Going up? Japan has announced a huge amount of governmental support to the establishment of the space elevator, a structure first proposed by Arthur C. Clarke in 1979 in his literary work "The Fountains of Paradise". The space elevator is essentially a giant series of poles and cables that would stretch from the foundations of the Earth to 62,000 miles into space, where it would latch onto an intermediary launch pad. The purpose of the space elevator would be to achieve both easy access to space...more 

It is a well-established fear that NASA will not be able to send man into space after 2010, the scheduled date of retirement for the space shuttles. NASA's plans for continuing the United States' presence in space were originally to maintain healthy relationships with Russia and borrow or buy one of the nation's space ships. Because of heightened tensions in Georgia (and no thanks to CNN for not showing the interview they gave Vladmir Putin), depending on Russia has fallen through.

So, what c...more