TORONTO, CANADA — The idea of a space elevator that hangs in Earth orbit is a lot more realistic than one would think, says professor George Zhu of York University, who recently published a study of the concept in Acta Astronautica. <br /><br />The study found that humans already have the materials and technologies to build a profitable space elevator. <br /><br />One idea would be to install two flexible tethers in parallel and loop them together. <br /><br />The bottom would hang in low Earth orbit, while the top would reach into deep space. <br /><br />You would still need rockets to reach the bottom station, but you'd save a lot of fuel and costs by transporting the payload via elevator into deep space. <br /><br />By using two parallel tethers, the elevator would be more stable and can maintain opposing forces while transporting cargo. <br /><br />This would prevent the Earth's rotational force from moving the cable back and forth.<br /><br />Zhu says that one elevator would be moving up while the other elevator would be moving down, so the forces would cancel each other out.
