Comments by "" (@DanielSMatthews) on "The Lunar Space Elevator" video.

How much fuel do you need to save using such an elevator before you have even recovered all of the energy and materials required to make it? That question shows that it is not viable "now" because that is not how humans do anything, they progress incrementally and not by investing more than they need to get to the next stage of development. Anyway it probably isn't needed as mass driver tubes bored into the surface of the moon would be a byproduct of both mining for materials and sinking shafts deep enough to create safe cities on the moon. Driver tubes can operate in both directions and capture energy as they slow an incoming craft so that the energy can be used when it launches again. You can also make them at different sizes and depths and have as many of them as your traffic levels require over time, so the idea scales nicely. Do the maths on that.
1