Russian Professor Says NASA Stole Space Elevator Concept From Soviet Scientist

Jim Oberg comments: This story seems somewhat hysterical, and
unintentionally a little ironic,

in that "Yuri Kondratyuk" was an assumed name anyway (for good reasons, as I
understand it).

But the real guy deserves real respect for his works, which included (I'm
told) the first-ever

discussion of using lunar-orbit rendezvous for a human moon landing mission
(I sure would like

to see any drawings he ever made showing this strategy, to include them in a
place of honor in

my 'History of Orbital Rendezvous' binder -- but so far, nobody seems to
know of any drawing).



Russian Professor Says NASA Stole Space Elevator Concept From Soviet
Scientist


http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/04/13/sibir.shtml

MosNews -- Created: 13.04.2005 14:04 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:59 MSK

A Russian professor has accused the U-S of stealing ideas for a "space
elevator" from a famous Russian engineer. Addressing a scientific conference
in Khanty-Mansiisk, Novosibirk professor Yuri Vedernikov accused the U-S of
stealing the ideas of the famous Russian engineer Yuri Kondratyuk.

Khanty-Mansiisk is currently the venue of an international conference on
the latest achievements in geophysics and remote probing of the Earth held
under the auspices of the Yugorsky Scientific Research Institute for
Information Technologies.

Scientists Yuri Vedernikov and Yevgeny Nikolnikov of the Institute of
Calculus Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics addressed the conference
with a paper entitled "The space elevator by Yuri Kondratyuk for
geostationary man-made satellites for natural resources studies."

In comments for Russian Information Agency Sibir, Vedernikov said that
the idea of a space elevator was first proposed by Yuri Kondratyuk in the
1920s, but he intentionally omitted the chapter on the invention from his
book "Exploration of Interplanetary Space", published in Novosibirsk in
1929, as he believed it was too early to make the project public as it could
end up "in the hands of the untrustworthy, including the military".

Nonetheless, later Kondratyuk included the chapter in the so-called
"final manuscript" printed in three copies. In 1938 the manuscript was lost.

According to some reports, Vedernikov claims, one of the copies of the
final manuscript was obtained by the Soviet KGB, another could have fallen
into the hands of NASA. The Novosibirsk professor believes that a copy could
also have been handed over to German rocket scientist Werner von Braun who
moved to the U.S. in 1945 where he soon became the chief ideologist of the
U.S. space program. Vedernikov claimed that NASA used Kondratyuk's ideas to
launch the project for building a "space elevator".

A space elevator, as Kondratyuk saw it, is a geostationary man-made
satellite put into space by a rocket where it is positioned over the equator
at a height of 30-95,000 kilometers. Then the satellite releases a thin
cable along which an observing receiver slides up and down. The receiver is
equipped with devices enabling it to monitor the environment, predict
earthquakes, etc.

NASA announced its plans to build a space elevator several years ago. In
2002 U.S. scientists said they were working on turning a science fiction
concept that first appeared in Arthur C. Clarke's book "The Fountains of
Paradise" over 20 years ago.

NASA began considering the concept in June 1999 at the Advanced Space
Infrastructure Workshop on "Geostationary Orbiting Tether 'Space Elevator'
Concepts" held at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
It brought together several dozen experts from NASA and private industry,
G4TV.com Web-site reported.

In theory, the space elevator consists of a thin cable placed by the
Space Shuttle into low Earth orbit (200 to 300 miles above Earth), and then
raised to a stationary, geosynchronous orbit about 22,000 miles up. The
cable is then lowered down to the Earth's surface and anchored to a mobile
ocean-going platform in the Pacific Ocean along the equator, several
thousand miles off the coast of Ecuador -- an area chosen for its lack of
hurricanes and ship traffic.

The cable is as thin as paper, but not as fragile. In fact, it has the
same strength as diamonds, and consists of the same base element, carbon
nanotubes.

The concept was first described in 1895 by Russian author K.E.
Tsiolkovsky in his "Speculations about Earth and Sky and on Vesta."

On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 20:39:57 GMT, "Jim Oberg"
wrote:

MosNews -- Created: 13.04.2005 14:04 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:59 MSK

A Russian professor has accused the U-S of stealing ideas for a "space
elevator" from a famous Russian engineer. Addressing a scientific conference
in Khanty-Mansiisk, Novosibirk professor Yuri Vedernikov accused the U-S of
stealing the ideas of the famous Russian engineer Yuri Kondratyuk.

"Coming up next: A decendant of Cyrano De Bergerac accuses NASA of
having stolen his ancestor's idea for a multi-stage rocket to the
Moon. This, and the latest egotistical blatherings from Rand Simberg,
on Fox News..."

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 20:39:57 GMT, "Jim Oberg"
wrote:

Jim Oberg comments: This story seems somewhat hysterical, and
unintentionally a little ironic,




Russian Professor Says NASA Stole Space Elevator Concept From Soviet
Scientist


Yea, but NASA added an improvement, because his elevator didn't go to
the top floor.


Rusty

In message
"Jim Oberg" wrote:

NASA announced its plans to build a space elevator several years ago. In
2002 U.S. scientists said they were working on turning a science fiction
concept that first appeared in Arthur C. Clarke's book "The Fountains of
Paradise" over 20 years ago.

This would be the same Arthur C Clarke who credits Y N Artsutanov of
Leningrad with developing the idea in 1960 in notes at the end of that
book?

Anthony

In message , Anthony Frost
writes
In message
"Jim Oberg" wrote:

NASA announced its plans to build a space elevator several years ago. In
2002 U.S. scientists said they were working on turning a science fiction
concept that first appeared in Arthur C. Clarke's book "The Fountains of
Paradise" over 20 years ago.

This would be the same Arthur C Clarke who credits Y N Artsutanov of
Leningrad with developing the idea in 1960 in notes at the end of that
book?

And the same one who contributed an afterword to Charles Sheffield's
novel "The Web between the Worlds". Interesting to see that Tsiolkovsky
wrote about the idea. Did Goddard?
--
Remove spam and invalid from address to reply.

Jonathan Silverlight
wrote:

Interesting to see that Tsiolkovsky
wrote about the idea.

Goddard: definitely not.

Confusion abounds on this. Tsiolkovsky 1895 drew attention to the
existence of geostationary orbit (and its counterparts for the Sun and
other planets). If anyone had ever done that before, it's escaped my
research. He spends a page on an imaginary tower to GEO to show how
the felt effect of gravity would decrease to zero there (and
centrifugal force would take over beyond). But "There is no need to
speak of the possibility of such towers existing on planets..." He's
clearly aware a compression structure that big would be impossible.
IOW, a pure _gedanken_ experiment, no calculations or even
back-of-the-envelope engineering.

John McCarthy kicked the idea around in the 1950s (and started
thinking about rotavators and other more general momentum-transfer
tethers) but didn't publish. Until now, the next published milepost in
the idea has seemed to be Yuri Artsutanov in 1957-60: he took the
crucial step to a much lighter *tension* structure, deployed up and
down from GEO, and a lot of other insights. It always struck me as odd
that his 1960 pop-science-for-kids article made no mention of
Tsiolkovsky, revered as the USSR's great space visionary.

Then you get Isaacs et al (unaware of predecessors) in 1966, which
brought a letter from Moscow citing both Tsiolkovsky and Artsutanov;
then Jerome Pearson (unaware of predecessors) in 1975.

So while I'd love to know more about the Kondratyuk version,
Vedernikov's charge is wild:

(1) Of course, NASA has not "announced its plans to build a space
elevator."

(2) NASA publications and just about everyone else always cite
Tsiolkovsky and Artsutanov, so nobody's trying to steal Russian glory.
This reappearance of Soviet-style "we thought of it first" (cf.
American-style "Nazis stole Goddard's ideas") is bizarre...

(3) Instead of Da Vinci Code speculation about what copies fell into
the hands of what WWII-vintage great powers, how about producing the
Kondratyuk text?

Monte Davis wrote:


Goddard: definitely not.



Although he did have that idea for a spaceplane driven by ion motors
powered by solar cells (something solar-related anyway, I forget the
specifics) that would spiral higher and higher in the Earth's atmosphere
increasing in speed till it reached Earth orbit.
Which is pretty futuristic by any standards.

Pat

In message , Pat Flannery
writes


Monte Davis wrote:


Goddard: definitely not.


Although he did have that idea for a spaceplane driven by ion motors
powered by solar cells (something solar-related anyway, I forget the
specifics) that would spiral higher and higher in the Earth's
atmosphere increasing in speed till it reached Earth orbit.
Which is pretty futuristic by any standards.

And elegant. And even doable, some day. Given that sort of imagination
and the skill to turn his ideas into hard mathematics and even hardware,
I'm surprised he didn't notice an idea that's been reinvented so often.
Unless there are files that haven't been catalogued yet?

Jonathan Silverlight wrote:


And elegant. And even doable, some day. Given that sort of imagination
and the skill to turn his ideas into hard mathematics and even
hardware, I'm surprised he didn't notice an idea that's been
reinvented so often.
Unless there are files that haven't been catalogued yet?


This one had an odd background; Goddard was supposed to have written it
up, sealed it and had it put into some part of the Smithsonian (?) as it
was being built; it was later found during some construction IIRC.

Pat

Actually, I'd been poking NASA's sore butt(s) along with all of those
sore Apollo butts that never set a stinking butt-cheak and much less a
hot-foot upon our moon, whereas in spite of that I've been suggesting
that my LSE-CM/ISS is just the ticket to ride.

I've also been informing them fools about relocating ISS, as into the
moon station-keeping sweet-spot of the mutual
gravity-well(nullification) zone for more than the past couple of
years.

Of course, many others have been accomplishing this same thing for long
before I ever thought it was such a terrific and obtainable idea.

There's actually all sorts of perfectly doable solutions as for
supporting this nifty Lunar Space Elevator, and merely trillions of
dollars and/or euros worth in payback. This is if China doesn't get
there first.

"Russian Professor Says NASA Stole Space Elevator Concept From Soviet
Scientist" http://www.mosnews.com/news/20=AD05/04/13/sibir.shtml

Actually, our NASA (meaning MI6/NSA) has taken much from Russia, except
without a stitch of love nor squat worth of remorse.

-
The basic township that's situated upon Venus:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
Your basic LSE (Lunar Space Elevator):
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Other available hot topics by; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm