So I had lunch with a guy last week in Bangkok who is working on a prototype for an electromagnetic launch vehicle in the ocean.
Why the ocean? Because his final product will be 2km in diameter. Sure you could dig a deep hole to get it to work or you just take the tube and let it sit deep in the ocean.
He wanted to talk to me because of the seasteading connection. He's not like one of the many dreamers I meet in the seasteading world, he is already funding the prototype himself and has it built, transporting it to the ocean this week. The prototype will be 50 meters in diameter with a 10cm wide tube launching at about 300 m/s.
We discussed it and said it would be a great business for seasteaders since you'll need people maintaining and keeping an eye on the structure. Though he prefers Thailand due to the cheap labor.
Equatorial launch platforms are quite interesting.. They tend to be truly massive in scale for the mass to orbit ratio to start to make sense. Basically a rail gun with a long low vacuum barrel. You need about
7.2 km/s to achieve a LEO. Building a mechanism capable of lofting tonnage into orbit might have to be a
dozen km's long..or a hundred.The rocket has been lifting off since $18K. Now you're not even trying with these charts. Just take any chart and put some kind of upwards arrow on it.
+1 WOsMerit
Lol..ikr..its pretty obvious we are going to $60k+, its just a matter of when. I really like to add mystery and suspense however..
Better?
Or how about this?
btfd
In fact Jihan told Zooko Wilcox that they don't do stealth mining at all and Zooko believed him. 
