An elevator to take people and payload up to space? It sounds totally crazy. But efforts are already underway in Japan and China to build one. And NASA agrees that the basic idea is sound.
"Colossal" is the word to describe it, intended to go 22,000 feet high into the region where satellites move in synchronous orbit around the earth.
Steel is way too heavy to use for the tether that holds it to the ground. But the wondrous newly-available graphene might do the job, if it can somehow be manufactured into a tether that long.
from NBCNews
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