Comment by XorNot
6 hours ago
Boosting to geostationary orbit knocks a big chunk out of your payload capacity. Falcon 9 expendable will do 22 tons to LEO and about 8 tons to GTO.
6 hours ago
Boosting to geostationary orbit knocks a big chunk out of your payload capacity. Falcon 9 expendable will do 22 tons to LEO and about 8 tons to GTO.
That's still a smaller ratio than the ~4X gain in irradiance over LEO. But if you're doing it at scale you could use orbital tugs with ion drives or something, and use much less fuel per transfer.
It's probably not competitive at all without having fully reusable launch rockets, so the cost to LEO is a lot lower.