Mass penalties: same for imported and local (was Can SSPS kWh's be p

>
> > a $350 transportation surcharge on a $5 tube of toothpaste
> > is going to severely cut down on the goods that are
> > imported up into a Habitat and will spur on domestic
> > production
>
> Why would the Pm (Penalty, mass) for a domestically-produced item be
> any less than that for an imported item, unless the raw materials for
> the former were being sourced from somewhere other than Earth?

I think that you would be well served by doing some research on the
fundamentals of the High Frontier concept. No one, other than you, is
proposing that we launch millions of tons of material from Earth so
that we may build a Habitat for thousands or hundreds of thousands of
folks simply so that billionaires can escape paying taxes on Earth and
that all of their consumables also be launched from Earth. Your
proposal makes as much sense as advocating that the colonists who
settled North America should have imported lumber from Europe because
they didn't want to develop axes and sawmills on the shores of their
new land, even while surrounded by endless vistas of forests.

The follow-on benefits of supplying energy to Earth is the development
of an industrial infrastructure in orbit, which means the sourcing of
mass from orbital bodies.