The stairway to heaven is already a mile high

By Aussiegirl

A fascinating article about what would seem to be the wildest flight of sci-fi imagination--the first mile of what will become a 62,000 mile elevator into space. Will there be elevator operators announcing "First floor, space debris...second floor, the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud"? Now for a trip down memory lane. Remember these lyrics?

There's a lady who's sure
All that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven.
When she gets there she knows
If the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for.
Ooh, ooh, and she's buying a stairway to heaven.

Yes, it's Led Zeppelin, and here is a midi of the song along with the words.

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - Space-elevator tether climbs a mile high

A slim cable for a space elevator has been built stretching a mile into the sky, enabling robots to scrabble some way up and down the line.

LiftPort Group, a private US company on a quest to build a space elevator by April 2018, stretched the strong carbon ribbon 1 mile (1.6 km) into the sky from the Arizona desert outside Phoenix in January tests, it announced on Monday.

The company's lofty objective will sound familiar to followers of NASA's Centennial Challenges programme. The desired outcome is a 62,000-mile (99,779 km) tether that robotic lifters – powered by laser beams from Earth – can climb, ferrying cargo, satellites and eventually people into space.

[...] The idea is to build the actual elevator's ribbon from ultra-strong carbon nanotube composites and to have solar-powered lifters carry 100 tonnes of cargo into space once a week, 50 times a year.