The Steep Climb to Low Earth Orbit: A History of the Space Elevator Community's Battle Against the Rocket Paradigm

This thesis examines the growth of the space elevator community in America from 1975 to 2010. It argues that the continued practical failures of the space elevator, a proposed technology for efficiently transporting payloads and people into space without conventional propulsion sources, resulted from a technological paradigm built around the rocket and supported by a traditional engineering culture. After its triumph in landing men on the Moon from 1969 to 1972, the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sought to advance novel concepts for further space exploration, but it fumbled in pursuing nontraditional notions of escaping the atmosphere such as the space elevator. Employing interviews with space elevator advocates Bradley Edwards and Michael Laine and other primary and secondary sources, this thesis also draws on concepts such as technological paradigms, engineering cultures, and the technological sublime. It concludes by demonstrating how success eluded the marginalized space elevator researchers who found themselves grappling with the vast social and technical system that supported the rocket's hegemony.