The students at GSU did an amazing job bringing our design to life in this video. We are beyond impressed with their dedication and delivery. Thanks so much for sharing this!

Oops... I meant GCU (Glasgow Caledonian University). My bad, it's been a long day.

Every time I hear about a space elevator from Earth, I think of all that space junk floating around. How does one plan to miss the space junk hitting the elevator? It sounds a little safer from the moon than from Earth.

Note that the Lunar Elevator is based on an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PRINCIPLE from that of the Earth Elevator. The Earth Elevator is held up by centrifugal force acting on the counterweight, which is above the point where gravity and centrifugal force balance each other (aka geosynchronous orbit). The Lunar Elevator is held up by Earth's gravity acting on the counterweight, which is closer to Earth that the point where Earth and Lunar gravity balance each other (aka the L1 point).

What size is the counterweight? Will it burn up harmlessly upon re-entry into Earth's atmosphere when the inevitable breaking of the Kevlar happens? I don't think 250,000 Km of Kevlar will be immune to the effects of micrometeoroids and other space hazards.

Hm. I'd love to see this done, but in the next 5 years seems impossible without committing massive resources and more money than is realistic.
I don't care how light the material is, 250,000 km of anything isn't going to be a featherweight and making it in one piece with no weak points would be an engineering nightmare. I see it is expected to end in Earth's gravity well, but what about in our atmosphere? If it could extend low enough for aircraft (maybe dirigibles of some sort?) to reach, we wouldn't need an elevator on this end.
It's too bad we don't know if the moon has the materials we need to make the cable. It seems if the materials could be obtained on the moon, it would be far easier and less expensive to simply put a "factory" up there to make the cable there. Much easier to get it off of the moon's surface than the earth's. Still, I'm glad someone is actively working on this. I'd love to see this happen in my lifetime, and at 48, I'm running out of time to see such an ambitious project come to fruition.

I always wonder how long it will take to get into orbit on a space elevator. Speeds won't compare with rockets, time constraints will mean more provisions for the journey, less payload.

Space elevators won't ever be worth it for some planets, and Earth is probably one of them.
They don't save energy costs, just spread them out, they will always be a single-point failure risk, and the cost of them and the costs of catastrophic failure in large gravity wells is far more than many other far simpler and better-tested systems, like rail-guns or laser light vaporizing propellant from the ground.

Sounds all cool and blue sky and stuff, but the Moon's orbit around Earth is not a perfect circle. What happens when their "ribbon" is pulled out of the Earth's gravity well?

@Tommy Maq: "[Space elevators] don't save energy costs"
Sure they do; a rocket uses several orders of magnitude more energy to lift the same mass. It has to lift all of its fuel off the ground, 3/4th of its fuel 1/4th of the way up, half of its fuel half-way up, etc. That fuel weighs on the order of fifty times what the payload weighs. Space elevator climbers won't carry any fuel, will be powered by light.
"they will always be a single-point failure risk"
Not so, any more than a suspension bridge has a single point of failure. The elevator will consist of many interconnected strands spread out over several meters. Google hoytether.
"the cost of them and the costs of catastrophic failure in large gravity wells is far more than many other far simpler and better-tested systems"
You may be assuming the science fiction version of a space elevator, a massive construct as big around as a sequoia. In fact it will resemble a 3-foot wide sheet of saran wrap. If it breaks, that part that falls toward the Earth will either burn up in the atmosphere or flutter down like a falling sheet of newspaper.