On a lighter note: While reading Worldchanging, I ran across this article on the Space Elevator. I've loved this idea since reading Arthur C. Clarke's Fountains of Paradise, and Clarke has lost none of his enthusiasm either. And it's not as crazy as it sounds; check out the Wikipedia entry for it.
Understand this. If you want to get out into space, and you're not an astronaut or a millionaire, this is your only hope. Rockets are entirely too expensive, but a space elevator, once built, would take only a bit of electricity to make the trip. Just like the Internet or the Interstate, the infrastructure is the hard part. Everything else is easy (and democratic).
The company doing this work right now is called Liftport.
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