The original plan was to use a tethered blip type balloon, but leasing a helicopter was deemed less expensive. It to comes with its own issues, not the least is the copter hovering at ~1km maintaining a constant tension on the cable as the climber ascends. I too expressed concerns about a manned aircraft having a 5KW laser beamed at it, but that seems to have been addressed. I was very briefly involved with one of the teams until my main job intruded, think that there is a lot to be learned from the effort.
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The original plan was to use a tethered blip type balloon, but leasing a helicopter was deemed less expensive. It to comes with its own issues, not the least is the copter hovering at ~1km maintaining a constant tension on the cable as the climber ascends. I too expressed concerns about a manned aircraft having a 5KW laser beamed at it, but that seems to have been addressed. I was very briefly involved with one of the teams until my main job intruded, think that there is a lot to be learned from the effort.