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The Space Elevator (io9.com)
1 point by Red_Tarsius on Feb 4, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment



tl;dr -> I've always scoffed at the elevator into space idea, but NASA scientists are actually quite intrigued by it and looking for feasible solutions. They are even offering a price of over $1 million to people who can come up with materials to make it happen. So far, the biggest obstacle seems to be the quality of the cable. The project is divided into 3 basic components:

- the robotic climber, or elevator car;

- power beaming propulsion;

- carbon nanotube ribbon, or elevator cable.

There's even an annual conference on the subject! http://www.isec.org/sec/




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