I had an idea yesterday about the minimum distance needed. Now, I have yet to work the math on this one but, rather than a 32,000 mile long elevator why not try sticking something from the equator to just above LEO, and using a series of orbiting satellites (or a cable around the earth) to keep it up (you would need to deflect them). Granted you still need to add orbital velocity but if you can get a useful amount of mass stable at that altitude you could build a pair of them to safely get something into orbit using a long rail gun between two of them.<p>I don't think it's stable but if you wanted to move a huge amount of mass out of the gravity well it might work.
The space elevator is miles off, so...<p>I put my money on Elon Musk and SpaceX to make space travel cheap enough in the meantime, until we can build the elevator. Got to focus on the short-term, the elevator is long-term.