One giant step ... done using baby-steps.

Since the Mars One programme appeared in the news a couple of days ago, I find myself letting my thoughts freewheel. The idea of dispatching a team to live permanently on the Red Planet and earn their living from the people who choose to watch them live on the media here on the Third Planet seems extremely unusual to me. For instance, what happens when more people want to watch the team in delayed video rather than live? How long before the audience are sated?

Somehow the concept of providing serviceables from Earth on a regular schedule (every two years) too makes one pause for thought. Not that it's unachievable - the Apollo teams were on the moon for 2-3 Earth Days at a time. Two years is just a few orders of magnitude larger. But I digress - I wanted to make this post about launching off-earth, instead of off Earth's surface. Because it is easy to talk and throw ideas around instead of learn from experience, throw ideas around is what I'm going to do.

When we talk of space flight we begin with escape velocity. Escape Velocity is the velocity necessary to escape the gravitation pull of a body to it's surface. Here this is atleast the velocity necessary to escape from Earth's gravitational pull. This value is calculated using the formula


Here, v = escape velocity
g = gravitational acceleration
r = radius of Earth

Solved using the MKS system, this value is 11200 metres per second.

That is, 11.2km/second. It doesn't seem much, until one thinks about it. Just to give an idea of the scale involved the longest public runway on Earth at present is 5.5kilometres. Therefore to be able to escape from Earth's gravitational pull, one would have run up-and-down the runway in less than 1 second! Even the famed SR-71, the fastest aircraft on record with a velocity of approximately 3.6 Mach (4410km/hr), can't do that! Hence the need for rocket technology.

The tricky thing here is that escape velocity is not necessary! Once up at the geostationary earth orbit (GEO), it is quite possible to change the shape of the orbit. The Apollo moon programme called this technique 'Trans Lunar Injection' (TLI). The trouble is getting up to GEO altitude 35786 km ! Well now, most programmes try to reach that altitude in hurry - but I say, 'Wait'.

Why not up to 35786 km in stages?

Let the first stage be high altitude aircraft - carrying food, provisions, and capable of independent movement ... say capable of moving upto 100km above Earth. But this still leaves us with 35686 km to travel. Traditional aircraft encounter loss of lift at such high altitudes. But materials - carbon nanotubes, and such that are extremely strong, and lightweight. Perhaps a lift surface constructed of such material may be used to marry several engines to lift upwards? I'll post more later when the idea is a little more mature in me mind. What say you?