Reply To: What is the current state of the project?

[Brian H]

Breakable wrote: I would like to point out that the only reason a space elevator makes sense is due to the inefficiency of current rocket engines and the total costs (environmental and energetic) of producing rocket fuel. Space elevators purpose is just to reduce the price of delivering loads to orbit.
In case we have cheap energy and/or reaction-less drives and/or cheap easy to produce environmentally friendly fuel (aluminium rockets are being tested now) space elevator becomes more of a attraction than practicality. Yes it would be nice for kids to take an excursion to, but in case you could buy semi-orbital flight for ~1000 usd, it becomes less of an interest.

Tourism is not the point. Projections suggest a marginal cost to orbit (not just sub-orbit) of as low as $20/lb (and FF could seriously slash that). That is orders of magnitude lower than even optimistic fueled boost projections. Energy-wise, “Once you are in orbit, you are half-way to anywhere”.

As for reactionless drives, that’s way too deep in free energy perpetual motion territory for my mind. The Mach Effect is pure physics bootstrapping. IBIWISI (I’ll Believe It When I See It).