At 04:17 AM 2/5/2003 +0000, Peter Fairbrother wrote:
My preference is the space elevator. In simple terms, the space elevator is a ribbon with one end attached to the Earth's surface and the other end in space beyond geosynchronous orbit (35,800 km altitude). The competing forces of gravity at the lower end, and outward centripetal acceleration at the farther end, keep the ribbon under tension and stationary over a single position on Earth. This ribbon, once deployed, can be ascended by mechanical means to Earth orbit. If a climber proceeds to the far end of the ribbon and releases, it would have sufficient energy to escape from Earth's gravity and travel to the Moon, Mars, Venus and the asteroids.me again.Space transport: I like the two-stage-to-orbit solution for humans, with the booster stage piloted. The maths works well. I don't know about scramjets etc for the booster, but a few rockets would do, with an aero fuselage to take off and land. Using current airline technology mostly. Safe. Cheap. If the second stage isn't reusable as a second stage (or if eg just the engines are) that's okay too. Things like tanks are useful in orbit, hell anything, any mass, is useful there. SSTO is pride, not economics (assuming at least a low-to-medium demand). But there ain't a company anywhere that's going to put up the dosh if NASA and the US insists on being the best...
http://www.highliftsystems.com/
"Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
-- Richard P. Feynman
