Getting down to work on a space elevator to the Moon

Space Elevator Concept / LiftPort Group

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The idea of a giant tower that can carry us from Earth to outer space is legend, and it probably will be for a long time. But a company has successfully Kickstarted what they say is their first step to building one on the Moon.

At $8,000, the project from LiftPort Group wasn’t going to get us an elevator right away, even if as of writing the team has raised more than $15,000. Instead it’s funding an early, related project: sending a robot two kilometers up via a cable and building a test platform of high-altitude balloons that are tethered to the ground. It’s not a stretch to think they’ll able to reach that goal, since they pretty much already have. …

The robot launch is sort of the precursor to the precursor: this could help with the Lunar Elevator, which in turn could help with the Earth Elevator. In the lunar version, a base component–a space capsule, basically–would be attached to a rocket and sent toward the Moon. When it got close enough, a cable would eject from the capsule and attach to the surface of the moon, allowing for transport between the surface and the capsule. Since a full connection between the Earth and the Moon is still decades away, it would work as a checkpoint: A rocket could be sent to the orbiting station and people or objects could be lowered to the Moon…

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