How viable is the idea of a space elevator?

I really would like to know how viable the idea is. I know it pops up from time to time in Pop Sci, but I want to know if this is an idea that could be implemented in 5, 10, 50, never years?

Space tourism is great, but we need an inexpensive way to get a lot of material into space if we're going to go much farther than the moon.

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Permalink Reply by Abdul Wahid Tanner on February 28, 2008 at 1:17pm: Mark,

Do you know Michael Laine? He has been working on building a space elevator for a long time and has lots of information on his site at http://www.liftport.com

Regards,
Wahid; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mark Pitman on March 6, 2008 at 12:32am: No i hadn't seen this. Thanks.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mark Pitman on March 6, 2008 at 12:36am: You brought a lot to the discussion that I hadn't considered before. Things just never turn out to be as easy as you'd hope. Still as you said, it has so much potential to open up a multitude of space exploration opportunities not otherwise feasible that I think it will be done.

5-10 years does seem optimistic, but it would be great to see a real public push toward getting us to space in a more real way than the shuttle program.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Gregory Emsellem on March 5, 2008 at 10:22am: I would not hope to see it anytime before at least 10 years... nevertheless I wold bet that we will see a lot to technology demonstration done around tether experiment since the core technology are similar and the cost and risk of a "simple" tether experiment are much lower.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mark Pitman on March 6, 2008 at 12:39am: Absolutely. There are already carbon nanotubes being built that have the strength needed for the tether. Granted they aren't very long, but you're talking about a 1 to 2 foot tether made out of a single chain of carbon nanotubes all aligned together. That's pretty impressive.; ▶ Reply to This