25% fuel saving seems like a small saving compared to the cost of building such cable. And of course, the saving up to geostationary orbit would be zero...
I don't think you have your maths correct, either.
I don't think you have your maths correct, either.
Going from a rocket that is 2880T fuel and 120T for everything else to a rocket that uses 25% less fuel gives you 2160T fuel and 840T everything else. Decreasing the fuel by 25% increased the rest of your budget by 7x!
If the starting point is 2,880t fuel for 120t payload, so 24t of fuel per ton of payload, then 25% less fuel gives 18t of fuel per ton of payload and thus your 3,000t rocket can now carry 158t of payload, or 32% more.
Even "we can see that the spaceline cuts the fuel cost of such a mission by approximately two thirds" is not a game changer compared to the cost of building the cable.
Space elevators are touted as game changers because although building one would be extraordinarily expensive it would slash the cost of sending payload to space by orders of magnitude, making it worthwhile.
This article talks about a cable from geostationary orbit to the moon.
That still leave the ground-to-geostationary part for conventional lifters.
Dang, I totally misunderstood, I thought this thing was going to go much lower.
Of course, it still probably isn't worth doing, there's not huge dollar reasons for people to be on the moon, mostly just fun science reasons.
And this thing doesn't even help with the orbit part, it helps with getting to a different part of the solar system once you get to orbit.