Magleving up Chimborazo

In my original post I didn't make it clear - but I was thinking of
unmanned payloads for such a device as I did realize that low
accelerations require an impractically long mass driver.

Mark.

> > The mass driver would have to be very long, much longer than what
is
> > proposed here as a first stage substitute.
>
> > If you plan on a human cargo, then the mass driver would have to
be
> > hundreds, perhaps thousands of kilometres long. You cannot drill
> > this distance vertically.
>
> > Alternatively, if you drill down a couple of kilometres, the
> > acceleration needed would be hundreds, perhaps thousands of G's.
>
> > If I have time in a few days I could work up a spreadsheet with
some
> > sample acceleration versus length examples.
> From s=at^2 and v=at we get a=v^2/s, where s is distance - in
this
> case, the length of the mass driver - v is velocity and a is
> acceleration. Assume this vertical mass driver must propel its
cargo to
> 12 km/s to overcome air resistance. If the mass driver is 1000 km
long,
> you get an acceleration of a bit over seven g's.
> Seven g's is survivable, but as you say, it is impossible to
drill
> this distance vertically. Even if you accept ten times that
> acceleration (using a water tank and filling even the lungs with
> breathable liquid?) and drill from the summit of Mount Everest,
you'd
> get below the Moho and into the astenosphere. If my memory serves,
the
> deepest hole that has been drilled is about eleven kilometers, and
that
> was a narrow hole drilled for scientific purposes, namely to recover
> samples.
> Alternatively, you could define a maximum acceptable
acceleration,