cheap orbital insertion

Are you familiar with the weather in that part of the world? Yourvehicles may experience highly variable aerodynamic pressures.
In addition, at some point the vehicle will exceed the speed of soundand generate a large boom. With frequent flights this may cause aproblem, although careful placing may avoid too many complaints by localsabout this.
Ed Minchau wrote:
The key factor in the development of space is thecost of moving
people and cargo from the Earth's surface to orbit. I propose
building a mass driver along the ridge of the Himalayas.
A mass driver consists of a series of solenoids, which move a charged
projectile along their length by alternately turning on and off one
by one.
The mass driver I propose would consist of solenoids 100 m in
diameter, made of a superconducting material. They would be spaced
along the mountain range so that they would provide a constant 3g
acceleration. The projectile would resemble a supersonic airplane,
gliding from one solenoid to the next. A maglev track could beused
to provide the initial velocity required for the airfoil to provide
sufficient lift to carry the craft from one solenoid to the next.
The craft would make a series of parabolic glides until it received
its final boost at the end of the mass driver.
I figure that such a mass driver would have to be about 1500 miles
long to achieve escape velocity at 3g.
:) ed
Al Globus
aglobus@..., (650) 604-4404
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html
The dinosaurs weren't spacefaring. We are. I don't think that's an accident.
Maybe we are life's taxi to the stars.
I think we should:
1. Devote half of NASA's budget ($7 billion) to reaching NASA's 2020goal of
reducing launch costs to Low-Earth-Orbit to $220/kg with a 0.01% failurerate.
This should enable space tourism. The resulting orbital hotels willneed to
develop efficient orbital life support and other necessary technologies.
2. Build orbital space colonies. The materials in the largest asteroidare
sufficient for orbital colonies with a combined surface area about500 times
greater than Earth's. Eros alone could make over ten thousand spacecolonies,
each with about about 10 square kilometers of 1g living area.
3. After a few generations of orbital living, people won't need theircolony
to be near Sol. Then small groups of colonies with populations in the
tens-of-thousands can set out on multi-decade journeys to nearbystars.
Except the launch goals, none of this is even a little bit official.