NN: What budget do you believe is necessary to make it happen within 10 years?

If we were given $10B (~$1B/year) we could have the first elevator operational in roughly 10 years.

NN: What's being tossed around now regarding potential developers? Who would pay for it? Government, private, business? NASA, or private, or business consortium?

We have talked to three private investment entities that are interested in constructing it. In terms of who might build it, it has a VERY high return on investment for any organization or country and there are many companies, individuals and countries that can afford $1B/year for ten years. Look at Dubai or Canada or any number of other entities. Dubai has invested many billions in its infrastructure over the last few years; the big dig in Boston is coming in around $15B; the new airport in Toronto was $4B; TRY 2004 in Japan is predicted to be $800B; the Airbus current jumbo development is around $10B.
—Bradley C. Edwards is the President of X Tech, Inc. a small company formed to address space elevator related research issues, and President of Carbon Designs, a small company developing high-strength materials. He sits on the Board of Directors at Spaceward (non-profit), Colony Fund I (investment firm), and Bakkura (technology company), is the Former Director of Research, Institute for Scientific Research, Co-founder/CTO of HighLift Systems.

NN: What advantages does having a SE bring to the country or business that builds the first one?

It means limitless, safe, simple, affordable access to space, with a predictable cargo schedule. It means the cargo can become an enormous increase in energy resources (huge solar energy satellites supplying clean - endlessly renewable - power back to earth); expanded, permanent settlements on the moon and mars and asteroids, and a stepping stone beyond, into the 'wild black yonder.' It means expanded communications to everyone on the planet - phone, video, internet, because of a greatly increased commsat infrastructure. It means bio-science advances that may allow us to live longer and in greater comfort in our old age, and better, higher purity medicines that we will use in our goal of a full and healthy life. So these advantages would go to the whole planet, really.

LiftPort Group intends to be the company that leads the international consortium in the construction and operations/management of the first Space Elevator. Once the first one is established, I believe many more will be built, because it is the only space transportation infrastructure that can apply economies of scale. They actually get less expensive the more you build, which also means the price/kilo can fall dramatically, as expanded systems are built.

There are significant commercial barriers to entry for whomever tries to build the 2nd one, if they try to do it without the cooperation of the people who built the first one.
—Michael J. Laine is the President and Chief Strategic Officer of the LiftPort Group "The Space Elevator Companies."

NN: What other nano-enhanced technologies may pave the way to off-earth travel? Surely all those that are soon to come will take advantage of the high strength-to-weight ratio of CNTs.

Higher strength-to-mass ratios of materials can improve conventional rockets and their payloads. Advancing micro/nanotechnology in computers improves the performance of payloads. Just by making people generally richer and making it generally cheaper to build things, nanotechnology can improve the potential for space development. Reflector-based solar panels using straightforward nanotechnology could increase the power per kg of solar panels by orders of magnitude, and that would allow vastly better solar-electric ion engines.
—Thomas L. McKendree, His dissertation, Technical and Operational Assessment of Molecular Nanotechnology for Space Operations, examines molecular nanotechnology and space, with a focus on space manufacturing and transportation.