On Sunday, November 25, 2012 10:02:11 AM UTC-5, cfrjlr wrote:
Helium-3 is abundant on the Moon but very rare on Earth

What if, instead, you put that elevator money into a nuclear reactor to breed large quantities of tritium and then let the tritium decay into helium-3?

You could avoid all the expense of going to the moon and, if the He3 market crashes, you still have a power-generating nuclear reactor. A space elevator without a market is in a vulnerable position.

Mike Miller