Skyhook (cable)
hypothetical aerial technology
A skyhook is a "hook" used to lift an object on a long cable hanging from the sky, without readily apparent support. In the mid-20th century it was common in the Boy Scouts and occupations such as oil drilling to send new recruits on a futile search for such an imaginary object, as a practical joke. In construction, when material or equipment arrives onsite before the foundations are designed or built, the common remark voiced, "The office wants us to use skyhooks!"
The term has subsequently lent its name to some real mechanisms that use an airborne hook or hoist, and to other products or ideas that allude to the concept. The American philosopher Richard Rorty uses the term to refer to a hypothetical metaphysical system that leads to a universal perspective. In his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett furthers this usage of the term, claiming that evolutionary biologists who are not strict Darwinians hold out hope for some sort of metaphysical "skyhook" to explain the existence of things like human consciousness.
“Skyhook (cable)” enters the record as hypothetical aerial technology. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Skyhook, cable and hypothetical can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Skyhook (cable)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Skyhook, cable and hypothetical provides the most credible route into that argument.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q104841459. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Skyhook (cable)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.