Four years, three teams, 2 million dollars put up by NASA Centennial Challenges… Sound familiar?  ……  Just… it’s what some people are calling the next generation in space travel: The Space Elevator.

Since 2005 the competition has admittedly changed quite a bit, but the same principals are still in place.  How do we get a robot to climb a tether in a geosynchronous orbit in an efficient way while keeping the power source on the ground?  And once we have that robot, how do we make that tether able to be strong and light enough to handle such a “lofty” goal?