Going up, space elevators this week on planetary radio. Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final

frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan.

The Space Word Foundation's project is called Elevator 2010.

No, they don't expect anyone to build this highway to space in five years,

but they do want to help create the mindset that leads to

development of a 60,000 mile ribbon that will make getting up to orbit downright

easy.

Engineer and entrepreneur Ben Shelf is a founder of the foundation and he's our guest on today's

show.

Later on Bruce Betts will weave us a rich tapestry of space milestones and night sky events and he might even give us the answer to our

latest trivia contest. Let's take a minute to review space headlines from the

last week. Bill MacArthur and Valerri Tokarev should have arrived at the International Space Station by the time you hear this.

The expedition 12 crew members successfully reached orbit in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, also containing a paying passenger.

Gregory Olson is the third space tourist.

A final report has been issued on the loss of Cosmos One, the first solar sail.

Yep, it was the Russian Volna rocket.

Apparently the first-age main motor suffered a pump failure.

You can read about it at planetary.org.

Our friend Mike Brown of Caltech. you can read about it at planetary.org

our friend Mike Brown of Caltech might have yet another planetary body to name

you may remember his co-discovery of what may be planet 10

...