Accepted Thoughts

Space Travel Should be Simpler.

Felix Baumgartner of Red Bull parachute fame once held the record for the highest altitude freefall (later broken by Alan Eustace).  I remember watching it when it happened.  He literally jumped from what looked to me like Outer Space.  (It was technically the stratosphere.)  He was wearing an actual space suit.  The stunt had all the drama you would expect.  Man walks to edge of suborbital space platform, looks down, jumps, picks up incredible speed, goes into flat spin, recovers, deploys parachute, safely lands on solid ground, thumbs up.  It was incredible theater.  But what has stuck with me most about that moment is not that a man parachuted from what looked like outer space, but rather how he got up there.  He did not ride a rocket.  There was no Gordo Cooper “Light this candle!” moment.  No specially designed airplane.  No.  He floated.  He rode a balloon that was tethered to the Earth. 

Should this not be the future of space travel?  (Sans re-entry with space suit and parachute only.)  Seriously, I sincerely hope that NASA, SpaceX, and Blue Whatever are pursuing this technology as fervently as they are rocket propulsion.  It just makes too much sense. 

There will always be a need for high-load capacity propulsion vehicles of some sort to carry exceptionally heavy payloads into orbit.  But we will hopefully be sending people into orbit by far cheaper and more practical means in the not-too-distant future. 

Let me float (pun intended) this idea:  A large space station with all the amenities of a nuclear submarine is perpetually orbiting the Earth.  It has a couple of shuttles attached to it that make routine trips the “Ascension Platform” (eh, cool name, right?) or platforms where they pick up normally dressed people who have floated into sub-orbit in some form of a pod on what I am certain will eventually be termed the “Space Elevator”.  I imagine this would take much less fuel.  It should also be easier on the human body.   

I know, I know.  The Space Elevator idea has been around for a long time, and neither Felix Baumgartner nor Alan Eustace got anywhere close to actual Earth orbit.  We should still be trying to figure out how to do something, anything, to make human space flight cheaper, safer, and more environmentally friendly.   

Please. . .  NASA, SpaceX, Blue Whatever. . . make this happen.