No chance. Requires massive budget, and technology that isn't yet available. Electromagnetic catapults have never achieved the high velocities required, not to mention the mega-engineering to create a track 100's of km long that is levitated >20km above the earth by a huge magnetic field, and yet is light enough to accelerate a capsule with GW of power.
A far better option is to put $10billion into developing Skylon http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/downloads/SKYLON_User_%20Manual_rev1%5B3%5D.pdf a fully reusable space plane that is air breathing to Mach 5 and you could ultimately get launch costs down to $100/kg after 10-20 years of gradual reliability improvement without requiring any magic or unrealistic technology. These guys are quite far along in their development, and hope to be flying an engine demonstrator in next few years. SpaceX is also targeting a fully reusable system, and have a pretty workable plan with fly-back boosters that will probably get launch prices down to <$1000/kg in the next few years (and put their competitors out of business barring those that are government subsidised) Alternatively gun launchers like http://quicklaunchinc.com/ or ram acclerators http://www.tbfg.org/papers/Ram%20Accelerator%20Technical%20Risks%20ISDC07.pdf can actually achieve the velocities required for investments of <$1 billion. And could be scaled up to large sizes quite cheaply by floating them in the Marianas trench, though accelerations are still too high for humans they could drop orbital costs at least as low as any other proposal. 2012/4/10 Jouni Valkonen <[email protected]>: > How about $40/kg cargo into LEO? This tech could have vastly larger capasity > and speed than with Space Elevator. And it is a little bit cheaper, well in > reach of current engineering and does not require exotic nanomaterials that > do not exist in required scale nowhere near in the future if never. > > Holiday in the stars: Space train could send four million people a year into > orbit by 2032 > > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2113668/Space-holidays-Space-train-send-million-people-year-orbit-2032.html > > > —Jouni
