Steven jones crouched in a california parking lot, hoping to pioneer the next great stride into space. The clean-cut, 22-year-old senior in engineering at the University of British Columbia was tinkering with a robotic contraption he and fellow students built out of solar cells, motors, hot-tub tubing, and pieces of a purple bicycle. Cost: about $1,000. Mission: Climb a 220-foot blue strap dangling from a crane at NASA's Ames Research Center, powered by only a 10,000-watt searchlight aimed at the contraption's solar panel. Reaching the top in less than three minutes would win Jones and his partners $50,000 in a NASA competition, plus a permanent place in the lore of the far-out, far-off, and far-fetched concept known as the space elevator.
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