Home > Nanotechnology Art Gallery > LiftPort Inc. / Artist: Shane Kilduff
LiftPort Inc. / Artist: Shane Kilduff
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See the entire LiftPort Conceptual Engineering Drawings Gallery (Focused on the Space Elevator)
The subject of research for more than a century, the space elevator is a unique way to ferry cargo and people into space. Recent advances in technology, most notably the development of carbon nanotube composites, now appear to make building a space elevator feasible. Initial research reports on building the space elevator that draw upon these discoveries have now been completed. As proposed in these reports, the space elevator will consist of a carbon nanotube composite ribbon stretching some 62,000 miles from earth to space. The elevator will be anchored to an offshore sea platform near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, and to a small counterweight in space. Mechanical lifters (robotic elevator cars) will move up and down the ribbon, carrying such items as satellites, solar power systems, and eventually people into space.
The Space Elevator is not a tower, or even an elevator shaft. It's just the elevator cable, without even any big motors at the top to pull things up. Vehicles and their payloads have to pull themselves up the cable with their own motors and power supply.
—LiftPort Group Inc., Bremerton, Wash.
These images help illustrate one nanotech-enabled future; one that could put the stars in reach of humankind.
"The Liftport" - Platform, Lifter, and Counterweight
This image represents three of the primary components of the Space Elevator - Platform, Lifter, and Counterweight. The fourth component is the carbon nanotube ribbon, upon which loads ride. The fifth is the propulsion system, a laser.
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LiftPort Concept Anchor
An ocean anchorage.
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Ocean Platform
The ocean platform, as seen from the lifter as it crawls up a ribbon.
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Lifter in Clouds
Lifters: Robotic cargo and construction cars. |
Lifter Ascending
The Earth, as seen from the lifter.
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Cross views of the Counterweight
Rather than a captured asteroid as a counterweight, the Space Elevator will use it's own left-over construction equipment.
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More from LiftPort
Photographs of Presentation Lifters, and videos of them in action. Designed to repeatedly climb up and down the ribbon, and are also used as presentation focal points. Robotics Society of America, July 2003 (www.robotics-society.org)Photographs of Competition Lifters, and videos of them in action. Desgined for or entered into ribbon climbing competitions. Robotics Society of America July 2003 (www.robotics-society.org)
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