Public Program - The Space Elevator

The May meeting of the Lake County Astronomical Society will be Friday, May 17th at the Volo Bog Visitor’s Center. Our guest speaker will be Larry Bartoszek who was a researcher at FermiLab, designer of the Space Elevator and now president of Bartoszek Engineering. His presentation will be ‘The Space Elevator’. This talk will cover the basic concepts of the Space Elevator as conceived by Bradley Edwards and Eric Westling in their book “The Space Elevator—a revolutionary Earth-to-Space Transportation System.” Larry will also discuss concepts that have been developed by the International Space Elevator Consortium since that book was first published in 2003. Once we have a space elevator, the cost to get to orbit should plummet and the colonization of space can begin. Larry Bartoszek has done original design work on the first 900 kg construction climber for the space elevator, the 20 tonne first commercial climber, and a possible 200 tonne climber based on the 20 tonne climber technology. Climbers are electric vehicles that roll straight up the elevator ribbon and out of Earth’s atmosphere. Larry will show how the space elevator can outperform rockets in boosting payloads up to geostationary orbit and beyond.  Please note the start time will be 7 PM.

Weather permitting LCAS members using their powerful telescopes will show the night sky to guests.