[Spaceships] TL10 Space RV

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I've got some concerns about the play between air resistance, lift, velocity, and heating. You need to be in atmosphere to generate lift until you reach orbital velocity. atmosphere is going to slow you down as long as you're in it, and eventually create massive heating around your ship, not to mention drag. You can reduce drag by flying higher, but that also reduces your lift.

Yeah, I don't think there's any way you can make it to orbit with 0.1G thrust. Even doing it with 1G would be tricky. If you want a rigorous answer though you'd need to play around with a program like Orbiter or perhaps a heavily modded Kerbal Space Program.