Bye bye Space Elevator

aint communication a bitch on the emails?

first stage balloon goes to 140,000 , then second balloon goes higher from there, reaching potentially altitude of ISS at 200 miles or so...once at the upper level of atmosphere you move about horizontally, or outwards...

From: Lucio de Souza Coelho
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 2:40 PM
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: Bye bye Space Elevator

On 6/6/06, panamabob@...
wrote:
(...)
> counter acting gravity by buoyancy.. thrust just to move you over the earth surface...
>
> think of being in a boat on the sea...
(...)

Okay, now I think that I understood what you are saying. You are
proposing to have a low thrust system that would accelerate
horizontally an (air/space)ship "floating" on the "surface" of
atmosphere, until reaching orbital or escape velocity. Is that it?

Maybe that will work, though I am still skeptical. At an altitude of
30Km air is still thick enough to flame meteors or ships entering the
atmosphere, as far as I remember, which means that the air-space-ship
will have problems as it gets faster. Resistance of air increases
quadratically with speed, and it is also worth to remember that the
air resistance-to-mass ratio of balloons is quite unfavorable.