We Could Maybe Build an Elevator to the Moon

From my favorite website, space dot com:

An elevator to the moon might not be as crazy as it sounds.

GO ON.

A moon-based elevator to space could radically reduce the costs and improve the reliability of placing equipment on the lunar surface. Such a lunar elevator would make the transport of supplies and materials from the surface of the moon into the Earth’s orbit and vice versa possible. Indeed, valuable resources could be extracted from the moon, then sent into Earth orbit more easily than if they were rocketed from the Earth’s surface.

Hmm, I can’t picture it?

LiftPort’s concept for building the lunar space elevator infrastructure calls for using a climbing vehicle that scoots up and down a ribbon-shaped, tethered cable that’s part of an anchor station secured to the airless moon.

There is of course the problem of space debris and the conundrum of building a cable that is 100,000 km long and lots of other stuff involved in the associated “moon elevator” idea cloud. But Liftport, the company behind this, states that it could be possible by the middle of the next decade, and that a moon elevator would have paid for itself after 19 trips. And then we won’t have to get all our rare earth from China. They’ve got a Kickstarter or something, I’m in.