re: Hypothetical: Could modern day engineers move the Lower Mississippi River?

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Can you at least draw up a crude mockup of your earth-moon elevator?

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Off the top of my head, I can give you a written description for one option. If you need a visual I can probably come up with something.

For now, it would have to be steel and in order to get the elevations needed the structure would have to look similar to the Eiffel Tower for stability with a shaft in the center. This would require a massive area at the Earth's surface for a foundation and with extra material can be done in an open ocean. To reduce the amount of material needed there should be (2) structures, one on Earth and the other on the moon. This would obviously require staging from one elevator run to the other. The elevation of the structures would not be equal but optimized to help with the staging from one shaft to the other based on the moons speed around the Earth. At the ends of both elevators (staging areas) would be a device similar to a centrifuge for testing g forces. The spinning capsule would be passed from one centrifuge to the other as the tops of the elevators pass each other.

I'm not saying we aren't going to lose tens of thousands of people until we get it right but........I am drunk and think my idea is fricking brilliant.