"NASA studied this concept and found it to be uneconomical. The show stopper being the requirement for a $200 per pound launch vehicle."

I recall that it required at some point $75 per lb for launch cost.
But doesn't much matter, if launch cost were $50 per lb it would uneconomical for NASA. We shouldn't forget that NASA spend tens of billions of dollars on Shuttle program in order lower the cost of getting into space- btw I believe they claimed at one point the Shuttle would bring costs down to $100 per lb.
The shuttle program not only made getting NASA astronauts into space expensive [more expensive than the Saturn program which they "scrapped to lower costs"] but also "required" that all other US private launch be done away with because we were suppose to depend upon the Shuttle to launch every that was going into space. Needless to say, NASA shuttle program has now resulted in a situation in which Russia and French have lower launch cost than the US. Keep in mind that the Soviets made expensive TVs that had tendency to explode and in general were incapable of producing anything at lower cost and high enough quality that consumer desired any of their products.

Also NASA and it's people generally hold the delusional idea that if you spend enough money you can lower the costs- this idea requires many many years of schooling before it begins to make any sense.

But regardless of all of the above, one important aspect of determining how low launch cost would need to be is the amount revenue one expects to get.
Now if President Bush could solve all the electrical needs for the US military in Iraq how much is that worth? Well, somewhere in around tens of billions of dollars and probably not 100 billion or more. If Bush could solve the entire electrical problem in all of Iraq by getting rid of the advantage of the enemy of blowing power grids, that could worth as much as 100 billion or more.
What if military had the choice to buy electrical power delivered anywhere on the face of this earth. In other words, because it's easier to have generator and fuel supply in one area they would only be willing to spend 25 cent per kilowatt hr [and therefore may not require beamed in power because it cost more than that], but in another region they might spend a buck or more for X amount for say less 6 months until such time as logistics "caught up".

Or put it this way, you live in town city that has had hurricane pass thru it, you probably won't get electrical power for days to weeks. How much will you spend to get electrical power in the immediate time frame until power is restored- ten times your normal rate spent for next week, would probably be seen as cheap. Let's assume you normally spend $20 per week on grid power, you would probably be willing to go out a buy a portable generator for $300-500 and run it receiving less power and less dependability than you normally receive.

Now, what I'm pointing towards is a very sophisticated system. It will need to begin in a somewhat crude system that over time develops. It's way beyond NASA or any govt program capability to operate. Govt could play role in starting it- and without govt involvement it would never happen. But to work well it would need to done by the private sector- and of course a private sector allowed to freely compete.

It can't work for Iraq or say Katrina at this time. It would needed to be have been began about 10 years ago to allow that possibility.

Oh, I forgot. Specifically, if you are receiving twenty times the amount money per kilowatt hr [$1 instead of 5 cents] and there is enough volume, that easily changes a $200 per lb launch cost into about $4,000 per lb launch cost requirement. I say "easily" because launch cost is not even the majority of the cost in this kind of project or anything done in space- generally, launch cost is around a 25% or less of the total cost.