[bobbles]

It's shame that after that entire explanation (the moon-earth firepole one) that he never actually answers the question of how long it would take...

[saagarjha]

Most of the time goes into climbing, which he estimates as taking "several years".

[LorenPechtel]

You can't climb the pole. Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation rules, you can't bring enough food to climb the pole. (Yes, I know, it's not a rocket. It really should be called Tsiolkovsky's logistics equation--it applies to any situation where you have to bring along your power source, whether it's a rocket or not.)