Space Elevators
Space Elevators
[Cueball and Megan sit beside a moonlit lake.] Cueball: Arthur C. Clarke said space elevators will be built 50 years after everybody stops laughing.
[Closeup of Cueball.] Cueball: So all we have to do is get Mind of Mencia on every channel and wait. Megan (offscreen): Oh, hush.

Arthur C. Clarke was a science fiction writer and a futurist. The quoted remark provides a benchmark for how long it will take to create something as massive and advanced as a space elevator : when technology reaches the point where the idea is considered seriously rather than dismissed out of hand, about fifty years of further effort will make it a reality.
Mind of Mencia was an American television comedy series running from 2005 to 2008. Cueball implies that the show is so unfunny that putting it on every channel would destroy everyone's sense of humor , thus preventing them from laughing at anything, space elevators included. Cueball is missing the point of Clarke's quote; Clarke was referring to people no longer laughing at the idea of a space elevator, not people no longer laughing entirely.
The space fountain , mentioned in the title text, is another proposed method of overcoming the planet's gravitational barrier, involving an effect similar to that of a coil gun .
[Cueball and Megan sit beside a moonlit lake.] Cueball: Arthur C. Clarke said space elevators will be built 50 years after everybody stops laughing.
[Closeup of Cueball.] Cueball: So all we have to do is get Mind of Mencia on every channel and wait. Megan (offscreen): Oh, hush.
