I found this video on YouTube a couple of days ago:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_v9BgU16Y4[/youtube]

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I found it quite interesting, but had no idea in what context it was built.  I contacted the person who uploaded this video to YouTube and asked them what it was all about.  ‘Caitlin2022’ replied:

“Just a group of students from the University of New South Wales, we had a project to build a scaled down version of the elevator to climb a 7m tether.”

Here’s hoping we see an Aussie team in the Space Elevator competition someday…

And yes, the video is ‘sideways’.  It would have been more appropriate had it been upside down 🙂