seems to me, more of a cable fatigue experiment.
44$ will get you 1200 feet of poly rope. if you've got a mine shaft 1200 feet deep, and a spool on the order of a 50 gallon drum, you can do a 1 layer winding.
If you can manage 100 pound load, that's 120,000 foot pounds or about 162KJ, or about the energy stored in a laptop battery.
3/16th stainless steel cable is 600 bucks per 1000 feet and that might get you a 1000 pound load, or 10 times the energy, for 10 times the price.
Question being, running the cables at 1/4th the breaking strength.. how long do they last?