AI Summary
5 min readSpace Elevators, Skyhooks, and Space Fountains
The fastest way to get to space? Sit on a steel manhole cover while a nuclear bomb explodes underneath it. In 1957, during Operation Plumbbob, the US military sealed a 900-pound steel plate over an underground nuclear test shaft, and the resulting explosion launched it at an estimated 150,000 miles per hour—six times Earth's escape velocity. It appeared in exactly one frame of the camera footage. "If that's how fast it was going, then it's the fastest human launch ever from Earth's surface," Michael Stevens notes. "Still, this way to get into space. Yeah. Fastest way to get into space. Worst way."
Between that instant incineration and the slowest possible method—waiting a hundred undecillion years for your protons to decay into radiation drifting through intergalactic space—there must be something better.
Why Rockets Are the Problem
The current solution is rockets, and they have fundamental limitations. "They're expensive. They're noisy. They need to have a huge amount of just propellant as their mass. Like 80%, 90% of their mass is just the fuel they need to get up into low Earth orbit," Stevens explains. Using a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy, it costs about $2,000 to $3,000 per kilogram to get something into space.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:01) **Opening: The Fastest, Cheapest, Worst Way to Space** - Hannah and Michael introduce the episode's premise: finding a single answer for the fastest, cheapest, and worst way to get to space.
- 2 (05:48) **The Slowest Way: Just Wait** - Michael argues the slowest method is to simply wait for Earth's natural cosmic journey to carry your remains into space.
- 3 (18:16) **The Rocket Problem & The Staircase Solution** - The hosts pivot to current expensive rocket launches and explore the impractical idea of a literal staircase to space.
- 4 (26:49) **Why Altitude Isn't Enough: The Secret of Orbits** - Hannah explains that simply being high isn't enough to stay in space; you need orbital velocity.
- 5 (34:43) **Orbital Speeds and a Lunar Baseball Game** - They calculate the speeds needed for orbit at different altitudes and on the Moon, leading to a fun thought experiment.
- 6 (42:50) **The Space Elevator: A Road to Space** - The hosts introduce the space elevator concept as a game-changing piece of infrastructure.
- 7 (47:41) **The Skyhook: A Rotating Tether** - Michael describes the skyhook, a smaller, rotating tether in low Earth orbit that could "scoop" payloads into space.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
What is the fastest, cheapest and possibly worst way to get into space?
Could a nuclear explosion launch a manhole cover beyond the Earth’s atmosphere?
And could space elevators, skyhooks or launch loops one day replace rockets?
In this episode, Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens (VSauce) explore where space really begins, why orbit means falling forever, and how Newton’s cannon explains the motion of the International Space Station.
They also interrogate the physics of the Kármán line, orbital velocity and geostationary orbit, before asking whether humans could ever climb a staircase to space, or catch a rotating skyhook into orbit.
Plus, the far future fate of Earth, firing a bullet around the Moon, the true value of the Apollo Moon landing, the ethics of colonising Mars and whether the future of space exploration should belong to private companies or the public!
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