How to build a lunar mass driver

Casey Handmer · 8 May 2026 · caseyhandmer.wordpress.com ↗

2 korrents from this piece

Casey Handmer did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Starship will bring the price of low Earth orbit down to roughly a hundred dollars a kilogram.

Their wordsStarship promises a near future with launch costs to LEO of perhaps $100/kg.

Interesting
Our reading
A lunar mass driver cannot pay for itself by cutting launch costs, because launch is already a small part of what an orbital computer costs.

Their wordsAt even $500/kg, launch cost is only 5% of the total satellite deployment cost, so a lunar mass driver is unlikely to drastically improve the economics of space-based AI, by reducing launch costs.

Interesting