NEWS: Russian Professor Says NASA Stole Space Elevator Concept From Soviet Scientist

The Russian professor states that a Russian scientist wrote a book in the 1920's that originally had a chapter on the invention and application of the space elevator. The chapter was removed by the writer because he felt that the world might use it for nefarious purposes. There were three copies printed with the included chapter, and in a large conspiracy web, the professor claims that NASA ended up with one of the copies, and stole the idea.



NASA has been considering the idea of a space elevator for several years. While I do not believe the technology would be immediately used to do harm, it is interesting that a Russian professor is publicly claiming that the NASA stole documents from a Russian scientist.

This probably is a biased story, since it is coming from a Moscow news organization. I am interested to see if any more information comes out about this.

The links below are some other ATS threads about the space elevator.


Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Carbon nanotubes and space elevators
Tokyo's Sky City

Actually the most likely source for the Space Elevator concept came from the Sci-Fi novel series 2001 by Arthur C. Clark. The russians should read up before they run their mouth. If you cannot even get into the upper atmosphere yet how can you fathom making an elevator to it?

True, Arthur C. Clark populized the idea of the Space Elevator but in his book, he acknowledge Knostantin Tsiolkovsky as origionating the idea ove 100 years earlier

Smitherman's paper credits Arthur C. Clarke with introducing the concept to a broader audience. In his 1978 novel, Fountains of Paradise, engineers construct a space elevator on top of a mountain peak in the mythical island of Taprobane (closely based on Sri Lanka, the country where Clarke now resides). The builders use advanced materials such as the carbon nanofibers now in laboratory study. "His book brought the idea to the general public through the science fiction community," said Smitherman. But Clarke wasn't the first. As early as 1895, a Russian scientist named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky suggested a fanciful "Celestial Castle" in geosynchronous Earth orbit attached to a tower on the ground, not unlike Paris's Eiffel tower. Another Russian, a Leningrad engineer by the name of Yuri Artsutanov, wrote some of the first modern ideas about space elevators in 1960. Published as a non-technical story in Pravda, his story never caught the attention of the West. Science magazine ran a short article in 1966 by John Isaacs, an American oceanographer, about a pair of whisker-thin wires extending to a geostationary satellite. The article ran basically unnoticed. The concept finally came to the attention of the space flight engineering community through a technical paper written in 1975 by Jerome Pearson of the Air Force Research Laboratory. This paper was the inspiration for Clarke's novel.

Science@Nas
a

Note this was written back in 2000 which is also the year that Nasa actually started to think that the Space Tower was something that could be done.
I do not understand why the Russians are saying this as it has never been a hidden fact.

Whether the idea was "stolen" or not, it's a stupid idea anyway. Yea, it looks cool, but so what.

Right, why ould you want an elevator say, up to the moon? Much better to focus on makeing ships cheaper.

Oh well...the Russians should be used to this by now....you know if the U.S will steal ideas from Its own citizens.....then they have little concern about the Russians.....oh and btw...what about those Levis..and piirate music liscense's the Russians are profiteering from.....I guess it all evens out! Thats Kharma!

[edit on 13-4-2005 by cafeman]

Isn't the Tower of Babylon the first mention of this?

Zip

I'm pretty sure that the space elevators are fairly old concepts, at least in science fiction. I've always viewed them with some skepticism.

the idea is not as stupid as you would think. Imagine the revolutionary gains in space that the world could accomplish. Less cost for shuttles, more focus on research, no more reentry disasters and even another possibility: Space trash disposal. Using the space elevator, containers of human waste (nonbiological) would be lifted to space and the "Garabage" barges would be propelled to the sun and disintegrate. No waste, save the environment, cheap costs.

I've always been a gerat fan of the space lift. There are some real problems with the design and all, but it would be 100 better than polluting the atmosphere with the rocket-based traffic, really, and probably pay for itself many times over. I read the main danger is the snapping cable that would cut literally across continents.

Is it such a good idea to send all those resources into the sun? What we need is a better worldwide recycling program. We shouldn't ditch any minerals offworld that can be reused in any fashion.

Damn, though. The future is now, eh!

Zip

The link below is an older article on an upstart private company that is working on building a space elevator. They don’t seem to be too far into the design phase, and many of the issues only have theoretical answers. The work on carbon nanotubes seems to be coming along nicely, but their costs seem to be a real issue.

Space.com

"The team is good and dedicated. They are covering all the major technical issues, said Robert Cassanova, Director of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts in Atlanta, Georgia. "It boils down to having materials available for the filament to go into space. There are going to be challenges. There are going to be surprises. It's going to take a lot of very good, very careful engineering design and development," he told SPACE.com.

Going back to the subject of the news article, I wonder why the Russian professor is claiming that NASA stole the idea from the scientist. Why would it matter? The idea or concept has been around for over a hundred years, but it wasn’t technically possible then, and it probably still isn’t possible.

I did think the big conspiracy about NASA’s thievery was pretty interesting, none the less.



[edit on 4/14/05 by NoPhobos]

reply to post by Zipdot


I had the same thought :]

reply to post by CAConrad0825


While it might cut back on shuttle cost wouldn't they be even more frailer than the shuttles. What would it be made out of anyway?

Plus there is a bunch of things flying around space, wouldn't it get impacted and possibly break at some point in time. It's a cool sci fi object but I don't really ever see it being used in the real world..