
Building a Stratospheric Balloon Launch Company with Zero 2 Infinity - sarwechshar
https://www.spacebandits.io/interviews/zero-2-infinity
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ovi256
That space vehicle they show in their mockups, the conical capsule with 6
engines, can't possibly have enough delta-v for an orbital injection. For one,
not enough fuel to run all those engines for a long enough time.

Any orbital launch must end up with the payload going 4.5 km/s at LEO (about
200 km altitude). For a classic rocket launcher, this happens after about 450
seconds. See for example the Falcon 9 velocity and altitude traces from [1]

This baloon launcher skips the altitude gain of the first 120s of a Falcon 9
launch. Not bad, but it can't skip the velocity gain - it still needs to
inject 4.5 kmps delta-v.

The Paul Allen financed Stratolauncher project starts from a similar high
altitude-low velocity point, but was planned to use quite a beefy rocket
launched from a carrier plane to inject delta-v to the payload.

Maybe that capsule is just a suborbital vehicle. They're quite popular as a
stepping stone.

[1]
[https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40983.0](https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40983.0)

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locktab
I agree with your analysis, from the initial rocket concepts the delta-v does
look lacking. One note however, I think you may be confusing your kilometers
with miles - one needs around 7.8km/s for a stable LEO.

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sarwechshar
Not the OP you're replying to but you're right! I'll try to get more
information on this and update once I do. Thanks!

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FiatLuxDave
Very reminiscent of [http://www.jpaerospace.com/](http://www.jpaerospace.com/)

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sarwechshar
Really cool that they were essentially a bunch of volunteers working together
to try something innovative like this - and that was before SpaceX was
founded! It's a shame their rockoon prototype didn't succeed, though.

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meantheory
pixar's up of space companies. launches would be a lot more quiet.

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sarwechshar
Haha maybe a new tagline for them ;)

