Space Elevator Gets FAA Clearance

lonesome phreak writes "Techzonez has a short piece about the recent FAA waiver received by the LiftPort Group allowing them to conduct preliminary tests or their 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."

Comments

Why bother with the FAA?

[JediLow]

Wouldn't it be best to launch from somewhere outside the United States - say from the equator? It just makes more sense to me if they used something like Sea Launch.

what about mile high cities? regulations prevent..

[plasmacutter]

Current regulations (faa i think) prevent mile high cities.

Already there are conglomerates in tokyo with plans and long term roadmaps laid out toward the construction of self contained mile high towers.. (one shaped like nested bowls actually has 7 or so large open air parks contained within.

The US will never have one as long as these regulations continue to pose even a slight threat to what is already a daunting task in both engineering and financing.

Truth be told.. i want to live in one of these towers before i'm middle aged, so get moving with the restriction removal!