RE: GZG FH: Blue water navy.

Noah spake thusly upon matters weighty: 

> And if you've got solid state antigrav, you don't need a silly old 
> beanstalk.

Depends. Since beanstalk uses vaccum (no air resistance) and a 
counterbalance system (outgoing shipment balanced with incoming), its 
energy inputs are minimal. Might still be cheaper to operate. 
 
> Anyway, a beanstalk just screams 'Bomb Me To Make A Political Point'. 
I'm 
> all for disposable/recyclable BDBs (Big Dumb Boosters).  The Saturn V
could 
> put 50 tonnes (metric) on Luna - think how much it could put into
LEO...

Sure, so does the Eiffel Tower, The Sphinx, any Naval Base, etc. etc. 
Assume the ground point would be gaurded well (and probably real hard 
to knock out unless you had a design engineer handy. It probably has 
a safety  zone a mile or two wide around it. And probably within 50km 
is restricted airspace. 

>From what I've seen of recent history with both US and foreign 
rockets (too many satellites go boom), I'm not sure that is the 
answer unless there is a quantitatively measurable leap forward in 
success rates. 

Tom.  
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