On a visit to NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston last week, President Trump promised American astronauts would establish a permanent presence on the Moon before pushing forward to Mars.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur nation will conquer \u2026 this vast frontier that we have before us \u2026 We will explore it, we will tame it, and we will win it,\u201d he said<\/a> of America\u2019s present \u201cgolden age\u201d of space exploration.<\/p>\n But researchers thinking of truly big ideas say we\u2019ll never get there with today\u2019s inefficient chemical rocket technology. And they point to an important breakthrough.<\/p>\n An AI illustration depicts what a space elevator made with polycrystalline graphene to transport cargo, then possibly humans, into space may look like.<\/p>\n An AI illustration shows what a space elevator earthport, anchored along the equator in the ocean, may look like. AI illustration by Jesaca Lin \/ NY Post<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re really pushing for permanent infrastructure, like a bridge replacing ferries to cross a river,\u201d Pete Swan, president of the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC), a nonprofit research and advocacy hub, told The Post.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a simple yet mind-bending concept: an ultra-strong electrified cable running from a point on the ground at Earth\u2019s equator, extended out beyond geostationary orbit (GEO), where a counterweight will float in space keeping it taut. Vessels then climb the cable to deliver goods, people and machines, passing through the atmosphere and into space.<\/p>\n \u201cThe beauty is that raising it with electricity saves our atmosphere from pollution, it doesn\u2019t leave any debris along the way and it will be routine, daily, inexpensive, safe. It\u2019s gonna be a bridge to space.\u201d<\/p>\n Crazy as it sounds, the engineering checks out, according to researchers who spoke to The Post.<\/p>\n A graphic showing how a space elevator bringing materials out of the earth\u2019s atmosphere could look. Donald Pearsall \/ NY Post Design<\/p>\n Space elevators positioned in three oceans around the equator could provide steady, constant traffic to space. Donald Pearsall \/ NY Post Design<\/p>\n However, the bottleneck to the space elevator idea has always been the tether material, because it must be scalable, 100 times stronger than steel, exceptionally lightweight and capable of efficient spooling in order to get the whole thing in place.<\/p>\n Next month, the ISEC is set to announce they have their most promising candidate yet\u2014a two-dimensional material called polycrystalline graphene<\/a>, already widely used in the consumer electronics industry.<\/p>\n Graphene is basically just one unbroken crystal of ordinary pencil lead atoms, long thought to be an ideal candidate for such a project, the researchers said. Polycrystalline refers to a patchwork process that makes the molecule more scalable.<\/p>\n International Space Elevator Consortium President Dr. Peter Swan (right) said: \u201cWe\u2019re really pushing for permanent infrastructure, like a bridge replacing ferries to cross a river.\u201d spaceelevatorblog.com<\/p>\n \u201cThe beauty is that, raising it with electricity saves our atmosphere from pollution, it doesn\u2019t leave any debris along the way and it will be routine, daily, inexpensive, safe. It\u2019s gonna be a bridge to space,\u201d researcher and advocate Peter Swan said. isec.org<\/p>\n \u201cIt looks like we found the material,\u201d said Swan. \u201cWe\u2019re a heck of a lot further along than we were six months ago. Technology doesn\u2019t go on a linear line, it grows.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery once in a while, somebody makes a discovery and all of a sudden the capabilities go from linear to really huge jumps in capability. That\u2019s what\u2019s happening in our tether material arena.<\/p>\n \u201c[Polycrystalline graphene] is so flippin\u2019 strong. They\u2019re taking it and making it into bulletproof vests, one layer can stop a .38 bullet from a pistol.\u201d<\/p>\n Stargazers have dreamed up ladders to space for well over a century with the idea popularized by famed British sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke<\/a> in his 1979 novel \u201cThe Fountains of Paradise,\u201d where the mega structures he envisioned were called \u201corbital towers.\u201d<\/p>\n Arthur C Clark\u2019s 1979 \u201cFountains of Paradise\u201d popularized the idea of space elevators, which he called \u201corbital towers.\u201d <\/p>\n A diagram shows the structure of polycrystalline graphene. derived from ordinary pencil lead, some researchers envision stacks of a 66,000 mile long graphene molecule acting as a space elevator tether. ResearchGate\/Creative Commons<\/p>\n Clarke \u2014 author of \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey\u201d \u2014 put in the effort to finely detail the real world engineering such a feat would require and famously remarked that a space elevator would be built \u201cabout fifty years after everybody stops laughing.\u201d<\/p>\n Swan likes to remind naysayers that in 1969, following the moon landing, the New York Times issued a formal apology for a decades-old editorial that mocked an engineer who suggested rockets would one day take men to the moon.<\/p>\n Each strand of tether would actually be a single molecule\u2014one atom thick, one meter wide and 100,000 kilometers (62,000 miles) long\u2014stretching from an \u201cEarthport\u201d on the surface, which will have to be located at the equator, up to an \u201capex anchor\u201d spaceport well beyond GEO.<\/p>\n Earthset is captured through the Orion spacecraft window during the Artemis II crew\u2019s flyby of the Moon on Monday, April 6, 2026. NASA via Getty Images<\/p>\n A 3D model of the planet Mars, on which President Trump wants to one day see American boots. Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n A single tether, or leg, is 20,000 stacked sheets of this molecule, as the ISEC sees it. The colossal cable would be nearly invisible, said Swan, but reflective, like a mirror, with ground-based spectators catching an occasional thin, long glint of reflected sunlight slicing down from heaven.<\/p>\n The ISEC report notes engineers in South Korea have managed to manufacture a 1,000-meter long, half-meter wide polycrystalline graphene molecule, which can be produced at a rate of about two meters per minute.<\/p>\n Damage to the tether from space junk whizzing around<\/a> low Earth orbit remains a top concern, said Swan, which is why he proposes something like five tethers per elevator, for backups and other uses, as well as a no-fly zone for satellites around it.<\/p>\n A SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket carrying the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope onboard blasts off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Aug. 31. ZUMAPRESS.com<\/p>\n The plan is for cargo vessels, called climbers, to crawl skyward using the tether until they reach GEO, which occurs at 22,000 miles above Earth. The journey to the top would take about two weeks, said Swan.<\/p>\n After GEO\u2014the gravitational sweet spot where Earth\u2019s gravity equals the exact inward force needed to match Earth\u2019s rotation\u2014climbers no longer need electricity for propulsion. The centrifugal force of the rotating Earth takes over, hurling cargo along the remaining 40,000 miles of tether before flinging it out into space at 16,000 miles an hour\u2014 4.4 miles a second\u2014according to ISEC\u2019s calculations.<\/p>\n That means materiel could be sent from the top of the tether to the moon in as little as 14 hours, a journey that presently takes three days from earth.<\/p>\n Trips to Mars<\/a> could be cut down to just 61 to 120 days, depending on the planetary positions at launch time, said Swan. The fastest route to the Red Planet takes seven months today, with a launch window which only happens every 26 months.<\/p>\n Dr. Armen V. Papazian, space economics professor at American University in Dubai, told The Post \u201c[Investors] are looking for a return. They want a risk adjusted return, and they want to make it hopefully while they\u2019re still alive.\u201d REUTERS<\/p>\n \u201cYou could have daily launches to Mars,\u201d claimed Swan.<\/p>\n However, a functioning space elevator, is still a long way off.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a sure thing,\u201d pointed out space economics professor Armen Papazian, at the American University in Dubai.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if one were to start building a space elevator tomorrow,\u00a0assuming they find the risk capital to do so, it will take a decade or two to complete, assuming everything goes smoothly.\u201d<\/p>\n From Moon villages to Martian cities to asteroid mining, space enthusiasts have long felt rockets are never going to fully cut it.<\/p>\n An artist\u2019s concept obtained from the NASA website on Sept. 26, 2000, shows a space elevator. The structure is envisioned to extend from the Earth\u2019s surface to a geo-stationary Earth orbit as part of a 21st-century mass transportation system. NASA\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n An artist\u2019s rendering of a proposed Moon hotel. GRU Space<\/p>\n The \u201ctyranny\u201d of the rocket equation<\/a>, as one NASA researcher put it in a 2012 paper, is that in order to reach the speed needed to escape Earth\u2019s gravity, rockets must be 85\u201395 percent propellant. Cargo is typically just 2\u20134 percent of liftoff mass.<\/p>\n The ISEC has put forth a cheeky $15 billion price tag to build the world\u2019s first fully robotic space elevator. They say it would be a steal, if feasible. The recent Artemis launch<\/a> that sent humans back to the moon for the first time since 1972 clocked in at $4 billion. But the entire ongoing, multi-decade Artemis program is expected to cost over $200 billion by 2030<\/a>, according to the NASA Office of Inspector General.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe the first ten years of the space elevator will be a logistics mission, just moving stuff up. Once we get past that and the moon starts getting its settlements and Mars needs more, we\u2019ll start having two-way, bringing stuff down. After 15 or 20 years we could do people.\u201d<\/p>\n The nonprofit claims a space elevator will be able to deliver 30,000 metric tons of cargo into space per year from the get-go. That would be a staggering annual haul, more than the combined weight of every object ever sent into space since 1957. However, it remains a hard sell to most.<\/p>\n