Instapundit linked up this NYTimes piece summarizing a recent conference held near Los Alamos. The topic: space elevators.

For those of you who don't know, the idea is to hang a big (big... asteroid-sized) rock in geosynchronous orbit, then run a tether from a spot on the equator all the way to said rock. Getting into space would then simply be a matter of taking a (long, slow, but comparatively safe) ride.

The problem has always been with the materials... there simply wasn't anything in existence that would be strong and light enough to make the tether.

Enter carbon nanotubes. This new form of carbon, discovered just a decade or so ago, promises fantastically strong yet extremely lightweight fibers, and would make the perfect material for the tether.

According to the article, it would appear now the rest of it is engineering. The first cost estimate is 6-12 billion dollars for a "Wright Brothers"-style first try. Sounds like a lot, is a lot, but compared with, say, the 100 billion dollar space station, maybe not so much.