Isn't the purpose of a space elevator, not having to deal with gravity? but this is at least ten thousand years in the future, surely human beings will have solved the mysteries of gravity by then. how else would they colonise the whole galaxy... and we see in the show that they have solved the gravity. smallest ships can ascend from the surface and go into deep space without having any difficulty, they have hovercrafts in the show. gravity is not an issue in this series.. so why is there an unnecessary space elevator? just for show?
(sorry for butchering the grammar, but I hope I could make myself clear :))
"If the space elevator has low maintenance costs (and I see no reason why they would be high), then it should be cheaper to get the space elevator than a shuttle, and people would catch it for the same reason they catch a long bus ride instead of a plane."
In my 20 years of work, the people who take long bus rides are those who can't afford a plane (or want the scenic view, assuming that we're talking about the Rockies and not the Plains). Almost all vendors either take the plane or the train, if it's the Boston-to-DC corridor, for the sake of business.
Imagine one's a businessman from Alpha Centauri, after a tiring hyperspace journey to the Capital, now has to wait another 14 hours with a boring view (esp after the 1st couple of hours), just to get to his ground taxi/livery service to get to the hotel or the conference center. I'd demand my space shuttle immediately, upon arriving at the elevator platform.
"Calling something "nano-explosives" only gives it a name, it doesn't say where the energy for the explosion comes from."
The show is simply trying to indicate that they were hidden and not caught immediately by the sophisticated security systems in place. Nano means miniaturized and not easily perceived like a suitcase bomb.
"people have been known to build planet-wide single points of failure, such as the main factory of TSMC in Taiwan that produces a significant amount chips in the low nanometer range, or some of the facilities around the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia."
Yes, which is why there's South Korea, Japan, USA, and a few other places which makes chips. Granted, not at Taiwan's high capacity but still, if Taiwan fell, chip manufacturing would simple increase in price. Computing, on the whole, would not collapse.
And as for Saudi, they produce only 9.2 billion out of a global production rate of 76.1 billion barrels per day.
In contrast, a huge chunk of Trantor's interstellar commerce and livelihood was placed at risk by the Space Elevator.