Magleving up Chimborazo

>
> certainly have no objection to using a dynamic transfer tether, but I was just
> thinking of the "first stage". I suspect in real developments, one can not
> try too many new things all at once without estranging "investors". Von

Tethers are easier to implement than mag lev.

Hence I envisage that a tether transfer system could be developed sooner than maglev, and payloads launched up on sounding rockets from Earth.

Once the system achieves enough volume then the market could justify replacing sounding rockets with maglev.

Sounding rockets are very cheap, so it would take a considerable volume for a maglev to replace them.

There is also a launch window problem which makes maglev and tethers difficult to integrate. If we only have one maglev site (likely because they are expensive) then we can only launch payloads once per orbit (assuming equatorial orbit).

But with sounding rockets we can can have multiple cheap launchers all over the world (even mobile) , so there is much more flexibility in terms of launch windows.