"They developed this machine which was only about this big [~1 meter] and they used ultra-lightweight materials, and it only weighed about 50 kg. So compare that with a 27 kilometer long ring. ...It was only low energy but they... sent it up in a rocket and they actually tested it in space and brought it back down... and they tested it again on earth, and it still worked, which I think is an incredible feat of engineering... [P]eople really haven't heard of this experiment... It's called the BEAR (Beam Experiments Aboard a Rocket) project in 1989, and I have a contact who worked on it..."