Sky Hook (1971)

[Mark A. Mandel]

Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET> writes:

        >>> begin quote >>>
The OED2 has "1966 Science 11 Feb. 682 (heading) Satellite elongation
into a true 'sky-hook'" which I believe is a reference to the
satellite idea promulgated in science fiction. (It's hard to tell
without more context.  The idea is a satellite in geostationary orbit
that is connected to the ground by a cable that can be used to lift
objects.) The OED's science fiction citations site
(http://www.jessesword.com/SF/sf.shtml) says that there are some
references to "skyhooks" in 50s science fiction titles, but the works
have not been found.
        <<< end quote <<<

[Non-ASCII gibberish replaced with apostrophes / vertical single-quotes]

A more recent sf term for such a construct is "beanstalk". The concept
is central to Clarke's novel _The Fountains of Paradise_, and he also
used it in _3001_, the last (and imho least) of the the 2001 n-ology.
But iirc I first saw this name for it in Kim Stanley Robinson's _Red
Mars_, first of a trilogy (followed by Blue and Green).

Wikipedia has a long entry on it
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/space+elevator), crediting
Tsiolkovsky with the basic concept in 1895, and Artsutanov in 1957 with
the idea of building it top-down (starting from the satellite) rather
than from the ground up.

Google yields about 100 hits for "beanstalk geostationary", and I don't
feel like digging through them for an earliest cite, especially since
Jesse's sf-OED project may well already have found one... Hmm, I don't
see an entry there for "beanstalk". Over to you, Jesse!

-- Mark A. Mandel
   Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania