Unfortunately, I don't think any chemical only rocket can get the cost to GEO down to where power satellites make sense. Only 1.3% of a Falcon Heavy makes it to GEO (19 tons out of 1440). Skylon, because it burns air a quarter of the way to orbit, gets 6 tons out of 300 to GEO (2%)
At high traffic rates, Falcon Heavy might get down to $1000/kg and Skylon to $350/kg. I can imagine 3 Skylon takeoffs per hour. I cannot imagine launching 3 Falcon Heavy per hour. If power sats must have $100/kg to make economic sense, then neither one of them will do it. However, using laser-heated hydrogen, a 125-ton Skylon variation can deliver 25-30 tons to LEO and 18 tons to GEO. That's 15%. Cost is less than doubled by the investment in lasers while payload fraction goes up by 7-8 times. The front-end investment is over $100 B; it makes power plants cheap enough to sell the power at 1-2 cents per kWh. The demand is certainly there at $1.6 B/GW, 1/5th the cost of a GW nuclear plant. Demand at such a low cost would permit very rapid growth, to one or two TW/year. At that rate, power sats would end human dependence on oil and coal within two decades from the start. Keith _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
