In the future, there might be elevators that can shuttle you to a place far higher than the tallest skyscraper on Earth and even more wondrous than a real-life Batcave: space. Companies and space agencies have been trying to come up with the ideal space elevator design for years, but it will take a long time before we can get a ride on the unusual vehicle. One company called LiftPort started working on space elevators in 2003 but went out of business in 2007. Now, LiftPort CEO Michael Laine hopes to bring it back from the dead with help from crowd-funding website Kickstarter.
In order to build a real space elevator, LiftPort will need roughly $800 million — hardly an amount that can be raised via Kickstarter. But Laine isn't after an exorbitant amount on the site; in fact, his $8,000 goal — he has already raised roughly $25,000 as of this writing — is mind-bogglingly small for a project with such lofty goals. According to Laine, the project's main purpose is to rebuild the community LiftPort lost by drumming up publicity about its relaunch on the site.
LiftPort plans to use what it collects via Kickstarter to fund one of its new crew's first projects: building a small robot that can climb 6,560 feet up a man-made structure held upright by helium balloons. While the company's ultimate goal is to come up with a design that'll let people take the elevator off of the planet, it first aims to build an elevator on the moon within eight years' time to test its technology out.
[via DVICE]
This article was written by Mariella Moon and originally appeared on Tecca
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