Maybe not:

Laboratory tests have shown that individual nanotubes can withstand an average of about 100 GPa, an unusual strength that comes courtesy of their crystalline structure. But if a nanotube is missing just one carbon atom, this can reduce its strength by as much as 30%. And a bulk material made from such tubes is even weaker. Most fibres made from nanotubes have so far had a strength much lower than 1 GPa.

Recent measurements of high-quality nanotubes have found them to be missing one carbon atom out of every 1012 bonds; that’s about one defect over 4 micrometres of nanotube length1. Defects of two or more missing atoms are much more rare, but Pugno points out that on the scale of the space elevator they become statistically probable.

Using a mathematical model that he has devised himself, and which has been tested by predicting the strength of materials such as nano-crystalline diamond, Pugno calculates that large defects will unavoidably bring a cable’s strength below about 30 GPa. His paper has been posted to arXiv2, and will appear in the July edition of the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter.

Pugno adds that even if flawless nanotubes could be made for the space elevator, damage from micrometeorites and even erosion by oxygen atoms would render them weak. So can a space elevator be made? “With the technology available today? Never,” he says.

This seems like kind of an oxymoronic statement, because “never” implies the technology available any time, not just today. I would think that devices that continuously repaired redundant cables at a molecular level could solve this problem, though they’re not “technology available today.” In any event, I remain an agnostic.

Clark Lindsey has some thoughts on the myths about radiation in space. I should note that this is one of the more popular lunatic (and I use that phrase in its most pejorative sense) theories about why we never went to the moon.

The Antelope Valley Press has a self-serving editorial on spaceports. Agenda revealed in last graf:

Right now, there is a serious and dangerous shortage of viable commercial airports. It would be far better to deal with that overwhelming present-day need than to try to compete for space tourism that will become a reality through the good works of Burt Rutan and Sir Richard Branson.

It’s certainly true that there are more spaceports being planned than are justified by current demand (or constraints of locale), and it’s also true that there’s a hard regulatory road ahead for many of them, given the issues that they’ll have with general aviation (something solvable with a more rational approach by AST). But to think that only Mojave will have a spaceport, and only Burt Rutan and Richard Branson will succeed or are even making any progress is, at the least, disingenuous. This was the line that Burt took in his luncheon speech in LA a couple weeks ago, and Stu Witt (manager of Mojave Airport) said the same thing when I met with him in Mojave last week (no confidences broken here, as far as I know–he’s happy to tell the same thing to anyone who asks).

I expect Burt and Stu to say those things, and I expect the Antelope Valley Press to stenograph them, but Oklahoma has a tenant with funds, developing vehicles, and we don’t know what Jeff Bezos is going to do out in the middle of Armadillo* Scrotum, Texas, where he’s not near either populated areas or military ranges, and may in fact have an easier time getting a site license than some of the more “conventional” choices. In any event, such editorials are to be taken with the prescribed amount of sodium chloride.

[* Update: Sorry, no slight to these guys intended]

Robin Snelson is. Enough to have started a blog about it.

Maybe.

What I found interesting was this, though:

The FAA also is considering two proposed spaceports in Texas, including a private spaceport on 165,000 acres of desolate ranch land about 120 miles east of El Paso bought by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Bezos had said his space tourism firm, Blue Origin, would first build basic structures, then begin flight tests in six to seven years.

Six to seven years? I thought that they wanted to do suborbital tourism, at least initially. Why would it take six to seven years, given that they’ve been working on it for a number of years already? It makes me wonder how serious Mr. Bezos is about this business, because that would put him way behind the competition (though perhaps he thinks that his design will be so superior that it won’t matter).

One of the dangers of having too much money is that you’re sometimes willing to spend it with no expectations of getting it back, so it’s treated more as a hobby. John Carmack has noted this explicitly in the past with respect to Armadillo (though he may be evolving it into a business), but is Blue Origin similar?

Over at today’s issue of The Space Review, Robin Snelson writes about NASA’s latest (and very interesting) Centennial Challenge, to demonstrate lunar landing technology. Also Jeff Foust writes about Elon Musk and SpaceX’s status, and there’s an interview with Newt Gingrich, on space prizes, private enterprise, and NASA.

[Update a few minutes later]

I just got around to reading the Gingrich interview myself, and clearly, under a (hypothetical, and unlikely) Gingrich administration, space policy would look much different:

I am for a dramatic increase in our efforts to reach out into space, but I am for doing virtually all of it outside of NASA through prizes and tax incentives. NASA is an aging, unimaginative, bureaucracy committed to over-engineering and risk-avoidance which is actually diverting resources from the achievements we need and stifling the entrepreneurial and risk-taking spirit necessary to lead in space exploration.

And he’s just warming up. I’m sure that Mark Whittington will now attack Newt as an “Internet rocketeer.”

[Update at 1 PM PDT]

I had been unaware of the schedule controversy described in the comments. It would be interesting to see a response from Ken Davidian or Brant Sponberg.

If XCOR achieves the turnaround time in the Economist article on suborbital adventure travel that Rand spotted of 4 flights per day, that puts them with higher capacity per plane per day than Rocketplane’s 3. (Full disclosure: I have business dealings with both firms.) Assuming that their two-seater does not take more people than Rocketplane’s to service, that should give them a revenue advantage in a Boom town scenario and a cost advantage in the Dullsville scenario. If Xerus indeed costs only about $10 million to develop vs. more than $40 million for Rocketplane (according to Chuck Lauer at ISDC), then they will have lower implicit interest costs too. Number of lifetime flights and flights per major overhaul are interesting questions that will also factor in. Since neither plane has flown, a 33% difference in servicing time per passenger is quite speculative at this point, but interesting.

This cost/revenue disadvantage per plane won’t be a problem for Rocketplane if it can fly 100 flights of 3 passengers in their first year and earn $60 million before any of the competitors can bring their planes on line (although Carmack is optimistic he will start flying next year according to what he told me at Space Access).

In a boom town scenario, RLI, Virgin, Armadillo, Blue, Masten, SpaceDev, XCOR and probably a few new players will all build more craft than they were originally anticipating. This will result in lots of business for the low cost/high value player, but probably several bankruptcies or mergers eventually.

The Economist has a good roundup of what’s going on in the private spaceflight business. They’re pretty optimistic (appropriately, in my opinion).

at the Texas Space Authority organizational meeting tomorrow in Austin. I am too. Email me at dinkin@space-shot.com or comment if you think we can do something for you from a business angle or want to see my slides.

— Update —

Buzz continues to promote Starcraft Boosters and his plan for many space adventurer orbiters on the same launcher. He asserts that orbital is “so hard that only 3 governments have done it”. That was also true of people to 100 km before Rutan won the Ansari X Prize. Number of governments that can go to 100 km without losing money=0. Number of governments that have a reusable craft that can fly again in less than a week to 100 km=0. He views suborbital as a dead end. He is still promoting lotteries to fund spaceflight. I asked him to join forces once skill games can finance orbital flights and he agreed.

I bet Buzz $20 that orbital craft would emerge without government funding.

Alan Boyle reports at MSNBC.com that “several” vendors are in negotiations for $500 million in commercial orbital transport service (with the same acronym as commercial off the shelf):

Oklahoma-based Rocketplane Kistler and California-based Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, acknowledged that they were finalists. Other sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the official NASA reticence, indicated that the Virginia-based t/Space consortium, California-based SpaceDev, Texas-based Spacehab and Andrews Space in Seattle were also on the list.

Before being bought by George French, owner of Rocketplane (whose flights I am offering as a prize at Space-Shot.com), Kistler had an agreement with NASA which was unawarded after an objection from SpaceX. In this competition, there are many strong companies and the winner may have a march on orbital adventure travel competition. I hope the winner chooses a fixed price agreement so it will maintain the discipline to compete in the private markets too.