B
bobvanx
Guest
>The shuttle is in a shallow climb when it is accelerating the fastest because velocity relative to the center of gravity of the planet is the goal.<br /><br />One day we'll stop trying to apply our instinctual grasp of aerodynamics to spaceships. The Orbiter is not in a "shallow climb." It's in a perigee raising maneuver. From the ground, that looks like a shallow climb. In space it looks like... well, I don't know, I don't have the tools for that, yet. So I'm at the inbetween place, where what I have doesn't work, and what will work, I don't yet have.<br /><br />/warning/snide comment alert/warning/<br /><br />Oh! You'd put the spaceship on the BACK of the wing! Well, I'm sure that the extra 20 feet closer to space will make all the difference.<br /><br />/end warning/begin apologies/eh, I had to be sarcastic for a moment/Please don't be offended/sheesh what a weak apology/end apologies/<br /><br />You really don't seem to realize just how non-helpful the atmosphere is for reaching orbit. For reaching space, it's relatively easy to ignore. But to orbit, it's inconvenient in a couple of really important ways:<br /><br />It's not deep enough. 10 miles or so is all you've got to work with. If it were 50 miles deep, then there'd be lots of reasons to look into flying to the edge of space.<br /><br />It gets your spaceship too hot. At the speeds required to orbit, the atmosphere burns stuff up.