I don't know the first thing about orbital-scale rocket economics, so, please, regard this as complete and utter speculative nonsense.
My thinking is that, if there's a future where we might have regular launches to orbit all of those costs will have to drop. At that point fuel might just start to become far more significant.
Let's imagine weekly "Orbit The Earth Adventure"(TM) launches in 25 or 50 years. The spacecraft, crews and maintenance would have to be optimized in order to enable the business model. I think it could very well be in that context that a MAGLEV launch-assist vehicle might make sense.
Again, I don't know what I am talking about and don't really have the time to research the subject and learn about the economics of low-earth-orbit manned space flight. I'll just have to leave it at that.
My thinking is that, if there's a future where we might have regular launches to orbit all of those costs will have to drop. At that point fuel might just start to become far more significant.
Let's imagine weekly "Orbit The Earth Adventure"(TM) launches in 25 or 50 years. The spacecraft, crews and maintenance would have to be optimized in order to enable the business model. I think it could very well be in that context that a MAGLEV launch-assist vehicle might make sense.
Again, I don't know what I am talking about and don't really have the time to research the subject and learn about the economics of low-earth-orbit manned space flight. I'll just have to leave it at that.