"NASA can't afford a space elevator, neither can High Lift Systems Inc. It's really expensive. But the $570,000 grant they got makes me think about that corvette I saw this morning..... "

Sounds about right:)
1/2 million could build a *small* pipelauncher- you would need about 5 million for a *full sized* one. If I had a 1/2 million NASA grant I would build a pipelauncher using 20 3" pipes welded to form a cylinder about 2' in diameter. Make this about 40' long, then have air conditioning duct 2' diameter which totaled 60 feet in length.
To power the pipelaucher, in order to make it easier, I would just use compressed air- fill the 3" pipes up with 100 psi.
Cost:
800' of 3" 1/16" steel walled pipe: $1000
60' of 2' air duct: $200
Work area with launch ramp: $10,000
Wages: $20,000
Equip rental: couple welders, air compressor, and boat: $3000
Misc: $5000
So that's about 50k to build it. You could then play around with this small pipelauncher, and then use natural gas in one or two of the pipes to test powering it by heat.
Once you had bugs worked out, you might try launching sounding rockets from it.