NASA has $2 million up for grabs, and its been available for four years now. Basically, teams have to provide power on the ground to a robot climbing a rope or tether of some sort. They have to go up an entire kilometre. The potential for this is massive, and were feasible results to come about in the next few years, it would be a much cheaper alternative to use something that gradually escapes the earth’s gravitational pull for launches to space.
A rocket needs to carry its own fuel to get itself, and its fuel up, until its escaped the earth’s atmosphere, and then the fuel it needs in space, it needs more fuel and storage containers to get it there. An expensive business.
On an aside, I don’t know how the quest for a strong but light tether is going, it would probably be secured at the other end to a satellite really far our, and as the earth turns, the satellite swings on the end of this rope, and so holds it tightly.
