new topic

You know, I have thought for a long time that you could use a lighter than air platfor to suspend an Earth-based mass driver with solar power plant, and balloons to carry payloads up to it.

One of the challenges to operating an electromagnetic mass driver on earth is atmospheric drag on the payload. Suspending it from an LTA platform would reduce a good bit of that I bet.

Dan

> Why would this be that much better than a standard launch?
> You gain 28 miles in vertical ascent, but you're not
> moving at all, you still have to get up to around 7km/s
> for orbital velocity, so you shouldn't be saving that much in
> terms of energy expended to reach orbit...

What about 28 miles of atmospheric drag? Is that insignificant?

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