After finding a gate newly built across the bridge previously used by occupants of our newly-purchased canyon home (which was on the opposite side of the canyon from the road), I was launched into a bridge building era, much earlier than expected. Spending my lunch hours reading about history and techniques of bridge building, and nature of materials and their construction properties, 4-1/2 years later my inverted kingpost 4-beam 1/2" steel cable bridge, with 26 ft center span, carried full sized car to the home side of the canyon. It is still in use by current owners, although damaged in flood several years after home was sold due to divorice (it was the only remaining servicable bridge to that area of the canyon after the storm, note).

It was this intensive experience with bridgebuilding that combined with my lifelong urge to space travel, that led to my thinking of first an earth tether space elevator, then when realizing no material strong enough, the Mooncable vacuum-fabricated fiberglass lunar tether through L-1 concept of early 1970's, then on to the other concepts based on long space transportation structures of several types including KESTS to GEO.