Could we fly a modified kite to the moon?

Originally posted by salsaking
How hard would it be to get about two or three hundred 500 foot spools of string and tie them together? Might cost a few hundred dollars but you would have about 10 miles of string which I think would get you to the next layer of the atmosphere.

Have you tried to work out how much 10 miles of string would weigh?

Bearing in mind the string would not only have to support its own weight (and I'm gonna put that weight somewhere in excess of 3 tonnes?) it also has to take the strain of the massive kite pulling it up... And the kite would be massive.

Nice idea - balloons would be a better idea, or the high altitude 'drop launches' from a mother aircraft - that's the way that Rutan fella likes to launch his space thingies.