space elevator

(Newser) - It sounds like something out of a science fiction film, but a very real "space elevator" is being developed by researchers at Japan's Shizuoka University, and the first test is coming this month. A miniature stand-in for the real thing will be attached to a rocket and launched...

(Newser) - A Canadian company best known for building tiny objects suitable for outer space has just earned a US patent on something distinctly grander: a 12-mile-high inflatable space elevator held up not by cables but by pressurized segments, reports fastcoexist.com . That's more than 20 times taller than the world’...

(Newser) - Obayashi Corp. likes building tall towers—it's days from completing a 2,080-foot skyscraper in Tokyo— and now it's working on the granddaddy of them all: A "space elevator" that could carry people 22,370 miles into the air. On Monday, the company announced that it was...