Space elevators by Silvia Szarkova

Spave elevators- just an infant idea of futute of travelling in space, or something that is really about to happen, and i tis knocking on the door of presence ? Maybe both..This theory originate to 1960´s and was popularized by Arthur C. Clarke in 1979´s novel “The Fountains of Paradise“. Nobody knew at that time, that things like those are posible. And today, NASA is in charge of competition leading to creating the real space elevator. Science fiction concept of space elevators is coming true in the competition organized by NASA. Three competitors from different American states- Missouri, Alaska ad Seattle- were together brought by the vision of fant! astic 2 million winning prize to Mojave desert to Roger Drive Lake, better known as the place of landing on of space shuttles. The Contest requires, that space elevators created by the companies in high technical status could climb 2,953 feet up a cable dangling down from a helicopter in nearly 1 mile high. All the machines are powered from a ground-based laser beams. One of them- LaserMotive´s vehicle was able to do this in something more than 4 minutes and immediatelly was able to repeat the act. As the another one- was completely unable to do the procedure, the LaseMotive would qualify itself at least to second prize- which means the 900, 000 dollar prize. All the process- the whole competition story has been in progress for five years, but the first three of them brought no results. Space elevators are believed to reach space without the expeses of rockets.

related story (sgx15826): http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091105/ap_on_sc/us_space_elevat...

by Silvia Szarkova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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