Let me quote Pyotr Makovetskii, the book "See the root cause" ("Zri v koren'" in Russian), from chapter 28: (http://n-t.ru/ri/mk/sk028.htm)
"And overall, such a tower is a diabolical invention. Rotating in equatorial plane it will knock off everything it encounters. And since any satellite orbit intersect the equatorial plane, sooner or later all satellites with orbit lower than the tower height will be knocked down. At the base of the tower will lay remnants of almost the whole cosmonautics."
I'd assume this closes naive discussions about space elevator, at least until the proponents will explain what they are going to do with the problem of hitting satellites. Yet I see this problem again and again with hardly any progress in this area...
"And overall, such a tower is a diabolical invention. Rotating in equatorial plane it will knock off everything it encounters. And since any satellite orbit intersect the equatorial plane, sooner or later all satellites with orbit lower than the tower height will be knocked down. At the base of the tower will lay remnants of almost the whole cosmonautics."
I'd assume this closes naive discussions about space elevator, at least until the proponents will explain what they are going to do with the problem of hitting satellites. Yet I see this problem again and again with hardly any progress in this area...