While I was checking the numbers for microwave launch, the energy numbers caught my eye. Jet power numbers were in the hundreds of gigawatts for a payload of 1000 tons.
Now, I don't know how that translates exactly into microwave power needed, but if it were on a 1 to 1 basis, you are going to need an absolute buttload of gyrotrons that don't even exist yet. You need much more powerful gyrotrons than the megawatt sized one they were talking about on the nextbigfuture post that I linked to back in 2010.
One gigawatt is a thousand megawatts. So, does that mean you need 250 thousand of these things in order to generate 250 gigawatts of jet power? That much jet power would be needed to lift 1000 tons, according to this chart.
Lots of hardware, maybe too much.
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