I think what bothers me most about this kind of paid fluff is that it fools the viewer into thinking they've learned something worthwhile, when they've only see

I think what bothers me most about this kind of paid fluff is that it fools the viewer into thinking they've learned something worthwhile, when they've only seen something pleasant. Another poster linked to a brief Wikipedia article, and even it mentioned that the technology is nowhere near ready, citing erosion by atomic oxygen as one concern. What we have here is a glossed-up version of the simple observations that spinning things spin, and "rolling" things move faster at the top than at the bottom. The rest has been left as an exercise for the reader's active and uninformed imagination. Don't fall for it. FWIW, my guess is that exactly 0 tethers as described in the video will ever play an important role in getting humans into space, for various reasons of various veracity. But it's all guesswork, which is all any of us have. Oh, and sign up for Brilliant.com.