15/06/2013
"Space lifts, dreamed up in the late 1950s, are a way of getting into orbit without using a rocket. --- There are, of course, many obstacles to building such a lift. But the answer to one — finding a material that is light and strong enough for the cable — might just have emerged from that mineshaft in Finland."
Hail utopia!
WHEN Elisha Otis stood on a platform at the 1854 World Fair in New York and ordered an axeman to cut the rope used to hoist him aloft, he changed cityscapes for...