In Brief:

• Expensive, unsustainable rockets have served as our primary means to exit Earth, but space elevators present a cheaper way to enter outer space.
• Although new materials are needed, space elevator missions are in motion and we could see the first elevator constructed in the next several decades.

Getting into space with rockets is ridiculously expensive. A NASA Inspector General report says the agency will pay Russia $491.2 million to send six astronauts into space in 2018. That’s almost $82 million a seat.

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