Ultimately, the continual strengthening of the elevator(s) tether will usher in an age of economical, luxurious travel to space, affordable to all, traveling up the elevator courtesy of maglev technology. At the terminal end of the tether could be a huge space habitat/hotel/factory/research center, and the gateway to the rest of the solar system. A multiple-strand elevator tether could support the deployment of very large carriages, capable of lifting multi-ton payloads and passengers in cruise-ship style, with private berths, lounges and first-class accomodations.
Geosync habitats, featuring double spheres that counter-rotate to provide artificial gravity, could be built to feature terrestrial environments including grass,trees, and waterfeatures; large enough to have their own 'weather'.
Think of hollow, 'inside-out' world plans
As the elevator is expanded, a balancing mass would need to be added to compensate for the weight of the tether and keep it correctly tensioned; this mass could take the form of a small asteroid, selected from the great number of carbonaceous bodies rich in organics inhabiting the solar system and occupying earth-crossing orbits, and gradually manuevered into position above the earth. Such an asteroid would also serve as a wealth of raw material to augment orbital constructions and provide consumables. Orbital factories could process the compounds mined from it and deliver value-added exotic manufactured goods to groundside via the elevator.
An additional benefit of the placement of facilities at or past geosynchronus orbit is the 'slingshot' effect obtainable due to centrepital forces/acceleration; a spacecraft carried up the elevator past geosync altitude could simply be released from the end of the tether with an intrinsic velocity sufficient to take it into deep space, requiring no use of propellants/rockets for launch. This would enable the construction and deployment of probes/instrument packages of considerably larger extent/capacity than currently possible, even to the inclusion of manned planetary missions.
