Going Up?

And you think your industry is risky.

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The private space industry is expected to grow by $7.7 billion in 2004. But many of the fledgling ventures seem extremely risky. Like, say, the company that wants to build an elevator to the stars.

It's not cheap to get stuff into orbit. Just to shoot something into space costs at least $15 million. To reach geosynchronous orbit 22,241 miles up -- where about half of all satellites go so they can stay above the same spot on Earth -- your costs rise above $100 million. Tack on another 10% to 20% for insurance. And make sure you build that satellite right the first time because, once it's up there, you can't fix it. Wouldn't it be nice if you could take an elevator to space?

In the future, you may be able to. That's the hope of the hundreds of space elevator enthusiasts who will touch down later this month at the Loews L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C., to attend the third annual international space elevator conference. Though the assemblage could be written off as a bunch of crackpots, some of the expected attendees boast good credentials, millions in financing, and because of new nanotechnology, a reasonable-sounding rebuttal to those would dismiss them. Their mission: to build two platforms (one in the ocean and one in orbit) between which a capsule not unlike an elevator could travel.

The idea for an elevator to space is not new. In 1895, a Russian scientist named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, inspired by the Eiffel Tower, conceived of a "celestial castle" tethered to our planet by a cable. More recently, the sci-fi novelist Arthur C. Clarke gave the concept play in his 1978 book The Fountains of Paradise. The author, who lives in Sri Lanka, is widely quoted as having predicted that an elevator could actually be built "about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." Last year in a speech, Clarke shortened the forecast to a decade.

For folks like Michael Laine, the mirth has already subsided. The former Marine and three-time entrepreneur hopes that his new business, LiftPort Group, will complete a space elevator by 2018. Though the company runs on a shoestring budget and employs only five people, its founder says he is poised to raise $500,000. From there, he hopes to pursue a half dozen elevator-related businesses, from nano- to laser technology. When it is finally completed, the elevator could compete with NASA and the Russian Space Agency as the prime mover (literally) in the solar system. A lot of people are rooting for Laine to succeed. "People are hungry," says Thomas Olson, who is launching the Colony Fund, a mutual fund that invests in space companies. "After people walked on the moon, the universe had been opened to us. We're trying to reclaim that birthright."

"I kept saying, 'What's your return on investment -- your ROI?' And they'd give these puzzled responses: 'What's ROI?'"

Michael Laine, is the founder of the LiftPort Group.

The modern conception of the space elevator is simple if audacious. First, you build a platform in the ocean along the equator -- a spot 2,500 miles south of San Diego is the top choice. Then you launch a few rockets into Low Earth Orbit, where they deploy either robots or people who assemble a platform (see sidebar). When that structure is complete, it starts unspooling an ultra-strong ribbon back down to the Pacific.

The ribbon is at first about eight inches wide, but once secured at both ends, devices called "lifters" ascend with more material that widens it. Meanwhile, the platform in space slowly starts rising to 62,000 miles from Earth so that the portion at geosynchronous orbit remains tautly in place. Once the ribbon is three feet wide, it's ready to start hauling payloads of five tons per day. Currently, the cost to deliver a pound of stuff into space is $10,000. If the elevator were operative 200 days per year, it could deliver two million pounds of materiel per year -- resulting in billions in sales.

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