Step Zero got me thinking...

Space elevators are great things, getting stuff into GEO
all cheap like. Too bad they require materials near the
theoretical limits. Also, what I read indicates that a
ride in the SE would take a week. A week in an elevator
car... thank you, but no. It would be great for cargo,
though.

Now, rotating tethers. Now as great, energy/cost wise as
SE, but a lot better than the way we do it now. I can't
help but wonder, could a rotovator be made, with existing
materials and for under $100 billion, which could pluck
something like SpaceShipTwo out of it's suborbital
trajectory and fling it into an actual orbit? Say a
SpaceShipThree which would be of similar size,
performance, and mass to the SpaceShipTwo and would carry
the same number of people. I think this might just be
doable, and would really take a bite out of launch costs,
at least once the initial cost of building the thing was
recouped. Existing materials, under $100 billion.