Ben Shelef reports on the 2009 Space Elevator Games blog that good progress is being made with respect to a new helicopter operator in Washington State and the GPS system. A test of the system this past Saturday was nominal.
The August issue of Acta Astronautica is now available and includes a paper by Brendan Quine, professor of space physics and engineering in York's Faculty of Science & Engineering, and his team. The paper is titled: A free-standing space elevator structure: A practical alternative to the space tether. It's also available as a download (PDF) from Elsevier Science Direct for $31.50 US.
I have not had the chance to read the paper yet but I will later this week but the premise is interesting. Instead of manufacturing a complete Space Elevator that stretches 100,000 km, the paper discusses a 20 km elevator that is constructed at a 5 km altitude.
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