this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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Something something the first 300 meters are the hardest...
The issue is not going up, it's going over. If we only cared about the private sector getting people into space, that happened on a fully reusable vehicle twenty years ago.
The problem is getting things to stay in space. Not trying to Elon-stan here, but getting a rocket into orbit is many fold more difficult than just getting into space.
Yeah, if by "going over", you mean accelerating in the horizontal direction, then you're right.
Just to illustrate this: Consider we want to put 1 kg of mass into orbit.
First, we have to raise it by 100 km. That requires 1e6 J = 1 MJ of energy (formula is m*g*h).
Then, we have to accelerate it sideways, to a speed of 8 km/s. The energy to do that is 32 MJ (formula is ½*m*v²).
So, most of the energy (97%) is actually in the sideways movement.
The Estes Corporation makes rockets that will do 600 meters.
It's great that Honda is doing this. We really need other companies in this area, because SpaceX is dominating it. Even if Elon weren't a walking disaster, we don't want one company so badly outclassing everyone else.