrance door of one new generation of transportation towards the stars. It’s science fiction at the moment, but an extraordinary idea.

To space without rockets, but with elevators

The company Obayashi Corporation believes that travel beyond Earth does not have to be limited by gigantic rockets and high costs. There is a type of structure that is not new in the minds of the most innovative engineers, but that does not yet seem to be possible with our knowledge. Or maybe yes. And it’s not us who say it, but the Japanese company that invites us to learn about its space elevator project.

The idea is as simple to understand as it is practically impossible to carry out in our era: devise a space elevator connecting the surface of the Earth with a space station in our orbit and serve as the basis of future elevators that connect us with other celestial objects in the Solar System, such as the Moon or Mars.

Image of the port from which one would ascend into space

The company assures that the ‘concept has been considered possible from a construction point of view and is now in the process of being developed’. It would all start with a port located in the sea, from where the elevator would rise to Earth’s orbit. This port would float on the equator of the planet and would be connected to the coast through a 10-kilometer underwater tunnel of length.

This port Not only would it be the gateway for entry and exit for transportation via the space elevator, but it would also serve as cable anchor point that would join with the Spacial station in orbit. This would be located one geostationary orbitat an altitude of 36,000 kilometres, and would be a vertical modular station capable of being expanded in the future and supported by solar energy collected by panels located nearby.

Recreation of the port that would serve as the base for the Obayashi Corporation space elevator

Such a solar power generation system could also send surplus energy back to Earth. At the end of the cablebeyond the station and 96,000 kilometers from Earth, there would be a counterweight which would also serve as Solar System Exploration Gateallowing ships to be sent for the ‘extraction of resources from other planets and other parts of the Solar System, such as Jupiter and asteroids’.

For now, This concept It sounds extremely good, but it clearly has many points to resolve before the start of construction could be considered, which would be the largest work ever created by our species. To conclude this presentation of the space elevator, we reveal what we believe would be the main obstacles to its creation:

• If the cable is to be manufactured in stainless steel, There is not so much stainless steel on our planetaccording to the article published by Christian Johnson on the website of the Journal of Science Policy & Governance organization.
• Instead of stainless steel, other materials can be used, such as, for example, Carbon nanotubes. In this case, the problem would come in its manufacturing, since the longest carbon nanotube that has been created has only been 60 centimeters.
• We should consider the creation of a new materialsomething that would take years or decades of research.
• The cable would have to fight against the elements so as not to break due to the tension it would have to endure.

The japanese company assures that you are taking all these problems into account and that in 2025 could begin construction of a colossal project that would be valued at 100 billion dollars. On the horizon, there are 2050the date of premiere of a space elevator which, at the moment, is more fiction than science.

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