Docking rings are a poor implementation of a space elevator (it's in the infocard), an efficient method of lifting a payload into orbit. That being said, the taking off animation doesn't look anything like "a space elevator," and I'm sure many would prefer effortless takeoff as seen in Star Wars and Firefly.
So we're sorta mixed between Science-fiction plausible and outright ignore-it-for-teh-arpee.