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How close are we to a real-life ‘Elysium’?

In anticipation of this weekend's big sci-fi epic, a look at how close we are to building a real-life space colony.

The movie to see this weekend is Neill Blomkamp‘s “Elysium,” starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster. The sci fi movie casts earth as one big slum, with the richest humans living on a giant bucolic space colony — the ultimate gated community. Marketplace Tech host Ben Johnson decided to check and see just how far away we might be from that sort of scenario — not the income gap part–  but the condos in near space part. Olga Bannova thinks about this for a living. She is at the University of Houston’s International Center for Space Architecture, and discusses how close humanity might be to building its own Elysium.

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