Question on the space elevator

So it would take about 16 kg of fuel+oxidizer, give or take, to send 1
kg up the elevator. But you also have to carry the fuel to lift the
fuel, and the fuel to lift the fuel to lift the fuel, and so on.
Mathematically, you would have to carry e^16= 9 million kg of fuel+ox.
(Factors of 2 or 1/2 at that point become very important.)

Anyway, beaming the power becomes economical at that point.


That number of 9 million kg seems a little large... we've sent much
larger things out of the gravity well on much less fuel, using less
efficient processes.