Hi Tom

An SE would be easy to build with the projected budget of the return to the Moon program - once the trick of making long enough lengths of strong nanotubes thread can be figured out.

But imagine what huge quantities of ultra-light, ultra-strong nanotubes would mean here on Earth!

BTW Jerome Pearson has made a recent NIAC study of his 1975 idea of tethered lunar satellites which would allow astronauts to land on the Moon using an elevator at high latitudes - and it wouldn't need nanotubes. An equatorial touch-down site could use space-ready plastic line. A small lunar SE could be built for an orbiter mass of a few tons and haul up a few tons a year - handy for sample return and experimental industrial processing in LEO if you had an elliptical orbit capture tether catching it and returning it to LEO.

Who needs rockets???

Adam