Arthur C. Clarke used to suggest that space elevators would
be built about ten to fifteen years after people stopped making fun of them.
With the development of carbon nanotubes and with renewed interest in space
travel and space tourism, the time in which space elevators was a subject of
fun has passed. If Clarke is right, therefore, we may see the first space
elevators built some time in the later part of the next decade. The only
question is, will the space elevator be built by a government, like the Apollo
program or the shuttle, or by private industry. The best guess, if good
policies are followed, is that the space elevator will be built by private
industry, but with heavy government incentives and subsidies. That’s how the
transcontinental railroad, which opened the American West, was built in the
1860s. It would be a wonderful historical irony if a “railroad” to the heavens,
which would open up the high frontier of space, could be built using the space
model.