Your questions answered: Space elevators

Space elevators have been mainstays of science fiction for decades. Arthur C Clarke was particularly fond of the concept, using it in no fewer than five of his novels; other luminaries such as Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert Heinlein and Iain M Banks also used the idea of a tower with its top in a geostationary orbit, allowing payloads to be sent into orbit by hauling them up the tower rather than using chemical rockets to get them there. The idea has a long history, being first proposed long before the first real rockets, in 1895, by the Russian space science and astronautics pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky; but it has gained more currency in recent decades because it’s thought that it might be a cheaper way to attain orbit. The practical considerations, such as materials science and the actual mechanics of the elevator system, have been seen as so onerous that it could only be a concept.