tomcat and Marko Horvat,
Yes it's wonderful, magnificent and inspiring, but... they haven't sill
achieved 7.9 km/sec - the 1st orbital speed.

As per usual, they(scaled & SS2/WK2) are certainly not receiving any
viable support from our MI6/NSA~NASA, instead only the lack of sharing
rocket-science and otherwise need-to-know info upon so much other
science which is simply MOS "high standards and accountability" of our
NASA status quo of evidence exclusions. This is why private ventures
have to tough it out by way of making due with far less cloak and
dagger spookology (meaning you can't have the cloaked advantage of
having three sets of the usual Arthur Andersen cooked books). Perhaps
China, Russia or India might spare a few affordably honest SBRs, that
plus helping to create their CNT/Basalt composite spaceplane for ten
cents on the dollar, and if made large enough may become just as
commercially doable as the C380 R&D required. If using a similar
two-step(SS1) launch method like before, I'm thinking it'll involve at
least 100+ billion for accomplishing something that'll accommodate the
likes of hundreds of folks per flight for achieving those multiple
extended LEOs (possibly 7 days and nights spent aloft) and safely back
to Earth.

In this case, I believe bigger is better. Thus an extremely large
spaceplane as touted by "tomcat" and others is most likely the best
do-everything and all-around ticket to ride. If going a bit further out
than LEO, once in orbit is where the massive outer protective shell of
a mostly basalt composite layer of interlocking armor can be
re-attached and, then it's off they safely go into the wild black
yonder. I see no insurmountable payloads of achieving 200,000 lbs,
although the initial launch phase of getting the entire spaceplane
along with it's full payload to an initial cruising altitude of even
47,000' is going to be impressive by itself, if not pushing a good many
known limits well past the red-line.

Once going past the point of no return and thus obviously having sped
through the Van Allen badlands, of their slowing down into going merely
1+ km/s is somewhat of a coasting velocity that's slightly better off
than a parallel parking speed. From that point on the likes of
Radium(Ra226)--Radon(Rn222) ion thrusters should get real interesting,
with possibly a Xenon/Radon ion cocktail that might offer a little more
push per MJ.

Our moon is only making 1.023+/- km/s, whereas of the ME-L1/EM-L2 zone
of our mutual gravity-well is getting the velocity requirement down to
less than 860 m/s, thus chasing after the moon is more or less about
putting on the breaks, and especially once having somewhat coasted
(retro-thrusting) into being reasonably situated within the interactive
nullification zone, as this is where next to hardly any energy/tonne
can keep that interactive status quo until it's time to return home for
their banked bone marrow injections.

The ME-L1 station-keeping zone should be relatively safe enough of and
external environment (averaging an extra 5 mr/day up to 5 rem/day as
secondary/recoil radiation derived off the solar impacted moon) for
more than a year at a time unless the sun gets seriously nasty along
with whatever pico-flak/m3 within those 1200~2400 km/s winds, in which
case advanced warnings should permit the option of returning home which
should not take but 12 hours at averaging 27 km/s by way of using the
moon itself as a near-miss flyby of having first thrusted nearly
directly down towards the moon and plan-A being thrust diverted just
enough off to the lunar horizon of this spaceplane becoming less than
10 km off the deck should make for the gravity assisted phase of going
extremely fast a rather simple and energy efficient task (not to
mention quite a second by second thrill), as otherwise the Spaceplane
could simply ion thrust itself out of the comfort zone of ME-L1 in
order to temporarily relocate to the solar backside of the moon for a
little timely safe keeping until the worse of the solar flak plus
primary and secondary worth of TBI threat gets past. Then maneuvering
itself back into the relatively safe and sane Earth-side pocket, as
well as being the most energy efficient zone, as this mode of
station-keeping within the ME-L1 sweet-spot should do quite nicely
untill it's time to return to Earth.

Since some of the lunar terrain could be worth 8 km, permitting their
speed-run of cruising this extremely large spaceplane twice past the
lunar surface at perhaps 10 km off the nasty deck might get a little
testy, but that's where computers and TOP-GUN piloting along with those
powerful Radon(Rn222) ion thrusters and full usage of the onboard
multi-hundred MJ energy resources gets to accomplish their thing.
Either that or having a few spare SBRs just in case.

I'll have to believe that I'm not entirely sure that most folks even
remotely appreciate the truly horrific importance and primo relevance
of the mutual gravity-well/nullification zone that's always situated
between Earth and our moon, supposedly at roughly 84% the distance
towards the moon or 16% the distance towards Earth (+/- solar gravity
and just a wee bit of extra influence from Venus every 18 months). Thus
perhaps all of what I'm suggesting is simply going way over thy head
and clean through thy legs. I've attempted many a time as to getting
such a topic regarding this ME-L1/EM-L2 sweet-spot into this Usenet and
many other forums, with essentially a zero return factor, other than my
having to take MOS mainstream status quo flak. So, I guess this is
another taboo/nondisclosure and/or need-to-know facet that's lethally
enforced by those MI6/NSA (aka Skull and Bones) MEN-in-BLACK.
~

Kurt Vonnegut would have to agree; War is war, thus "in war there are
no rules" - In fact, war has been the very reason of having to deal
with the likes of others that haven't been playing by whatever rules,
such as GW Bush.
Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm