It costs $6708 per kilogram to launch from Space X. This is a reusable rocket. Lets say I have a crazy airship the size of a Walrus Hula and pick the thing up into the air and launch from altitude like a reusable space rocket, you cut the costs by 20% or even crazier a giant cloud 9 like the STARS, Then lets say you improve the manufacturing costs and make your ship out of recycled materials and 3D printed plastics and are able to cut costs another 20%. You are down to $4295 per launch. Now lets say you pull off around 100 -- 250 kilogram satellite launches and charge 5000 per kilogram 1,250,000 per launch cheaper than anyone else. Everyone is charging 20,000 per kilogram. People have put a lot of satellites up at $20,000 per kilogram.
You have just cornered the satellite market. The costs goes way down after you reuse the launch vehicle 20 times before it blows up. You create routine automation for the launch from your high altitude platform. Your prices go down again because of reuse to $3000 per kilogram. You now start sending up cargo pods which can manufacture pharmaceuticals, exotic materials, and computer chips which are worth more than $3,000 per kilogram. Something like ZB Lan Optical Fiber . You have done a second income generating activity, manufacturing something no one else can make. It is not necessarily the whole product, but a piece for a new type of computer, part of a pharmaceutical, etc. Now you have two levels of manufacturing. You get greedy and decide you have to snatch that rock, the big one with 500 pounds of platinum in it. Industry gives you money to grab that rock before anyone else can. You now have some people in space to monitor that industry which makes money. It is not enough to keep those people up there, you have to keep them up there cheaply. You build transhab modules and you arrange to have people come up as tourists. You are bigelow aerospace. $1,000,000 per day to have a space holiday. It costs $300,000 to get them up there assuming 100 kg goes up. You now have a few more settlers. Your first rock returns. It has a giant advertisement on it and huge amounts of publicity, it makes the money from publicity initially. What is next. Get to that moon. Why the moon, Helium 3-- you can have fusion power with helium 3. Also it is possible to build fusion thermal rockets with water and Helium 3 both found on the moon. Initially the money is not what counts. You got there first and built there first.
Modification 08/18/2018
You develop a new type of rocket engine based on solid propellants. Paraffin is an ideal environmentally friendly fuel that will reduce your cost for fuel by an order of magnitude.
http://www.spg-corp.com/advanced-hybrid ... fuels.html This further reduces your costs to $2500 per kilogram.
You work on miniaturization of many of the components in the space craft to reduce weight. Then you do a general search across industries to find standardized industrial components to replace many of the parts with cheaper mass produced industrial grade parts from many different heavy industries-- trucking, airplanes, manufacturing, etc. This reduces the cost of valves and numerous standard electrical systems. The next step is to upgrade the battery and spark plug systems with standard batteries you might find in industry like lithium ion batteries in cars. We have standardized industrialized bio-batteries made from sugar. The changes further bring the costs down to $2000 per kilogram.
The DNEPR rocket created by the Russians could get a satellite into low earth orbit for about $2000 per kilogram.
More recently, The Falcon Heavy Rocket by Space X could get rockets to GEO for $1411 per kilogram with multiple flights ten of them it would go to $743 per kilogram. If it went to twenty flights, it would be below $500 per kilogram.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/02/r ... power.htmlNow you are getting people up there. What is the next step, you build a space gun. The space gun can't send up people, it can send up supplies cheaply. A space gun costs about $250 per kilogram. Things like food, metals, wood, biologicals which are heavy and durable can be sent up fairly quickly. If you have a high altitude platform like a big tensegrity sphere that is heavy enough, you might even be able to use your space gun at high altitude allowing for more cargo and less chemicals for firing the shell. I think this would be kind of soft PMT.
http://www.astronautix.com/a/abriefhist ... oject.htmlOOC: ZB Lan Optical Fiber
https://www.space.com/39039-made-in-spa ... -test.html