[ExI] Laser propulsion talk at Utility conference

[Keith Henson]

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 4:00 AM,  Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't see how you can justify the expected profit.  The instant you start
> undercutting oil, oil prices shift to undercut you - and they can keep
> their prices down for years, if necessary, to wait until your operation
> runs out of money and shuts down, abandoning the hardware in place (no
> matter how efficient it would have been to keep using it).

Adrian, this isn't a project to make and sell oil, it isn't even a
project to sell energy.  It's a project to sell power satellites.

The intent is to sell them at a cost that massively undercuts coal,
nuclear and gas.  The low cost allows charging 1-2 cents per kWh for
the power.

At that price, an oil company can buy power (or power satellites) make
hydrogen from water, take CO2 out of the air (or get it from some
other source such as limestone) and make synthetic transport fuels for
as little as $30/bbl.  That translates to a gasoline price of a dollar
a gallon.

> That's how they've done it before; all indications are that they'd do it
> again.

If the project concept were to sell oil, you could be right.  But it is not.

Keith