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To: Free ThinkerNY

It will be way more than $2 per kilogram. There will be costs to get the tether built and erected and maintained. The elctricity may be the cheapest part of it. There will be tons of overhead nobody has calculated yet.


2 posted on 09/03/2009 7:42:44 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (I'd like to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.)
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To: Secret Agent Man

Yeah, it could be $8K per kilo!

If you go all the way to the end, though, beyond geosync, and let go, the slingshot effect is pretty strong. Out at the end, a hundred kilo package to Mars or the Moon becomes much cheaper than a launch from Earth surface.

A beanstalk on the Moon, now....

The Greenies would never allow such a thing. If you run a mass out 30,000 miles and let it go, you steal from Earth’s rotational energy, and don’t get it back unless you attach an equal mass of, say, refined asteroidal heavy metals (iridium, platinum) and wind it back down to the surface.


5 posted on 09/03/2009 7:57:58 PM PDT by DBrow
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To: Secret Agent Man

Just like the space shuttle is a “re-usable spaceplane.”


6 posted on 09/03/2009 8:02:16 PM PDT by eclecticEel (The Most High rules in the kingdom of men ... and sets over it the basest of men.)
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