Vern Hall, et al., (2016) reported that this study provides the International Space Elevator Consortium’s (ISEC) view of the Earth Port (formerly known as the Marine Node) of a Space Elevator system. The Earth Port:
• serves as a mechanical and dynamical termination of the space elevator tether, providing reelin/reel-out capability and position management in order to deal with tension, wind, current and debris avoidance; it may also serve as a satellite terminus platform;
• serves as a port for receiving and sending Ocean-going Vessels (OGVs); the OGVs that come and go from the Earth Port will move tether climbers, payloads, supplies and personnel;
• provides landing pads for helicopters from the OGVs;
• serves as a facility for attaching and detaching payloads to and from tether climbers and attaching and detaching climbers to and from the tether;
• provides tether climber power for the 40 km above the Floating Operations Platform (FOP);
• provides food and accommodation for crew members as well as power, desalinization, waste management and other such support.
Early in the report, the rationale for a space elevator is described. In addition, the accepted assessment of the first Earth Port location is shown to be near the equator in the Pacific. Other locations are possible. One attractive location is Howland Island, described in Appendix F. The bottom line is that the space elevator will create a transportation infrastructure that will provide revolutionary access to space routinely, inexpensively, safely, daily, and with large payloads.
Next, the Functional Requirements are presented to show a comprehensive enumeration of the various features and functions of the Earth Port. This section sets the stage for a broad spectrum of designs for future space elevators. The main focus of the report is Section 4 which offers an in-depth description of the Earth Port deriving from the requirements discussed previously. There were many aspects within this section that intrigued the team. One continuing question was how comprehensive would the
Floating Operations Platform need to become?
Section 5 poses a possible organizational structure including staffing estimates. The allocation of tasks among the people assigned to the Earth Port continually matured during the year-long study.
Section 6 describes a notional “Day in the Life” of a crew member. It is hoped that this section will provide the designers with an insight into the daily work at the Earth Port and to consider the necessary human factors analyses.
Section 7 is a recap of the Earth Port development Roadmap which developed during the 2014 year-long study.
Section 8 sets forth our conclusions and recommendations.
The contributors concluded:
1. Design and construction of the Earth Port will be a straightforward extension of today’s practices. As the Earth Port consists of many components, there will be a systems engineering design aspect that will ensure consistency between the Floating Operations Platform (FOP) and logistics flow of support and mainline mission equipment. The Earth Port has a tremendous amount of historical experience to leverage. The design of floating platforms goes back thousands of years and the ability to operate from them is mature. In addition, there are many parallel developments of operations centers that can help design the FOP and any satellite terminus. The road map, accomplished for the Earth Port in the 2014 ISEC study (Space Elevator Architecture and Roadmaps), shows that development can be accomplished in a linear manner
with current technologies.
2. Operations at the Earth Port will leverage over a hundred years of combined experience. This expertise and knowledge will come from off-shore drilling operations and naval operations around the world. The FOP will likely be a modified drilling platform to support the combined needs of securing space elevator tethers and enabling the processing of payloads through its transportation hub. Each of the major components of the Earth Port will require support from experienced personnel who have worked inside off-shore drilling platforms and transportation hubs.
3. Operation and maintenance costs appear to be reasonable. By using parallel constructs, the estimate of staffing and platform sizes has enabled this team to estimate the costs. The key here is to ensure that the operations are routine and established early in the development of our space elevator concept. Most of the processes must be straightforward to ensure that the routine movement of payloads and tether climbers is enabled in a rapid manner, supporting the needs of customers. There will be a business center at the Headquarters that is responsible for ensuring the costs are estimated correctly and then adhered to.
Recommendation: As each of the International Space Elevator Consortium’s year-long studies finishes, it is obvious that we have just initiated the discussions on the topic. As such, this team recommends that efforts continue to refine the ideas in this report to help reduce risk for future development.
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