The space elevator bubble!

Get out your checkbooks, because the window of opportunity to buy low is shrinking fast!

Since the collapse of the 1990s virtual real estate bubble, we've built a pretty impressive bubble built on real real estate. That's doomed to collapse soon too. With space on Earth and pretend space devalued, there's only one place left to go- outer space.

If, like me, you're a slavering nerd who compensated for an unhappy childhood by developing an elaborate structure of imaginary friends, locales and situations, who regresses to this escapism when presented with stressful situations or difficult choices, and who has built up a secondary series of defensive rationalizations which center on rebranding yourself as a visionary rather than as a man-child, then you've probably noticed increasing buzz over a space elevator.

Now, for those of you who don't write fan fiction based on computer games (although in my own defense, my 'After Action Report' was so awesome that I was contacted by the producer of The New Twilight Zone), here's a little about the space elevator.

A space elevator is basically a space station attached to a cable. This cable is attached to the earth. It is carefully balanced so that the centrifugal force of this huge cable balances out the gravitational pull. This cable would have to be about 62,000 miles long.

Today, hauling a satellite into orbit costs millions of dollars, the effort of a huge team of dedicated nerds, and thousands of tons of wasted metal and fuel. A space elevator could haul a satellite into orbit with about the same amount of logistical fuss that surrounds an Amtrak trip. You just put something into a container, hook it onto the cable, and send down a counterweight from the elevator station. Whoosh! After a couple of days going up the cable, your satellite is 62,000 miles up and a low-orbit craft will tow it into place.

You will be able to go to space, too. In your shirtsleeves, watching out the window as the world slowly shrinks away beneath you. If you go for the whole package, a week after you leave the ground you could be orbiting the moon. No gut-wrenching g-forces. No grueling physical training. Nothing more stressful than a two-hour course on tube-based foods and the downsides of using a vacuum toilet. (Hint: be prepared for a hickey on your puckerhole.)

The space elevator will change the world. Space tourism will no longer be the realm of ultra-rich daredevils, but rather the equivalent of today's Caribbean cruise (right down to the ass hickeys). The cost of satellite TV, radio, internet, phones, etc., will all plummet. Exploration of deep space will double, triple. Solar panels will beam down enough energy to shut down half the world's coal power plants. Someone will send up a huge array of rockets, and get unimaginably rich by hauling back an asteroid with 10,000 tons of platinum in it. Within a generation after the space elevator goes operational, we will colonize the solar system. Polluting industry can be moved off-planet. Nuclear waste can be safely chucked on the far side of the moon, and safe nuclear power will join the orbital solar plants in providing humanity with an unending supply of clean energy, as we drive hydrogen-powered cars made of space platinum and wear diamonds forged in space by the first ignition of the sun.

That, my friends, is one hell of a business plan.

There are a few things powering the building elevator buzz. First, the spectacular meltdown of the great space programs. Russia's program is basically a bankrupt amusement park. They turn on the power once every couple of years for a rich nostalgia victim. China is laughably trying to jump from the Mercury Age to the Gemini Age. NASA is tied to the ridiculous '75 model space shuttle, and the ESA... well, you probably don't even know what ESA stands for, and that's my point right there.

Second, Space Ship One. On the one hand, it's exciting. On the other hand, it's a teensy plane that can barely even carry a passenger sixty miles up. It's not exactly Battlestar Galactica. It's a promise- nothing more.

Third- there's the tiny problem of how the living shit you build a 60,000 mile-long cable. That's been kind of a sticking point. Well, a few years ago they figured out that carbon nanotubes, stronger than steel and one-tenth the weight, would let you build an excellent space elevator cable. The main problem with that is that weaving nanotube fiber is about as labor-intensive as making a traditional Persian carpet, except you don't need a PhD from MIT to weave a Persian carpet. However, machines which are just now coming on the market can mass-produce nanotube fiber. Within five years, prototype nanofiber sheets will be appearing in consumer products. TV screens and computer monitors you can roll up like a projector screen or fold up in your pocket. Windows with built-in Internet browsers. Self-heating jackets with satellite radio. And, yes, space elevator cable.

The conquest of the universe is leaving the feasibility study phase and entering prototype testing. You can see how this excites nerds. Already, startups are gestating and testing their hauler vehicle designs. People are signing contracts to build nanofiber manufacturing plants. This is happening now. This is the next great bubble. Space is the new black, people.

Here's the problem. Which (if any) of these pie-in-the-sky startups will have the money and technical savvy to complete the most audacious engineering project in human history? Will they also have the political clout and smarts to outwit a US government who will try to seize their patents in the name of national security, to outwit the corrupt regimes along the equator that will exploit their position on the prime elevator-building spots? Will they also be able to maintain security, or will terrorists manage to sever the umbilical cord between Earth and the fledgling lifeboat-less space colonies, while also sending a 60,000 mile long structure plummeting to Earth and basically destroying everything within ten miles of the equator?

And can they turn a profit doing it?

The answer to all of these questions is: bloody unlikely. But the rewards of a functioning elevator are so dizzying- as far beyond the dreams of Bill Gates as $100 billion and control of the Internet would be beyond the dreams of the doges of Venice- that inaction is impossible. The logic of the market demands that the attempt be made. The logic of the media demands that there be hysterical coverage. The logic of your 401(k) plan demands that this will be a very real part of your life soon.