The Solar Tower and the Space Elevator

By | November 2, 2005
5 Comments

Recently I’ve been reading up on Australia’s long term plan to erect a Solar Tower. Click here to see the concept video [scroll down to the "View an Artist Rendition of the Solar Tower" link].

OzTowerCompare-web.jpgThe Solar Tower website claims that this structure will be the tallest building in the world. You can tell by the picture that it won’t be a close contest. If, that is, this Solar Tower is completed before a Space Elevator.

That thought led me to this: why couldn’t the Solar Tower serve as the base of an Austrialian Space Elevator?

The planned site for this solar tower is in the remote outback of Buronga in the Wentworth Shire of New South Wales, Australia. This sort of remoteness is also a key requirement for the Space Elevator. You want it far away from normal flight paths to avoid accidental collisions. But remoteness will also help guard against intentional 9/11-style terrorist attacks.

Both the Space Elevator and the Solar Tower would work best near the equator. The Solar Tower could provide the electricity needed to power the Space Elevator laser. It could power an entire space port. There’s even the possibility of using the Solar Tower’s rising hot air directly to cut the cost of part of the lift through a hot air balloon principle, or by aiding a stirling engine.

Both the Solar Tower and the Space Elevator are big projects that will benefit the private sector but will require governmental effort. Perhaps some of the engineering expertise needed for one project could benefit the other.

Synergy all around.

  • Phil Bowermaster

    The Solar Tower looks like an enormous version of the Coit Tower in San Francisco, also kind of like a lighthouse.

    Would the cables and other infrastructure for the space elevator block some of the sunlight, or do you think that would not be much of an issue?

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    Phil:

    The Solar Tower collects solar energy in a green house that stretches out for many square miles around the tower. Energy is harvested as the heat shoots up the chimney.

    A Space Elevator would cast a looong shadow, but since it’s only 3 feet wide and paper thin, I don’t think it would noticeably affect the operation of the Solar Tower.

  • legion

    I suspect that locating a space elevator earth station in Australia would cause too much instability in the system. The base station would have to be closer to the equator than you can find within the Australian continent. From the equator to GEO and beyond. Nobody knows how much perturbation such a system would tolerate. Don’t design problems into a potentially chaotic system.

  • http://ikbot.blogspot.com ivankirigin

    I see little _reason_ to build a space elevator on top of this kind of tower.

    Firstly, you want it to be remote. I mean nothing around for a thousand miles. Also, you want stable weather. I’m not sure you’re going to get that in a desert.

    You would want to build a tower as a base of the elevator, and maybe some construction tech which doesn’t exist yet for either tower application still needs to be found.

    Also, I think these solar tower folks want to build lots of em. That would be cool.

  • http://www.geocities.com/rreilly656 DonRodrigo

    The tower itself could be used as a “half-stage” for a more conventional launch system. This would require dedicating a tower as a launcher rather than part of an energy-generating complex.

    A vertical rocket sled travelling at an accelleration rate of 6 Gs would provide about a 350-400 mph boost to a launch vehicle, saving about 15% to the weight of the vehicle that actually flies, or increasing it’s payload by a significant margin.