Bond Hengbu wrote:The machine costs have to go down just like with mobile phones. It should be dirt cheap, you don't have train a doctor. Also why cannnot thy be assembled on Earth?
Because of physics. Because of mass and gravity. Because of the cost in physical energy to move a large mass from the surface to orbit. Because of the physical energy required to accelerate that mass to escape velocity. You see, when you lift anything into orbit from the surface, you also have to carry every single bit of reaction mass (fuel) along with you. Which means, not only are you lifting however many tons of cargo, but you're also lifting however many tons of fuel required to lift your transport vehicle PLUS the cargo.
Which is why we don't launch things into space every five minutes.
This is also why, IRL, the International Space Station was carried up into orbit piece by piece and assembled in space.
There are two major ways to reduce costs in this area: invent a super-light, super-efficient magical fuel source; perhaps something that can be created from rainbows or unicorn blood.
Or, build an orbital manufacturing facility; a place outside of the Earth's gravity well, where you do not need to overcome gravity. This way, you'd bypass the fuel costs altogether. Space is a micro-gravity, micro-pressure environment (it's popular to say "zero-gravity" but there is no such thing in real life) which means you could build a device that weighs several hundred tons in space and literally push it towards its destination. Sure, you'd have to push it with some considerable force, but it wouldn't have to worry about overcoming the Earth's gravity and it wouldn't have to worry about overcoming friction o any other forces. It would just keep going forever unless acted upon by some other force.
So, the physical costs are really quite unlike the machine costs of a mobile phone.