I've heard of the guys in charge of google (overgrown kids by the sound of it, like me ;-) ) want to build an SE directly up to the moon. before you guys all say "preposterous", like I first did, let's consider it at least briefly.

First of all, your elevator has to have the same orbit as the moon, which travels east-west (relative to the surface) in a little more than 24 hours. gives you aprox. 40100km/24hrs or ~167.1km/hr or mach 0.14. that's not to bad for a sky-platform. then of course you'll need it to be floating, but not altogether without aerosurfaces. It has to be in the stratosphere for airplanes and helicopters to land, and be able to dodge LEO and GEO satellites, not to mention the SE we're all trying to build.

A hotel group could be involved to build a tourist destination in the clouds (i wanna go) and of course GOOGLE would be in there as well.

... what're your thoughts?

What I heard is they have a plan all worked out to correct those minor imperfections in the moon's orbit, build the elevator, and then use all of the moon's cheap real estate for data centers.

Andreas

I think Andreas is spoofing us about correcting the Moon orbit by 46,000 kilometers. That would likely take all the man made energy man has produced the past 1000 years.
Also  there is a times 10 error: 40100 kilometers divided by 24 = 1761 kilometers per hour which would produce lots of air friction losses.   Neil

For the sake of discussion we agree to assume that someone could circularize the orbit of the moon.  Before attempting to do so we would need to thoroughly analyze the impact on Earth.  A few questions come to mind:
[INDENT]1) How will this change the ocean tides?
2) What is the impact of tidal changes on the things that live in the tidal zones?
3) Really important is will this mess up surfing or improve it?
4) What will be the impact on global weather?
5) Does anyone really think the environmentals will adopt a wait-and-see attitude?[/INDENT]This could be a very long list.  
And I thought that building the SE is a public relations nightmare.

I think there are some more problems. The moon circles the Earth once per month, so tethering the Earth and moon together seems completely impractical.
We likely can build a moon elevator = attached to the moon, but not to Earth with presently available materials, perhaps for a few billion dollars, after we have cheap access to space. This could be as short as 50,000 kilometers, or as long as 350,000 kilometers. The shorter length is less costly, but less useful except between L1 and the moon. At about 350,000 kilometers the ribbon would typically miss Earth by up to 70,000 kilometers, but it would dip slightly into Earth's atmosphere a few times per decade traveling about 1500 kilometers per hour. So suborbital craft could receive and deliver payloads. Climbers of the Dr.Edwards type could make the trip from moon to L1 (or reverse) in about a week, but a trip of 350,000 kilometers would take perhaps two months (each way) so I don't think there would be many human travelers.   Neil

Hi Frank: A minimum energy (almost) to crash on the moon takes about a month, but it reaches minimum speed about 50,000 kilometers from the moon so it could attach to the moon SE, with a small amount of delta v to correct the direction.
If we want to get to the moon in a week or less, we also need a short bolo at the tip of the moon elevator (attached at the hub,I think) to slow the payload and correct the direction. Bolos in orbit around the moon or Earth would rarely be in the correct position to get the payload attached with only a bit of delta v, but halving the delta v may make using a bolo practical.   Neil