Note that you still want to fire an insertion burn to round out your orbit at the higher altitude - otherwise you return where you started to graze the launcher (bet case)
Ignorance fought! Mine too. It’s pretty obvious in hindsight, but before being corrected on this point here at the Dope, I didn’t realize that if you do an instantaneous change in DeltaV, you change your orbit, but it still intersects the point where you made the change. This clarifies a lot of simplistic thinking about astrophysics (which come to think of it, is pretty dangerous unless it’s just a thought experiment. :o )
Thanks! Interesting. Also, thanks for introducing me to the invariable plane.
Plus you get the added benefit that when you return, you’ll skid across the ground and bounce, rather than slam smack dead down into the ground, at whatever’s at the opposite side of the Earth at that time!
The US can try using a trampoline, according to the Russian Deputy PM: https://twitter.com/DRogozin/statuses/461167801835991040
(Huh, Russia allows Twitter? Their politicians even use it?)
Ditto. Now I realise that I have been misusing the term ecliptic. (Not that many would notice!) I thought that the ecliptic is the plane of the planets’ orbits (well, a weighted average.) Turns out this is closer to the definition of invariable plane. I had no idea that ecliptic was specifically referring to Earth’s orbital plane.
Ignorance fought.
Any way you can reach escape velocity will work.
Technically, technically the ecliptic IS the sun’s annual apparent path across the sky relative to the background stars. Yes, we know the earth is really moving, but the ecliptic refers to the sun’s apparent motion. I make this distinction because it is no coincidence the word “eclipse” and “ecliptic” sound alike. There is more to these two words, but that is good enough for now.
Soaring / gliding could get close? http://www.perlanproject.org/ Their promo is “soaring to the edge of space”
An idea of mine to at least supplement newtonian thrust.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=254792&highlight=launch
There’s a difference between soaring in an atmosphere, however tenuous, and reaching orbital speed - where you circle the globe, about 26,000 miles in 90 minutes. The traditional methods of acceleration usually involve reaction mass, and reaction mass to reach 18000mph is not trivial.
Soaring, balloons, piggy back on a normal jet, whatever - these will serve the job of getting you outside most of the atmosphere and perhaps a boost of 500 to 1,000mph - but that’s a small fraction of orbital velocity.
So how much savings would there be from not having to punch through most of the atmosphere on rocket power?
Here are some numbers you can work from:
Felix Baumgartner jumper from a balloon at 127K’, so we should be able to assume a similar altitude could be reached for a stable launch.
The first stage of the Saturn V weighed 2300 metric tons and burned for around two and a half minutes, accelerating from a rate of 13 m/s/s to 38 m/s/s to 6145 mph at 220K’.
The first stage accounted for around three quarters of the rocket’s mass, so a large portion of its fuel was devoted to pushing the weight of its fuel upwards.
Escape velocity from about where you are standing is a little over 25K mph. It will be somewhat lower at a hundred thousand feet. However, from an airborne platform, to launch upward, you basically have to use a rocket, because anything else has to push against the platform with its launching force (or fling a counterweight downward).
I’ve seen proposals for a combination of ballooning, soaring, and low-thrust, high-efficiency engines which, on paper, would bring launch costs down a few orders of magnitude. Of course, it’s always tough to say how seriously to take on-paper savings.
I read the OP as going to space with no enemas… Carry on.
Few other options provide comparable thrust.