re: Pardon my question....
"I'm talking about a long but near-term feasible cable, not a solid tower."
I suppose you are talking about carbon-nanotube cable? Problem is this stuff doesn't exist- it's unobtainium. This carbon-nanotube cable would have many uses and would be very valuable for lots of things besides a space elevator, but at the moment you can't buy it- nobody sells it by the foot. If I wanted this stuff I couldn't buy it for $1000, $10,000, or $100,000 per ft or even billions of dollars per mile.