Don't forget that for the vast majority of that trip the atmosphere is essentially negligible. A better comparison would be a vacuum tube train with a(n approxi

Don't forget that for the vast majority of that trip the atmosphere is essentially negligible. A better comparison would be a vacuum tube train with a(n approximately) constant 1G handicap. From the perspective of the tether, any practical payload mass is negligible in comparison with the tether itself, and -- most likely -- it's under tension anyways, so pulling the payload against gravity would actually be releasing tension below it. Space elevators are particularly strange to think about because they combine the weirdness of orbital mechanics with some, but not all, of the intuitions we have about terrestrial behavior -- and then add in the complications of being a megastructure on top of it, which humans have basically zero experience building. They defy easy reasoning.