This small cube sat space tether step is a tiny step towards a larger vision of a space elevator. However, is mostly unrelated. It is in space but the tether material has nothing to do with what is needed for earth based space elevators.

The Obayahi space elevator is planned to be built by the year 2050 with a capacity to carry 100-ton climbers. It is composed of a 96,000-km carbon nanotube cable, a 400-m diameter floating Earth Port and a 12,500-ton counter-weight. They expect the space elevator to cost $9 billion.

Obayashi knows the current technology levels are not yet sufficient to realize the concept, but our plan is realistic, and is a stepping stone toward the construction of the space elevator.

The construction will be technically feasible with an assumed cable tensile strength of 150 GPa, it will take roughly 20 years to construct the cable [after the materials become available in the required multi-tons quantities], the impacts of wind or Coriolis force on cable displacement are small, and it is essential to fix one end of the cable to the earth's surface, always applying pre-tension at the ground end.