Skyhook

A "Skyhook" is a "hook" used to lift an object on a long cable hanging (metaphorically) from the sky, realistically from some other object supported by the "sky". The term seems to have originated in its imaginary sense first as a hook simply hanging from the sky, but became used as a nickname for the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system, a retrieval method to be used by an aircraft.

Other physical manifestations of the concept include:

* Skyhook balloon, a type of unmanned balloon used by the United States Navy in the late 1940s and in the 1950s for atmospheric research
* SkyHook JHL-40, an experimental combination airship/helicopter in development by Boeing, primarily for low impact logging
* Skyhook (structure), a still conceptual class of tethers used for transporting material to and from a planet's surface into orbit

"Skyhook" can also refer to any of the following:

* Cessna Skyhook, a helicopter produced in the early 1960s by the Cessna Aircraft company that was marketed to the civil sector
* Skyhook (boarding), a binding used in skateboarding and related sports
* Skyhook (climbing), a hook used in technical climbing
* Skyhook (skydiving), a device for quickly extracting reserve parachutes
* "Sky Hook", a Hugo-award nominated science fiction fanzine
* An explanation of design complexity in the universe that does not build on lower, simpler layers (coined by Daniel Dennett in "Darwin's Dangerous Idea")
* Skyhooks, an Australian rock band of the 1970s
* Skyhook Wireless is a service for determining geographical location by looking up the MAC Address of a Wireless Access Point

"Skyhook" is a nickname for the following:

* The Airco DH.6 an early (1916) ab-initio trainer aircraft.
* Hook shot, a basketball shot popularized by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar