The hope is still strong that one day, relatively cheap travel beyond the confines of Earth and her atmosphere lies in space elevator technology. The idea is that instead of burning up rocket fuel to get into orbit, future space payloads could just be shuffled up a giant tether. And on the forefront of this technology, and the closest to claiming NASA's $2 million space elevator prize is a group called the Kansas City Space Pirates and their robot named Maryann.

From io9:

Maryann uses solar panels, and energy beamed from the ground via a laser beam shot through a special telescope, to climb half a mile up, on a cord attached to a helicopter hovering overhead. The D.I.Y. enthusiasm among these part-time innovators is breathtaking, and you gotta love an inventor who says things like:

So we'll be beaming more energy to our robot in this competition than has ever been beamed to a remote moving device ever. We'll be setting a variety of world records as we proceed in this competition.

This $2 million prize is for wireless power transmission, the second half of the Space Elevator Games — the first half being a "Tether Challenge" to create a material strong enough to carry materials into space.