Earl Colby Pottinger wrote:
Scott Lowther :
Neil Halelamien wrote:
"We'd have a small cramped cabin for the orbital flight and you'd
be in
it for a long time. You'd want to go to a hotel [because of that]
and
for orbital tourism you'd want an altitude of 130km," says Rutan.


Yikes. You'd want higher than that, and you'd want more than one
guy.

Why, electric rockets or tethers can keep the station up, with one
man
rockets you have a lot of traffic bring up supplies. At one time
most of
China moved on bikes, it did not stop them from getting to work.
Start small
and work your way up. The problem with present day NASA is that it
always
wants to start big.

This raises an interesting question: With current technologies and a
reasonable amount of consistent power, what is the lowest altitude (and
speed) at which one can sustain an orbit, if you're constantly
propelling yourself upwards?

-- Neil