Frank and the Orbital Siphon

In sorting through Frank’s papers I came across the October 2006 edition of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. On page 368 was a paper titled ‘THE ORBITAL SIPHON: A NEW SPACE ELEVATOR CONCEPT’ which was authored by Frank – then still known as Chris – Davis and Colin McInnes of Strathclyde University. They had presented the paper as ‘Novel payload Dynamics on Space Elevator Systems at the 56^th International Astronautical Congress at Fukuoka, Japan in October 2005.

Frank, in his younger days, had read Arthur C Clarke and the potential of some the ideas stayed with him. His development of the siphon theory – moving minerals from an asteroid back to earth – seems to have moved up a gear when he was able to produce computer simulations in the nineties which were later picked up online by Colin McInnes. Together they fleshed out the concept before introducing it at the Fukuoka conference in 2005.

It took – and still takes – a particular quality of imagination to accept the thinking involved, let alone the practical implications. But Frank regularly walked untravelled roads. So he booked a JAL flight and a room at the Hakata Green Hotel and spent a week figuring out their language and their food. He didn’t say if they figured him out…

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