wrote:

"Is firing a rocket from the ground straight up
into space the right way to do things?

It sure was in the 1950s and ¡60s and it
persists today. But it¢s still expensive, fraught
with technical risk and dwindling into
obsolescence.

There could be an alternative on the horizon,
however, that incorporates the concepts of
railguns, scram jets and kinetic launching
into an innovative, reusable space launch
system for unmanned cargo."

See:

http://defensetech.org/2010/09/21/ti...pace-launches/

It's just like the mountain based rail launcher on the old puppet show
Fireball XL-5! I liked that show just as much as All Thunderbrids Are
Go.