FARMINGTON, Conn., October 26, 2000 – Otis Elevator Co. said today that it has “the
right stuff” to help NASA achieve its dream of building a space elevator. Otis is a
subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE:UTX)

In an August report, NASA first detailed the concept of building a space elevator that
would hum along a thin diamond fiber and extend 22,000 miles above the earth’s
equator to a point in space known as “geosynchronous orbit.”

John Thackrah, vice president of engineering for the world’s leading elevator
company, said that based on Otis’ current capabilities for creating transportation
systems for skyscrapers several miles high, a space elevator may be more fact than
fantasy.

“Today we have the technology to create elevator systems for a five-mile-high
tower,” Thackrah said. “At the rate of our development efforts we could apply
technology we are working on for today’s existing market to the NASA concept within
the next 10 years.”

Otis already has in its active product-development program a range of technological
applications to address the structural, dispatching, control and maintenance issues
associated with such an undertaking.

Otis projects under development for release to earthbound markets are self-propelled
and lightweight vehicles; stackable – or multi-deck – car frames; and ride-quality
components including aerodynamic cabs, door and cab seals; electromagnetic-field
guideshoes; and intelligent door systems that maintain the same open and close profiles
under standard pressure or zero g’s.

In addition, control systems that enable vehicles to “see” each other and avoid
collision are used today on Otis’ horizontal people mover systems, which typically share
horizontal hoistways — or “guideways” — at airports. Installations are in operation at
Narita International Airport in Tokyo and the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky
International Airport in the United States, and people movers are under construction at
Northwest Airlines Midfield Air Terminal in Detroit, Michigan, and the Minneapolis/St.
Paul International Airport in Minnesota in the United States. Also, an installation is under
construction at the airport in Zurich.

Otis also designs equipment for the most efficient use of hoistway space, using
multi-deck car frames, Thackrah said. Multi-deck elevators would be important for food
preparation areas, sleeping quarters, sanitary facilities and cargo storage on the 24-hour
journey from the earth’s surface to orbit.

Skyscrapers such as Toronto’s First Canadian Place and Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas
Twin Towers already employ double-deck elevator configuration. And Hong Kong’s
Central Station, a 420-meter tower currently under development, will have 18 of Otis’
SKYWAY System high-speed (8 meters/sec.) double-deck cars.

Because repairs to such a system would be very expensive, routine maintenance
would have to be minimized, Thackrah said. The system would require on-board
diagnostics that could not only warn maintenance personnel on earth of potential
problems, but also enable repairs from a remote – in this case very remote – location.

Otis currently features its REM? monitoring system, which detects software as well as
electro-mechanical degradation on microprocessor-based systems and automatically
alerts a service dispatcher. In addition, the company is developing diagnostics for
“maintenance-free” earthbound elevators.

This all means that an elevator to space may not be so far-fetched, after all,
according to Otis.

“When our company’s founder, Elisha Graves Otis, invented the first safety elevator,
the word ‘skyscraper’ entered our language,” Thackrah said. “The NASA concept
doesn’t just scrape the sky, it breaks through it. But who knows – There was a time
when people couldn’t even imagine a mile-high building or a man on the moon.”

Otis Elevator Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of United Technologies
Corporation, is the world’s largest company in the manufacture, sale and service of
people moving products, including elevators, escalators, shuttle systems and moving
walkways. Headquartered in Farmington, Connecticut, USA, Otis offers its products
and services in more than 200 countries and territories and maintains more than 1.2
million elevators and escalators worldwide.