[theothermkn]

The actual fuel cost to put things into orbit is quite small, on the order of $30/lb of payload. I've done this analysis on HN before, but the gist is that LOX and kerosene are about the cost of milk, and roughly as dense on average, and you need about 20-30 lbs of propellant for each lb of payload. The rest of the cost comes from labor and amortizing the launch vehicle and infrastructure. The cost floor is <stick wet finger in breeze> probably around $100 (2019 dollars) or so per pound. Not great, but not "extraordinarily expensive." This is without going to gun-assisted schemes for durable raw materials and the like. (Incidentally, this seems insane to me. It seems like you want rockets for people and fragile goods, and guns for anything that can take a few hundred to a few thousand gees or more, like steel or aluminum or water (ice) or.... But, this is just a SWAG. There could be hiccups there preventing a gun-assist cost floor much lower than that for rockets.)