H2Orbit - Its About Sustainability

Historically and traditionally the method for transportation from the surface of the Earth to orbit involves rockets. That is however not the only way to get there. A very few have traveled to the fringes of space on wings like the North American X-15. Not quite that high but impressive none the less is Lockheed's SR-71 Blackbird. Until recently another concept that has only existed in the realm of science fiction, as 1st depicted in Sir Arthur C. Clarke's "Fountains of Paradise" is the Space Elevator, who is most famous for having written "2001: A Space Odyssey". What many people do not know is that he also is quite the engineer and the concept of the geosychronous satellite has been officialy credited to him, based on his 1945 paper.

H2Orbit supports the development of space elevators as quickly as possible. The rationale is that for every pound of cargo one of these can take to orbit its one less pound that we have to take on the back of expensive and slow rockets. Also they won't consume as many resources to move that pound of material and can make thousands of trips where rockets are usually used once and then discarded.

You might ask why we would have a topic area on space hotels listed on a page called "gaining orbit". The reason is pragmatisim. The reason its pragmatic is that people traveling to or from orbit will need places to stay - either before they leave or just after they arrive (and before they can take the next hop in their journey). Guess what - many "lodging companies" are in fact looking this far ahead. Additionally H2Orbit contends that the "counterweight" described in 'space elevator' designs should in fact be a hotel and/or port that can not only receive cargo and passengers from the ground but also docking space craft.

Think about it a few minutes and it will make complete sense. Hotels usually ring airports. This will be no different for all the same reasons. One difference might be a tighter integration of services and functions on the orbital end of those space elvator cables.

There are simply a myrid of companies, agencies, groups, education institutions, etc. involved in various aspects of space systems and launch systems. They can all be found relatively easily with some quick internet searches. What we tried to present here were some examples.