I have known for all of my adult life that the real future of mankind in amid the sky. I have wanted to know why we all can not share in that futur, and thought that oppertunity should be availible for all. Sometimes I have wondered if someone is trying to prevent that, but I think it is just a combination of incompitence and a fear of loosing the burrocrocies that have grown around the space launch's. It holds the answer to polution related to mining and even possibly more important the polution ralated to power generation both on land and in vehicles. I also has the answer to overcrowding on Earth.

About 35 years ago I was told by an aerspace instructer that outer space will never becaume practical with rockets. That we must build faster jets until we can just fly into orbit. After much studie on this I believe he was half right. A multi stage fully reusabel hybred combination hypersonic jet as the first, or second stage, with rockets as the upper stage, or the hypersonic skyhook is the most economical way to orbit. The raileguns and such may be better in time, but requiese way to much capital to get started.

To expect a single stage to orbit jet to orbit is way beond what we can do now. Possibly way in the future. For a long time I was convinced we needed something like the C5A as the first stage. I would have the second stage or hypersonic craft under it's wing on one side of the fusiloge. The attachment would be much the same as air launched cruise missles, but the towed concept seems to be much more practical for somethin that big, and it simplifies many of the separation dangers. The conventional jet would supply much of the lift, and most of the takeoff and flight trust until a very high altitude at about mach 0.8 was atained. Then the conbined cycle hypersonic engine would light. I would have enough lift to land and take off with a light payload and very little fuel. It would have enough lift at Mach 1.5 or so to fly well will a large payload, and max fuel. It would to a cable release and slowly drop as it accelerated to mach 1.5 or so at which time it would continure accelerated but be able to clime. Somewhere around Mach 12 to Mach 18 is the maximum we can expect to do with current technology. At this time I expected the hypersonic ramjet to leave the atmosphere and separate the upper stage. The upper stage at first should be a conventional rocket. A more practical last "stage" would be the hypersonic tether, or possibly interume would be a combination of rocket to the growing tether. When we can bring a large part of asteroid to orbit then the tether can be continually ergeed, at each stage being more efficient until it can be brought down to earth. This would create the elevator to the planets. It would not only make getting to orbit less that 1$/# but if you clime up higher past geo sycronous orbut and then let go you are going fast enough to go to Mars or beyond with out any more energy or reaction mass.

The wealth of Mars is at least half the wealth of Earth. We will be able to terraform Mars and effectivly make trillions of terraformed planetoids all over the solar system housing from 10 to billions of people each. We will finish learning how to use asteroid, comets, and be looking at travel to the starts.

The Links to the left can take you to some of the sights trying to take us up and ultimatly to the stars. Especially see the thoughts on the Mars settlement.