Radio-acoustic shaping and space elevators

New Scientist details a microgravity construction technique that uses radio waves and interference patterns to shape clouds of small particles into solid objects. I imagine by the time this technique becomes widely used, it will be supplemented with zillions of MEMS and nanobots. A few months back there was a conference here in Jet City about space elevators and, Science News covered it. Unfortunately, unlike the robotics conference I went to way back in August of last year, I didn’t go to this. Oh well.