30 Sep
2014
30 Sep
'14
7:49 a.m.
Didn't Newton's original diagram for putting cannonballs into orbit show a cannon being fired from a mountain top? At 09:26 PM 9/29/2014, Dave Dyer wrote:
this corresponds to 31% increase in payload (for 5 km launch altitude) to 122% additional payload (for 25 km launch altitude).
Cool, but you have to amortize that over the construction cost and lifetime of the tower. I bet you need to have an awfully large requirement to orbit mass to pay for it.