3 ms·
I think you could accomplish this more easily with a semi-evacuated floating tunnel heading east from the Galapagos Islands, and up the west slope of Chimborazo
by logfromblammo 8y ago
I think you could accomplish this more easily with a semi-evacuated floating tunnel heading east from the Galapagos Islands, and up the west slope of Chimborazo, whose peak is the closest to space of any other mountain on Earth.
That means it already has higher angular velocity by virtue of being close to the equator, and is further from the Earth's center of gravity by virtue of being situated on the equatorial bulge. The peak is also 45% the atmospheric pressure at sea level.
The floating tunnel would be about 1100 km, and then about 150 km up the volcano. At a constant acceleration of 30 m/s^2, relative to the launch tube, 1250 km of track gets you up to 8660 m/s after 289 s. Then you get 464 m/s from changing reference frames from Earth-fixed to Earth-relative at the peak of the volcano. Subtract about 1300 m/s for drag, and 7824 m/s is roughly a LEO at 200 km. About 3 Gs for about 5 minutes is easily tolerated by healthy humans in the correct orientation--we do that in amusement park rides for fun.