For those of you who are into technology, you must be thinking about the future all the time. Humankind is certainly "breaking out of the box" and thinking in "Post Earth" terms. With the design development and impending construction of the Space Elevator, we are certainly "going where no man has gone before" and giving a whole new meaning to space exploration.

LiftPort Group is one of the contributors to the development and construction of this innovative project. By creating a competition, much like those developed to provide incentives for solar car design, it will take a "social engineering" approach to space exploration technology.

Spaceward Foundation has joined the ongoing collective effort in which a growing number of companies, websites and organizations to build a tethered permanent Space-Elevator, making it the biggest development since the launch of the first Space Shuttle.

This new approach to creating new application in space travel is called parallel technology and merges the developmental paths of many different technological entities. Results such as battery, CPU and screen technology along with software vision and speech recognition form a very powerful tool.

The development of super strong carbon based material solves building materials strength issues for such a titanic undertaking. This material is already being used to build high performance race cars and the new 787 airbuses.

Of course, there are a lot of downsides to this idea that concern me, and is in fact starting to cause a great deal of debate on its feasibility as well as its impact on our planet. Understandably, there is a concern as to how this tethered "space port" will effect the Earth's rotation and atmospheric patterns

Admittedly, it is a cheap alternative to current launching methods for the obvious reasons when it comes to fuel consumption requirements and opening the door for advanced space exploration that is quickly escalating now that Japan has thrown their hat into the race as well.

It is noteworthy to mention here that not much has really been done to examine the effects this technology may have on our environment and on the health of our planet as a whole. Too many times in the past, we have charged forward into unknown territory without considering the possible hazards. It is my sincerest hope that we will not make the same mistakes again.

However, it remains to be seen whether this new step in space exploration will lead us on bold journeys or down a path of destruction.