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Why not? You have to slow down and land with the full passenger load, rather than launching the payload into space[1]. And you need to engineer the vehicle to v
by idlewords 12y ago
Why not? You have to slow down and land with the full passenger load, rather than launching the payload into space[1]. And you need to engineer the vehicle to very conservative airline safety standards.
[1] Although launching the passengers into space is an attractive option, given the kinds of people who could afford tickets on this thing.
- teamonkey 12y agoYou need a massive multi-stage rocket that is 90% fuel (+ reactant etc.) by mass to get a couple of tons of satellite into orbit 160km up; yet a fraction of that fuel mass can take a plane and hundreds of passengers thousands of kilometres at a stretch, but only 1 or 2km high. In other words, going up is hard.