[hsnewman]

"With a space elevator in the moon you can use raw material from the moon to assemble huge stations and ships in space."

Yeah, you really believe its trivial to work in space? Repairing the Hubble cost billions, I can't imagine the cost of building 1 ship in space (from stuff manufactured on the moon, which itself would be so costly I can't even imagine).

[scardine]

The space elevator itself would be something outrageously expensive and dangerous to build - but there will always be people willing to take the challenge.

[s1artibartfast]

And likely less expensive than the international space station.

The proposed mass of the lunar elevator is 40,000 kg, and does not include life support.

The mass of the ISS is 419,725 kg and cost ~150 billion.

For comparison, direct appropriations for the 2003-2010 war in Iraq (in addition to the defense budget) were 1.1 trillion.