There are several ‘space-themed’ campaigns in Kickstarter. To me, this signals that the human species (not just a single culture or nation) wants to go to space. We want to explore and discover; and we want to build something great…

Neil Armstrong is a hero.

Neil died while our community was meeting at the International Space Elevator Conference – held at the Museum of Flight – surrounded by space artifacts.

I’m sorry that I’m so inadequate, but I’m not the kind of guy that can write an appropriate eulogy. The ‘moment of silence’ while attending the conference seemed woefully inadequate to express our collective loss. So after some quiet contemplation over what the man, the myth and the mission meant to me, I decided to do something.

I’ve removed the $10,000 pledge level of “Name Our Robot”. That reward was ‘vanity bait’ for corporate backers to name our ‘bot, and cover it with stickers like a NASCAR racer. In hindsight it seems crass and inappropriate.

But no more.

Neil will get – and deserve – hundreds of statues in his honor. This is our tribute: We, LiftPort, will name the robot we build for this experiment – Neil. And the first robotic car that carries humans – once again – back to the Moon “… Before this decade is out…” will be named – Armstrong.

​Take care,
Mjl
President, LiftPort Group

Wow.  I've been saying that a lot lately.  Thank you for your amazing support!  

We sailed right on past the first Stretch Goal and are well on our way toward our $30K goal - I'm really excited about the next level because I want to provided YOU GUYS with a 'Robots-Eye-View' with live video streaming of our record-breaking climb!

I've a HUGE update I'll post in about 5 hours. Thanks for your patience! The conference was grueling (in the best possible way!)   And trying to manage that on top of an exploding kickstarter campaign was a little rough. But now that the conference is over, I've got some basic 'life maintenance' stuff to tackle - and then I'm all yours: Website content added, responses to questions, message replies (I've received over 1000 emails in 2 days!) But I'm on it! 

Again - I can't express my gratitude properly, yet, - but I'll find a way.  Thank you!

​Take care, mjl

You people are amazing!

I'm in the middle of the International Space Elevator Conference - and to have this thing funded during it is terrific!  I'll write a more complete post in a couple hours, after the day's proceedings are complete.  In the spirit of not 'spamming' folks, I won't post that full blog post here.  Find it on our website.  

But I thought you'd want to see this image.  It's a graph of time and dollars.  Pretty cool?!  ;-)

Thank you!  Now it's time to seriously consider our first Stretch Goal of $20K. 

​Take care,  mjl

Hi,

I posted a 1-page blog on the LiftPort website.  I did this because I wasn't sure you folks wanted another big update, the day after this thing started.  I'm happy to post here, too.  Please post a comment below to tell me how you want me to proceed.  I plan to post a blog every day of the campaign - do you want me to update the KS every day too?

The next couple days will be very busy - The International Space Elevator Conference starts in a few hours.  So I'll be there, doing my 'thing'.  If you're in the Seattle area, come by on Saturday!

Thank you so much for your support.  We're (almost) 50% there - and it's only the 2nd day!  I'm optimistic by nature (or else how could I think to build an Elevator to Space) so I'm already thinking about the Stretch Goals.  So if you like what we're doing, please tell your friends!

​Take care, mjl

It’s been 1 hour, and we’ve got $749 committed! 9% of our minimum goal – Thank you! This bodes well for the next 20 days… 

So what’s happening in the next few days? 

At somewhere between 9:30-10:am (Pacific Time), today, I’ll be at the local NPR station. I’ll talk about our Kickstarter campaign, the upcoming International Space Elevator Conference (www.isec.org/sec) , and the restart of LiftPort Group (www.liftport.com) . Listen online at http://www.kuow.org/program.php?current=WK1

Then Saturday, a bunch of us will be interviewed by http://www.scientificamerican.com/ - I’m kind of excited about that.

Over the weekend, about 125 of the core researchers will meet in Seattle to talk about the larger project of the Space Elevator, and a smaller sub-group will chat about our specific project of the Lunar Elevator and Tethered Towers experiments.

It should be a fun couple of days.

I’ll be posting updates here, through Kickstarter for the ‘big stuff’. But I’ve also created a message thread on our forum so that our team can interact with you guys. Join us! http://liftport.com/forum/104-kickstarter-conversation/

​Take care,
mjl