@CVDon: Think of it as like trains. Steel wheels on steel rails are more efficient than motor vehicles, in transporting mass across the surface.

@3V3RYMAN: Why? You would ride up the thing very much like a building with an external elevator...and it goes to space.

@OgilvyTheAstronomer: Define 'getting off.'

@Ceropegius: I have multiple problems with space elevators, but not this one. Carbon nanotubes = Unobtanium in this case.

@gorehound: Please tell me that by also, you mean 'instead of,' and not 'after...'

@HalOfBorg: Yes, junk will be touched...

@∞Gïmmï∞Mørgäikkøŋëŋ∞: This is too easy, I'm going back to amygdala jokes...

Tell me again about how bad the TSA rules are...

Is that what they call it, where you come from?

@Starlionblue: Not the same, but I think they might be sisters, though...

@Jesse_Astle: No, but if the technology becomes cheap enough, I can see people creating colonies based in their particular religion, as has happened before...

@Srynerson: It's perfectly consistent, when you consider that people's notions and perception of what has a high or low probability of occurrence is and/or can be wrong or manipulated...

@NotGodot: And so, we deserve to die for our past 'sins,' or not expand out because of perceived future 'sins.'

@t3knomanser: "The best solution is to invest more heavily in robotic exploration, which provides excellent cost/benefit for pure science, and advances our spacecraft and robotics technologies- two areas that need to be greatly advanced before colonization becomes at all practical. "

Europeans did not colonize the New World(tm) with the express notion of creating a repository of Western Civilization, in case something disastrous happened to Europe...yet we happen to be that.

@Anekanta - Re-Socialized Killbot: "So, long story short, we'll get to space when we're mature enough as a civilization to get there. "

@hwilam: You want to skip the 'underground for tens of millions of years' step, though...

@balloondoggle: Or any first-day Star Wars movie...

@Wenchette: Was that:

@Manly McBeeferton: That's all right, it was worth the trip...