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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh
Well, yes and no. You can still go round and round at a suborbital velocity while attaining orbital velocity.
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Only by continuously expending energy to maintain altitude.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh
No you're not. Notice that the aAccel is the aAccel the craft maintains in addition to maintaining its current speed.
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That is only true in "space" (whatever that means). If you out of the atmosphere but not yet in orbit (or passed escape velocity) then you are on a suborbital trajectory. If you are trying to go up with 0.05 G of thrust and being pulled down at ~0.8 G you are going to fall. One way to get around this is to "jump" out of the atmosphere (using, for example a combination of rockets and air breathers) and then accelerate to orbital velocity before you fall back into the atmosphere. That is not going to work if the accelerate-to-orbital-velocity part takes 6 hours. Well, I guess it all depends on how high you jump...but yeah I really don't think that would work. :/
Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh
What is a proper free falling speed? If you're talking about terminal velocity for a free fall, then I'm not sure how it's relevant: the craft is not being in a free fall unless you failed to reach stall velocity at the runway (in which case you've got a totally different problem on your hands).
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No sorry my bad, I just meant "orbital velocity".
Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh
Why? Even the silly TL6 aerodynamic knowledge is enough to keep stall speed at 40mph. With a TL10 design that is optimised for a low-thrust launch, this shouldn't be a problem at all. Well yeah, you need a 400m runway to lift off the ground with that sort of thrust. Big deal.
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And here I'm talking about keeping your self out of the atmosphere while you accelerate to orbital velocity.