Good luck dealing with the absence of cheap oxydizer and the lack of convection which makes heat dispersion a nightmare.
> Move our power generation into space and beam it down.
Our power is already generated in space, and beamed down to us. It also comes with no infrastructure cost, which is truly an engineering wonder when you think of it.
Wasn't one of the disasters in Simcity 2000 having your power-beaming space laser miss your power station instead light your city on fire? It seems like such a thing would cause massive hazards.
> Move people into real orbital habitats.
> Make Earth proper a gigantic park / nature reserve.
Or force people to live deep underground. Then when they save up enough money to buy a ticket, they can be transported there much more economically.
As for me, I like living on the surface.
Dial that up tenfold and I suspect you’ll be fine - especially with the plant in the desert (nothing to burn)
1GWh/y/ha. That’s a 4,000 ha requirement for the US electrical needs, about 10 square miles.
If industry had to pay launch costs for water, air, and other basic things they need, they wouldn't be financially viable.
If we then pointed out that in space or on the surface of a lifeless rock there are no costs of pollutants there might be a bit of incentive to move.
But you are correct, those companies would need to be self-sufficient in gathering all resource inputs and be able to ship finished products back where they are wanted. Much more complex than renting an industrial unit in an industrial town.
Make Earth proper a gigantic park / nature reserve.
We can't "wait" for anything, or the window during which we can develop space travel will close. 10 or 100 years from now we might no longer have the motivation or the means to fund and build new vechicles like these.