And the space elevator is not something that would be developed by interplanetary travelers but by people who just want to get into Earth orbit.
I think it would mainly be useful for people either launching/maintaining a lot of satellites, or living in Earth orbit. Or if someone is producing energy or material in space (orbital solar power stations?) and they want to easily transmit it back to Earth, an elevator would probably be more efficient than weekly collection runs.
> And the space elevator is not something that would be developed by interplanetary travelers but by people who just want to get into Earth orbit.
That's not true at all. The vast majority of the energy cost of going to another planet is incurred just getting into earth orbit. A space elevator radically improves the economics of interplanetary travel.
In fact, you can get certain transfer orbits "for free" by just extending your tether a bit beyond geosynchronous orbit and using it to fling bulk payloads to Mars, etc.
Although it does make getting into orbit very slow.
In "Blue Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson, we get to a point where travel between Earth and Mars is faster than the elevator ride from the top of Earth's elevator to the bottom.
I think it would mainly be useful for people either launching/maintaining a lot of satellites, or living in Earth orbit. Or if someone is producing energy or material in space (orbital solar power stations?) and they want to easily transmit it back to Earth, an elevator would probably be more efficient than weekly collection runs.