THE SPACE ELEVATOR
In the 2060s, the 100th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing approaches. And a grand new project is underway to connect Earth to sky. The Borneo Tower is a space elevator. It began with a satellite orbiting the Earth in 24 hours at an altitude of 36,000km. It was placed in a geosynchronous orbit, which means it hovers over the same spot on the equator, the chosen site being Borneo. Then, a cable of super-strong materials was dropped down to the surface, to be used as the basis of an elevator system, carrying goods and people from Earth to space and back again. The reduction in cost
of getting cargo into space is huge, but the engineering details are challenging. The key breakthrough was the successful development of ‘super-fullerenes’, carbon molecules that offer cables with high tensile strengths. On Mars, building such an elevator would be easier because of the planet’s lower gravity. The Olympus Elevator is already on the drawing board.
Resources from space are brought down the space elevator in increasing volumes, safely and cleanly, to help the recovery of Earth’s environment – and, eventually, the preservation of Mars’s.
Meanwhile, the development of an automated industrial civilisation in deep space continues. With self-replication and AI technologies rapidly advancing, a new generation of probes – themselves built by earlier probes – is pushing further out: to the ice giants, into the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto, and soon
even the Oort Cloud with its enigmatic Planet Nine. The flow of science results and industrial development is spectacular. But this is all happening independently of humanity.
There are now healthy democracies on the Moon and Mars, and in Lagrange and other large orbital habitats. But it has become obvious that humans have no direct role to play in space beyond the orbit of Mars, and none venture there. And indeed humanity has, gracefully, agreed with the AIs what is known as the Milligan Accord, to accept a long-term limit on the industrial development of the Solar System. The quality of judgment in the new generations of AIs is vindicated.
But many eyes look to the sky – a Starshot probe has been sent to Fomalhaut, the origin star of the alien lurker. Soon, perhaps, humanity’s relationship with the cosmos will change again.