Re: Is suborbital a real market?

On Nov 21, 10:57 pm, simberg.interglo...@xxxxxxxxx (Rand Simberg)
wrote:
On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:07:56 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
ohara...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

You might say that this is a step towards an orbital market but all
you have to do is to compare E=mgh to E=1/2 mv^2 where v is orbital
velocity to see that suborbital isnt a real step toward orbital.

No, I can't see that, sorry. Even though I'm an astronautical
engineer with three decades of experience, and understand the math.
Can you explain it further?

For orbital, you gotta carry a whole lotta fuel and I dont see Virgin or
Blue Origin or the others trying to do so.

Of course they're not. They have to do things one step at a time.

Can the Virgin ship be modified to carry a big enough engine to get to
200 Km and then can it carry a big enough engine to go orbital?

Of course not. Again, what is the purpose of this seemingly stupid
and irrelevant question?

Otherwise they gotta build a whole new system.

So?

Is it really a stupid question? Is it really an irrelevant question?
No, going into orbit takes orders of magnitude more energy than simply
raising yourself to 60 Km and it is reasonable to wonder if they can
easily do it.
.