Edwards said he probably needs about two more years of development on the carbon nanotubes to obtain the strength needed.
In other words, nothing we can currently build is strong enough.
No, there already are carbon nanotubes used in current commercial applications (some are already in plastic car bumpers) it's just a matter of improving an existing technology, not inventing a new one.
Ain't seen a darn thing made out of carbon nanotubes yet.
Nothing can be strong enough, period.
It's like trying to bring the Moon close to the Earth. You can't. It'll break up due to the Roche Limit. You can't break the laws of nature.
The tidal force will destroy a space elevator -- even if you can erect it -- as soon as you try to use it.
"Two years" translates to 10 years, at least -- he's only talking about the basic materials research, and it would probably take more than two years. After that, he's still got to find a way to create, not to mention test, 20,000 flawless miles of this stuff.
And his $10 billion is also undoubtedly way off -- probably by at least a factor of 10. It would cost a lot more than that just for the rockets to launch the material and dispenser into space (you have to drop it down from GEO; you can't put it up from the ground.)
Not to mention R&D on the enabling technology -- cable manufacturing, the dispenser bus, ground receivers, "elevator" stabilization technology, shielding, repair vehicles, figuring out how to repair the cable when it's under tension, and whatever other stuff needed to create and deploy a long, continuous cable, and so on.
It's a great idea, but there's a lot of stuff that needs to happen before this can be made to work. This guy's shading the truth, which is too bad.