Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A space elevator could make it much cheaper and faster to get goods to other planets, like Mars. The Obayashi Corporation based in ...

Imagine an electric-powered elevator that carries humans and cargo up a freestanding, inflatable structure 20 kilometres above the Earth's surface – to a platform used to launch space missions.

As for what's affordable... that's all in the eye of the beholder. The world has spent trillions of dollars on space launches already, with very little to show for it mass-wise. A low-g mass driver ...

I think you need to do some background reading. I'd suggest looking at the first two or three sections of this page on types of rocket engines. Stop at pressure-fed engines; the details of the ...