An Elevator to Space
But the student working group Astronautics Dresden has very earthly problems
Konrad Kästner
Traveling to space in an elevator – that would be a safer and more environmentally friendly alternative to expensive rocket flights and maybe the prelude to space tourism for the masses. Behind the idea absent of rocket boosters lies a – still hypothetical – means of transport to space along a cable stretched between a base station at the equator and a space station beyond geostationary orbit at an altitude of 35,786 km. The competing forces of gravity, which is stronger on the Earth, and centrifugal force, which is stronger in space, would keep the cable taut. An internally or externally driven elevator would lift a payload or transport it in both directions.
Multiple students at the TU Dresden have been tinkering with the challenge of designing the carriage for a space elevator and building a prototype since the start of the year. The working group they have since founded, Studentische Arbeitsgruppe Raumfahrt Dresden [Student Working Group for Astronautics Dresden], or STAR Dresden for short, then entered the European Space Elevator Challenge in Munich and won the Teamspirit Award, which was presented for the first time. The Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Freunde und Förderer der Fakultät Maschinenwesen [Friends and Supporters of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering] and the Institute of Aerospace Engineering at TU Dresden provided support for the competition.
The idea for the group grew in 2017 during work on an application for REXUS – Rocket EXperiments for University Students, offered by a student experimentation platform of the German Aerospace Center [Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)] and the Swedish National Space Agency. “We wanted to continue to participate in competitions like this without having to start over every time with issues such as workshop, tools, contacts or group structure,” explain Rico Nerger and Elias Ortlieb, Mechanical Engineering students in their 5th semester and co-founders of STAR Dresden. Speaking of workshops, “We are urgently looking for a room of about 20 m2 with a bit of space in front of it and power outlets,” says Ortlieb. “And we are looking for space enthusiasts who want to live out their interest in the topic, whether that be theoretical, practical, organizational or in any other form – you don’t need to have experience in STEM to join us!”
For more information, visit: https://star-dresden.de
This article was published in the Dresdner Universitätsjournal, issue 17/2018 on October 30, 2018. You can download the whole newspaper as a PDF file for free here. Please contact doreen.liesch@tu-dresden.de to order the Universitätsjournal as a printed newpaper or as a PDF file. For more information, please visit: universitaetsjournal.de.