I didn’t remember those. Space elevators have always been an extremely out-there concept that requires material science that’s theoretically possible but not yet existing. The point stands - rotovators or elevators or hypersonic linear accelerators or something neither of us has thought to mention all stand to potentially reduce the cost of space travel to “jump in the Millennium Falcon and go” levels (reducing costs from a hundred million to a few hundred thousand per trip), but they all require huge amounts of traffic going to and from space to be practical and affordable.
Creating a spacefaring economy has always foundered on figuring out what things we need/want to do in space that will justify the extravagant cost of setting up the space infrastructure needed to make a spacefaring economy doable.
