Going up?

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Accord­ing to this arti­cle on space.com the “space ele­va­tor” is not to far away.

The Lift­Port Group, the space ele­va­tor com­pa­nies, announced Sep­tem­ber 9 that it has received a waiver from the Fed­eral Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) to use air­space to con­duct pre­lim­i­nary tests of its high alti­tude robotic lifters.
The lifters are early pro­to­types of the tech­nol­ogy that the com­pany is devel­op­ing for use in its com­mer­cial space ele­va­tor to ferry cargo back and forth into space. The tests, which are planned for early fall, will sim­u­late a work­ing space ele­va­tor by launch­ing a model ele­va­tor rib­bon” attached to moored bal­loon ini­tially up to a mile high. The robotic lifters will then be tested in their abil­ity to climb up and down the free-hanging rib­bon, mark­ing the first-ever test of this tech­nol­ogy in the devel­op­ment of the space ele­va­tor con­cept. Accord­ing to Michael Laine, pres­i­dent of the Lift­Port Group in Bre­mer­ton, Wash­ing­ton, the FAA go-ahead is a crit­i­cal step” in the ulti­mate devel­op­ing of the group’s Lift­Port Space Ele­va­tor concept.

Source: Space.com

The “space ele­va­tor” con­cept is nin fact infact it was first dis­cussed in the late fifties. If proven fea­si­ble it could lower the cost of putting pay­loads into space and pre­pare man for a mis­sion to another planet. For more infor­ma­tion on “The Space Ele­va­tor” view this Wikipedia arti­cle.