Actually, dumping energy seemed to be a bigger deal than energy cost to orbit. Perhaps they could anchor it somewhere like the middle of Africa which REALLY could use cheap energy and sell the energy surplust to defray operating costs.Hard to say. Current tech with a large market could drop costs to $s per pound of cargo to orbit. A teather might be cheaper -- or might be more expensive. A teathers overhead and maint expenses could well be far more. Teather advocates love to quote the stats that "energy costs" to orbit would only be pennies per pound of cargo. But the energy costs of conventional launchers is little more -- and a trivial fraction of actual costs.
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