From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Sat Aug 24 2002 - 03:19:22 MDT
On Sat, 24 Aug 2002, Damien Broderick wrote:
> I throw in, as usual at this point, JoSH's rather neat and gargantuan, but
> not as gargantuan as a Beanstalk, 100 km tall space launch tower:
The problem with this approach is that it is stands (and falls) with
availability of in-situ-deposited machine-phase diamondoid. I'm not
holding my breath here.
Neglecting air friction, energetically, going to orbit is largely a
problem of horizontal velocity component. There are several useful
volcanoes (say, Kilimandjaro (5.9 km, 205 miles south of equator, or pick
anything suitably located and gentle-slope conic from
http://www.peakware.com/encyclopedia/highest.htm ) which could host an
electromagnetic acceleration track. If you can stabilize the sled all the
way to Mach 2, where (sc)ramjet ignites (these bring you up to 100 000
feet, and Mach 3-10, where you go to rocket burn), you can certainly go
one-stage to LEO. But for the sled, which you can probably recycle, there
are no expendable components, and no giant single point of failure.
I would be very surprised if the US didn't have a clandestine hypersonic
ballistic bomber program, so you can save money by focusing on the
acceleration track, and the problem of switching a scramjet to rocket burn
(or use a rocket stage/boosters).
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