sun, moisture, wind, airplanes....
Okay, let’s say we somehow get around all that. I’m just doing a little math here: Moving at 100 mph, It’s about a 26 day trip one-way, non-stop. A little over three weeks. Four if the speed drops to 90 mph. How much power is it going to take to a) lift something and b) keep it from falling at terminal velocity?
And I can just imagine humans on board with a breakdown happens. Not a crash, just a breakdown. How do you make repairs as say 200,000 feet?
And another thing: just for poops and laughs, I decided to check the weight on this pipe if it happens to be 1 inch carbon steel.
249,984 tons.
Yeah, I know, it would have to be a lot bigger than an inch.
So, can I go back to laughing now?
It’s 62,000 miles long to keep it taunt and the force equal at both ends. 26 days if you go all the way to the end.
However, payloads could detach at around 150 miles up and would be weightless. We could first haul up parts to make a fleet of reentry-less shuttles that can grab payloads at 100-150 miles up and bring them further (and a lot faster) to orbital space stations, etc. Fuel for the shuttles can go up the tether, too. And since the shuttles wouldn’t need to waste 98% of their fuel getting off the Earth, they could go a long ways hauling stuff around near-Earth to high-Earth orbit.
Bigger shuttles could be built up there in space for longer hauls, say to comets and asteroids for additional raw materials. Comets are big snow balls, full of ice that can be melted and using continuous orbital solar power broken down into hydrogen (fuel) and oxygen (life support).
I say it IS the future.