Strange, they talk about developments of several billion for a new space vehicle, but blithely waft the development costs for a space elevator away. A space el

Strange, they talk about developments of several billion for a new space vehicle, but blithely waft the development costs for a space elevator away. A space elevator is a great idea in principle but it would need a tether that is magically very strong and very light and is thus not a viable proposition in practice. The figures supplied in the article for the electrical costs also disregard the costs of accelerating the payloads to orbital speed, which is required as well as lifting the payloads to orbital height. (kinetic energy = 1/2 * m * velocity squared)