Any discussion that I have heard about space elevators , has included the use of NANOTUBES  and
 how they will be anchored to an asteroid or something similar in a low Earth orbit.
  How long will it be before we will see any possibility of a tether-wire that is thousands of miles long
 and made of NANOTUBES
              MICHAEL JAY . . . PHONE: (253)-JAY-1900 . . .  SEATTLE , WA

Wire and cable are easily cut by a one gram micro meteorite, so tethers will be made from ribbon about one meter wide. We could likely take delivery on a 2000 kilometer ribbon with a thin sheath of CNT on the surfaces in 2008, but it would be no stronger and possibly less reliable than a Kevar ribbon with the same mass. Worse the cost would be hundreds of times the cost of a Kevar ribbon.
There is a slight possibility that a major tether break through has occured in price and/or strength, but the company will not announce until they can make deliveries by the ton. More likely CNT applications will be rare before 2010.   Neil