The idea of a single, high speed elevator that could blast astronauts from Earth to the surface of the moon with the flip of a switch is the stuff of cheesy Fifties science fiction novels. At least it was until former NASA researcher Michael Laine and his company LiftPort. The nine-year-old firm has developed a cheap and simple ribbon cable that it says could stand up to the the 239,000-mile journey between the two celestial bodies and have designed a robot that can make the journey. All they need now is the money to build it, and what better place for a team of hungry scientists to find funding than Kickstarter.Listed alongside things like self-produced musicals and something called “glitch art,” LiftPort’s new Kickstarter project is hardly big enough to send a robot up a wire and into the heavens. The company asked for $8,000 — so far, they’ve raised nearly $14,000 — to build a 2 kilometer space elevator that will be suspended from a weather balloon. This would be a big step up from their last milestone, raising a platform 1.5 kilometers high and sending the climbing robots about 460 meters high. And thanks to new advances, there’s no limit to how high they might climb. “About six months ago we had a fundamental breakthrough — a breakthrough we think will transform human civilization — and we want you to be a part of it,” said Laine on the project’s Kickstarter page.It’s not exactly clear why Laine and company want to do with this moon elevator. Conservatively speaking, they want to use the challenge of building this elevator as an opportunity to develop revolutionary new technologies. The weather balloons it plans to suspend the test ribbon, for instance, could be used for cell phone towers or look out spots for forest fires. When it gets built, though, this elevator will be the ultimate vehicle for transporting equipment to places like the International Space Station, says Laine. It could cut costs of moving goods from $10,000 to $10. This is assuming it doesn’t break, but Laird says it’s totally asteroid resistant.
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