The idea of traveling into space by an elevator originates
from Konstantin Tsiolkovski, who in 1895 proposed a freestanding
tower reaching from the surface of the Earth to
geostationary orbit. In 1959 another Russian scientist, Yuri
N. Artsutanov, suggested the use of a geostationary satellite as
the base for a long cable reaching down to the Earth’s surface.
By using a counterweight above the geostationary orbit, the
whole system could stand freely in force equilibrium.1