I agree that space elevators are very unlikely in the next few centuries. But arguing that Starship achieves basically the same thing seems wrong to me. Stars

I agree that space elevators are very unlikely in the next few centuries. But arguing that Starship achieves basically the same thing seems wrong to me. Starship is subject to the rocket equation. That means all but a few percent of its launch mass is rocket fuel. Space hooks of all sorts require some transfer of energy, but the idea is it's on the order of magnitude of the actual potential energy gained. Edit: It strikes me as implausible that we'll get unobtainium with sufficient material strength to build a space elevator without accompanying superconductors run through the elevator structure, but when I ran the numbers, current lithium ion batteries are about 1/60th of the energy density of mass moved from the highest equatorial point on earth to geosync orbit. Not so very different from the rocket equation, you're right, if we decide there's no way to convey energy through the space elevator. It's all sci-fi anyway!