The Maine Solution - Updated

> Are there no comments about the launch ring being
> studied by the Air Force with Launch Point
> Technologies in Goleta, Calif?
I myself have tremendous affection for EM launchers (I even wrote a novella about one), but the fact that you brought one up kind of illustrates the point I was making when I said it's not this or that new tech, it's the traffic model. More recently, some commentators have been criticizing the notion that eitherEM launchersor space elevators are our salvation. They point out that the only way such mega-projects could amortize their enormous up-front costs would be with extremely-frequent launches, and point out that such launch frequencies would alsohave a profound affect on the economics of plain old rockets. For example, the system cited talked about 300 launches a year, and then later 3000 launches a year, with predicted costs/kg. But is it really fair to compare costs between one technology launching at the rate of 3000 a year, and another doing perhaps 3? What would the chemical rocket launch costs look like if they were fired off at the rate of8 or 9a day?