I don't think that Elon is so opposed to power satellites that he'd turn down the business of launching them for someone who wanted to build them. And if such a person came to him, he'd figure out how to do it. Probably building on his existing tech. He just doesn't think the concept worth investing his own money in.
On 2014-04-06 21:27, Keith Henson wrote:
On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 9:02 PM, Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:On 4/6/2014 8:49 PM, Keith Henson wrote:How do you scale Falcon's to 500,000 tons per year to GEO?Why on God's green earth would anyone (other than you of course, Keith)either want to or expect to?Reaction Engines thinks it's a good idea. Remember them?If SSP on that scale ever does come about, itwill be an incremental, gradual, many-projects distributed thing, NOT somecommand-economy White Sea Canal project.That means it will not come about unless someone can make a case against the physics for incremental and gradual. I would *much* prefer it to be done that way. I reluctantly came to the conclusion it has to be a huge project to get the economics to work out. Please find a flaw in my work/thinking/assumptions/physics. I will help you any way I can. If you can't and power sats are not constructed, what do you propose to do to fill the gap as cheap oil runs out?How do you scale that level to 20 times that much?Incrementally, via the market. Or not, if no market for that ever develops.If you have a fleet of laser Skylons operating, it's easy to grow it incrementally to 10 million tons per year because it makes enormous profits while undercutting the energy market. It doesn't take that much of an increase in the aerospace business. But rockets? I don't see how.If SpaceX can do it, I wantto talk to them. I don't think they can.That's OK, Keith, I suspect SpaceX will survive the blow.Musk is utterly opposed to power satellites. Building them with Falcon's isn't going to happen even if the economics made sense. Keith
