[noiseman]

It seems a little silly to award prizes for merely demonstrating the ability to climg a cable, whether it's 3,000 feet long or not. That's the easy part.

The hard part is developing a material that will allow the deployment of a several hundred mile long (or longer) cable, and demonstrating the capability to actually field it. Even a demonstration of a small step in this direction would be far more impressive than a cable-climbing mechanism.

[atomicweeder]

It would seem to me that a space elevator is physically impractical, if not impossible.

The space end of the cable would have to have some kind of engine to keep the cable from collapsing under its own weight back to earth. Then, add the weight of the elevator and payload pulling on the cable.

Just doesn't feasible.

[El Sordo]

Rewards for achievement. Its a proven formula.

The cable is but one of many problems and is on being addressed concurrently with this kind of effort.

Also, beam power transmission has other possible applications, plus this helps advance miniaturization.