In a word, yes. The purpose of the "smart grid" is to tie all the producers and consumers in the US, perhaps North America, together with an adaptive system to efficiently route power. This is going to be very important as we are incorporating intermittent power producers, as with wind and ground solar. If you have a rectenna system near each large concentration of users, a large connective infrastructure would be unneeded as one, or more GEO systems could simultaneously supply base load to the ground infrastructures. A much less capable grid may be needed to supply power to low density areas; likely that the current system could be adapted for this purpose.

Two other benefits/considerations; SBSP would eliminate the need to rebuild our entire aging electrical infrastructure backbone with a cost estimated in the trillions as the production would be placed relatively close to the consumption; the second is the cost, land and effort required to build the rectenna or LASER receiver systems. The cost of the ground facilities could rival or exceed the cost of the space based infrastructure.

Or Frederick Pohl's novel Gateway, the first of the Heechee series published in 1977. The idea of finding an alien artifact close by is both very powerful and flexible boundary condition for a story with a great deal of room for original development. I'll have to pick up a copy of this one as well.

I would say that it would be much more like the automated Mars landings that have been demonstrated a number of times. No aero-effects though (both good and bad), but with only a 3 second time delay, which would likely preclude direct control, but could allow for some kind of directed behavior i.e. "move target area 20 m out and 10 m left" to miss the inconveniently placed bolder.

To complete the thought; Third, it's even hard to make a living building spaceships...

The technological solution has to match the economic situation. Perhaps Elon has the right idea; time will tell if his demonstrated expendable vehicle evolves to a salvageable system to bootstrap additional market to justify greater investment in advanced systems. In the studies I’ve participated in and read, Including the Commercial Space Transportation Study cited by Dr. Andrews, the space market is remarkably flat; it will take a very large decrease in cost to generate a positive total market value. The field of dreams is a tough sell on Wall Street.

Regressing and accepting your $B5 - $B10, we can make a quick, optimistic assessment of minimum possible initial price. Just assume that the vehicle system was developed instantaneously, runs itself with zero propellant costs without wear or failure. Assume a 20% return on investment and that the entire Earth’s market of ~50 flights/year is instantly captured. $B1 to $B2/year are then required to pay the investors, or $M20 -$M40 per flight. This is only 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of currently available services. Now add the upper stage required for GEO access as most of the current market is going there, ground facilities procurement, development and operation, staff, and consumables. Development time of even just five years will cost an additional $2B to $B5. We can see why the investors or very leery a present.

Noting that the mass fraction required for orbital performance will drive all systems, structural, propulsion, flight controls, environmental controls etc. etc., the cost per pound combined with the marginal payload fraction will conspire to make this system expensive. Using multi-stage system to gain relief for the mass fraction is paid for by the development of two (or more) flight systems and the operational costs and complexity of pre-flight integration. Multi-staging was employed by some early trans-Atlantic long range aircraft too, and was an economic failure. Going SSTO will save of the number of systems and operations (with some caveats), but will place a premium on the costs due to the on the edge performance required from all systems, especially propulsion, thermal protection and structures.

Looking at past technology expanding and not so technology expanding programs I would stand on my comment “tens of billions” the 280 klb dry/500 klb wet XB-70 cost ~$B12 ($B1.1 in 1965). The 300 klb dry/ 500 klb wet Boeing 777 cost ~ $B7.5 in 1994 (my understanding from being there at the time that the real number was much higher to including an engine and an elaborate passenger accommodations/entertainment system development). As for the 787 no one is even talking. The X-15, similar in performance to a reusable first stage required $B2 – $B 2.8 for the 56 klb wet vehicle and 199 flight test program. Scale that up by an order of magnitude perhaps to account for the multi-million pound system needed to launch commercially viable masses.

I can only wish that we had to worry over the environmental effects of those "thousands, let alone millions, of rocket flights each day..." Those numbers would make the tens of billions of dollars required to develop a RLV economically amortizable.