For Spider and the rest of you space nuts

[jimmyz]

[John Galt]

yeah was pretty awesome

tbf to spacex, they travel at mach 6 or something as opposed to mach 3.4. not to disparage this, this is great, but that's part of why spacex had a harder time with it

[Spider]

Basically, this thing goes straight up to 100 km...and then falls straight back down. All it has to do is overcome gravity. To orbit something, you put only like 10% of the energy expended into overcoming drag and gravity...and the rest goes into building velocity. This thing doesn't need to build any velocity over ground, since it doesn't actually go anywhere. It doesn't need to worry about doing the other 90% of the job.

I'm trying to figure out what its actually good for, other than giving tourists a couple minutes of simulated zero G before the run out of forward momentum and start falling. You can't launch payloads with it. You can't actually take anyone anywhere...its just a really elaborate carnival ride.

Eh. Its really easy to shit on this, at least compared to actual space launchers. Its still pretty cool.

[exploited]

[jimmyz]

Why crap on any innovation. Tourist travel will help fund real exploration. A drive drive paradigm. I,m not rich enough to afford this ride. I like it none the less.

[Spider]

[exploited]

[jimmyz]

[Spider]