Going up

An interesting twist on the already interesting idea of a space elevator (a line connecting the surface of the earth to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit). The new idea is to rotate the line so that centrifugal force would pull the payload out, and (if strong enough) up. That way, less energy would be necessary to climb the elevator, although a large part of the attractiveness of a space elevator is that it would be orders of magnitude cheaper than rockets. (via Glenn Reynolds)