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Lunar Space Elevator Instead?
koa writes "We have all seen articles on building a Space Elevator on the earth, how about this article about experimenting with the Moon first since the technology we have available to us is sufficient, as the Moon's gravity is 1/6th that of Earth's (the cable weight would require less exotic materials such as carbon nano-tubes). One could make a very good argument for commercialization of Space if getting materials to and from the Moon's surface was vastly cheaper and easier."
It would like when they were building the first highways across America. The company would build a "seedling mile" of good highway along a stretch of crummy road near some town. After people tried that mile of good road in the middle of a stretch of washboard, it was a lot easier to get them to vote for the taxes to pave more of it.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.