More here: All aboard the space elevator!A Seattle team has collected a $900,000 prize in a NASA-backed competition to develop the concept of an elevator to space — an idea spurred by science fiction novels.
Powered by a ground-based laser pointed up at the robot's photo voltaic cells that converted the light into electricity, the LaserMotive machine completed one of its climbs in about three minutes and 48 seconds, good for second-place money.
The contest is intended to encourage development of a theory that originated in the 1960s and was popularized by Arthur C. Clarke's 1979 novel "The Fountains of Paradise."
Space elevators are envisioned as a way to reach space without the risk and expense of rockets.
Instead, electrically powered vehicles would run up and down a cable anchored to a ground structure and extending thousands of miles up to a mass in geosynchronous orbit — the kind of orbit communications satellites are placed in to stay over a fixed spot on the Earth.
The principle is simple: about 22,500 miles above the earth's equator is a spot called the geostationary point. Satellites in geostationary orbit take exactly one day to circle the earth. If they orbit in the same direction the earth rotates, they'll stay above the same spot. Many weather and communications satellites are in geosynch for this reason, seen in dynamic schematic to the left.
So what if a really strong cable or other robust structure could be connected from the earth's surface to that distant point? With a little bit of a counter weight on the other side, such a device would literally connect the sky and ground.
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