Balloon Launch System

Mimifromgalaxy – CC-BY-SA

I’m linking to this story about high altitude balloons because it has a small reference to the balloon-based rocket launch system that I wrote about in the Green Comet Trilogy. It’s nice to know that my idea wasn’t impractical.

[Zhou Fei, head of KC Space’s R&D team] says that Traveller could also be a “secondary launch” platform. This would mean lifting a rocket above most of the Earth’s atmosphere, from where it could fire a small rocket into orbit far more easily than from sea level. This would be useful for the growing market for tiny CubeSats.

“One of the holy grails around the world is whether you can lower the cost of launching a small CubeSat into orbit,” says Jeffrey Manber, whose company Nanoracks is working with KC on the Traveller programme.

Visit the BBC site for the full story.

via BBC – Future – The new lighter-than-air race for space

rjb