Lunar Space Elevator - History

History

The idea of space elevators has been around since 1960 when Yuri Artsutanov wrote a Sunday supplement to Pravda on how to build such a structure and the utility of geosynchronous orbit. His article however, was not known in the West. Then in 1966, John Isaacs, a leader of a group of American Oceanographers at Scripps Institute, published an article in Science about the concept of using thin wires hanging from a geostationary satellite. In that concept, the wires were to be thin (thin wires/tethers are now understood to be more susceptible to micrometeoroid damage). Like Artsutanov, Isaacs’ article also wasn’t well known to the aerospace community.

In 1972, James Cline submitted a paper to NASA describing a lunar elevator concept. NASA responded negatively to the idea citing technical risk and lack of funds.

In 1975, Jerome Pearson independently came up with the Space elevator concept and published it in Acta Astronautica. That made the aerospace community at large aware of the space elevator for the first time. His article inspired Sir Arthur Clarke to write the novel The Fountains of Paradise. Later, Pearson extended his theory to the moon and changed to using the Lagrangian points instead of having it in geostationary orbit.
In October 2011 on the LiftPort website Laine announced that LiftPort is pursuing a Lunar space elevator as an interim goal before attempting a terrestrial elevator. At the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG), LiftPort CTO Marshall Eubanks presented a paper on the prototype Lunar Elevator co-authored by Michael Laine.