Within the next few decades, space elevators? According to one expert

One aerospace engineer and physics professor claims that space elevators—yes, actual elevators that will lift humans into orbit—might not be as far off from reality as we think. His theories suggest that such a far-fetched idea might become a reality soon; in his wise words: “We’ll know we’re near when Elon Musk begins taking credit for it.”

What what is a space elevator, then? If all goes well, humanity will reach Mars by 2040, yet one of the biggest challenges to establishing a permanent extraterrestrial colony is logistics. As we practically tie people and freight to high explosives and pray that it travels in the direction we want it to, getting cargo and people into space is a time-consuming and expensive task.

Some people think that passing a pod up and down a really, extremely long cable from the Earth’s surface all the way to orbit would be a far superior solution. It would be much less risky than rockets, use less fuel, produce fewer emissions, and cost less overall. But as you may understand, there are a lot of difficulties with space elevators.

How would the rope remain taut, for starters? How might we make sure that nothing, such as bad weather or errant space debris, kills the cable? How exactly would you construct such a thing?

In a recent editorial for Scientific American, space elevator enthusiast Stephen Cohen claims to have all the solutions. Cohen thinks it would be feasible to go to the stars in an elevator after researching the practical execution of a system and publishing a master’s thesis titled “The Dynamics of a Space Elevator.”

Cohen’s strategy is as follows: a satellite travels in geosynchronous orbit around Earth at a height of around 36,000 kilometers (22,370 miles), unattached like all other satellites. The satellite uses fuel to accelerate farther from the Earth into space while it releases a cable—a very, very long cable. The cable maintains tension while being attached to the ground by using “gravitational and centrifugal processes”. Congratulations, a space elevator is now at your disposal.

Unfortunately, current technology falls short of meeting it. Cohen has chosen to overlook this need and leave the material experts to work out the rest of the problem while the cable needs to have a specified strength that is roughly 50 times that of steel.

Cohen estimates that we are likely around 10 years away from the material being produced and that we won’t be ascending to space until 2040, when we will allegedly be walking on Mars. Cohen suggests that it might not be too long after that, which is a crazy idea.

The majority of scientists are still skeptical because despite years of talk of space elevators, we are still constrained by our mortal earthly coil with no end in sight. We can only image how happy the astronauts would be if the days of fastening ourselves to rockets were to soon come to an end.