Building a Space Elevator: Is It Really Possible?

Since we humans started to build and construct places to live, pray, and work in, an ongoing obsession of society is building the tallest physical structure on planet Earth. From the pyramids of Egypt, various places of worship, to the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building, the desire to build taller and taller marvels is a definite driving force in the architectural and engineering world.

While the current tallest structure, the Burj Khalifa, standing at 829.80 meters with the antenna, has been unbeaten since the year 2009, this may be surpassed in the near future by the Jeddah Tower, which is set to be the first 1 kilometer high structure in the world. Logically, this competition for the tallest thing to be built will keep on going, and it has already been announced that Dubai may try to build the structure that will defeat all competition: a skyscraper hanging from the sky. Known as the Analemma Tower by Clouds Architecture Office, it is touted to be a skyscraper hanging (or tethered, to be more precise) via cables to an asteroid (called a mass anchor) that will be located in orbit. If (and this is a giant IF) this building is built, it will defeat all height records for the tallest structure since it will have a total building height (skyscraper and asteroid) of somewhere above 50,000 kilometers with it mass anchor and an orbital station at 35,700 kilometers (geosynchronous orbit) for space-based activities.

As a physical structure, the Space Elevator will have a central cable system where a vehicle can “climb” out of the atmosphere and reach outer space instead of the current ways we get to it (i.e. chemical propulsion rockets). What this does is to make access to space cheaper and inexpensive, making industry, commerce, tourism, and colonization of outer space feasible.

Obviously, this idea of a floating building in the sky is in the most conceptual of stages of design and engineering—but the idea itself is pretty old. You see, the analemma tower is a variation of the idea of a Space Elevator—the holy grail of space infrastructure projects. Various scientists and science fiction authors have been writing and studying the concept since the 1890s. Arthur C. Clarke even wrote a novel based on the idea called The Fountains of Paradise detailing the challenges and promise of the Space Elevator to creating a space-based infrastructure to begin the development of the Solar System. Other examples include the search for a Martian Space Elevator in The Long Earth Series of Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter and the space elevators that are connected to an orbital ring habitat around Earth in Peter F. Hamilton’s The Night’s Dawn Trilogy.

Now, the engineering problems of the Space Elevator has been thoroughly explored by others like Real Engineering and, in terms of physics, the idea is not a physical impossibility to build—the real “show stoppers” at the moment are its challenges to architecture, construction, and infrastructure.

To build a Space Elevator, you will need a city of this scale to be thriving around it.

Architecture. In the design world, a space elevator would present an unprecedented challenge to the architectural and engineering team that will be tasked with preparing the construction documents of the Space Elevator. The first issue will be that the Space Elevator is unique—the literal first structure of its kind to be designed by humanity for this task. The Space Elevator will be a combination of various building types—the structure will function much like an airport, train station, cargo terminal, and space station rolled into one functional whole. Aside from the Space Elevator itself, all the support buildings around it will need to be designed: residential spaces, administrative areas, recreational places, and so on will be built around it.

Designing a Space Elevator necessitates a master plan of a whole new city—in essence, it will be like a planned unit development scaled up to an extensive level. Urban Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Master Planning will all need to be included in the design process. The safety factors that need to be included in the architectural plans as well will be a major addition to any design of the Space Elevator. Expansion plans around the space elevator will also need to be considered since demand for the use of the space elevator will inevitably increase as it operates over time.

In extremely simplistic terms, the Space Elevator will be divided into four Parts: The Base Station (on Earth), the Tether System (the cable that connects the Base Station to outer space), the Orbital Station (at Geosynchronous Orbit), and the Mass Anchor (The Asteroid that will keep the whole system stable). Architecturally, the Base Station, Orbital Station, and Mass Anchor will need to have new design concepts and ideas to be researched and iterated to do this properly. Considering all these challenges, it would not surprise me if the design phase alone took years to complete—and will be continued as the construction progresses and new challenges arise during the building of the space elevator. A graphic of the space elevator can be found here.

Construction. The scale of the Space Elevator and, again, the uniqueness of the project will be major challenges to any construction consortium that will be tasked to build this project. Manpower, construction equipment, and building materials will need to be moved to the construction site at such scales that only the largest megaprojects that have been done can present glimpses on how the Space Elevator can be constructed. (The Line comes to mind, and they are already having delays and reductions in the scope of work, and this is a project that is already stretching the limits of construction.)

The sheer volume of materials needed to build this will probably stretch supply lines to the limit (if not outright break them), and that is only with the construction materials we know what do with. A Space Elevator, especially the tether system, will use new materials to construct (assuming we ever are able to create something; the closest right now is graphene but the general problem is shaping the material and producing it in enough quantities to matter) and having new construction materials and methods will slow down any construction project.

Another important consideration of a space elevator is that it needs to be located in the equator of the Earth. This limits the location of the Space Elevator to Africa (Gabon, The Congo, Uganda, Kenya, and Somalia), South America (Ecuador, Columbia, and Brazil), and Southeast Asia (Indonesia). Wherever the location of the Space Elevator will be with these countries, the construction of the Space Elevator needs to begin with the construction of the city around it that will be supporting the construction and operations of the Space Elevator. After this city is done, that is only when the work for the Space Elevator itself will begin. Incredibly, we are just talking about the Base Station, the portion being built on Earth—the other segments like the Tether System, Orbital Station, and Mass Anchor are all space-based construction, and this is the next challenge for the Space Elevator.

Infrastructure. This is a major challenge for the space elevator, our current logistics and industrial base to construct the space elevator. Already as mentioned above, the construction of the ground-based systems of the Space Elevator is already at the limits of what we can do now—and will stretch and break current infrastructure systems on Earth—and this is with stuff we know! When it comes to Space-based infrastructure, we are in literal baby steps—the biggest structure we have built is the International Space Station, and that is at near earth orbit. While SpaceX is already testing out the Starship to allow us to carry larger amounts of materials in to space—it is still nowhere near the capacity needed to build anything in the magnitude of the Space Elevator once it becomes fully operational. Also, much like the construction of the Base Station, a literal space-based infrastructure (and cities) needs to be constructed in space before one can contemplate building the Space Elevator.

Over-all, designing and building a Space Elevator at this point will be a multi-decade project of the century if anyone will even try to do this—unless we have a massive technological leap in the near future, the space elevator will for now stay as a dream.

If you want to read more about my experiences in Science Fiction, you can check out my article on how architecture and science fiction are linked to each other.