Going up? Next stop is space

A SEATTLE team has collected a US$900,000 prize in a NASA-backed competition to develop the concept of an elevator to space - an idea spurred by science fiction novels.

The team's robotic machine raced up more than 900 meters of cable dangling from a helicopter.

Powered by a ground-based laser pointed up at the robot's photo voltaic cells that converted the light into electricity, the LaserMotive machine completed one of its climbs in about three minutes and 48 seconds.

The contest is intended to encourage development of a theory that originated in the 1960s and was popularized by Arthur C. Clarke's 1979 novel "The Fountains of Paradise."

Space elevators are envisioned as a way to reach space without the use of rockets.

Instead, electrically powered vehicles would run up and down a cable anchored to a ground structure and extending thousands of kilometers up to a mass in geosynchronous orbit - the kind of orbit communications satellites are placed in to stay over a fixed spot on the Earth.

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