#lofstrom loop

[krismur]

SpaceShipTember 2025

Day 1 - Launch! Passenger and Cargo aeroshells lifting off a Launch Loop on the way to orbit. The passenger module can make a gliding reentry and landing in case of emergency

[zalmonthe]

Aircraft of the Pacific Armada overfly the orbital railway

It's a 80km tall, almost 2000km long structure magnetically suspended above ground by an iron cable shooting through it at 15km/s. Three exist on Earth, this one located in Southeast Asia, with the other two spanning the Indian and Atlantic oceans.

Spacecraft ride the rail much like magnetic trains, climb near the edge of space, accelerate to near orbital velocity and lift off. Deorbiting craft likewise attach themselves and decelerate safely to earth, making reentry far less stressful. Most of the energy stays in the iron cable, making launches safe, cheap, quick and easy. Anything too big to fit on the track is built in orbit, lifted with plasma filaments or nuclear pulse engines.

Space garbage and micrometeors don't threaten the bridge since it's not quite outside the atmosphere, everything at this height will burn and fall. The bridge also doesn't threaten anything below it any more than a normal bridge would.

The photograph is edited - the space freighters are, in reality, rarely more than a kilometer long and wouldn't look so big at the puny altitude of 40km that the FA.108 can reach.

[krismur]

SpaceShipTember 2025

Day 8 - Spaceport Since the points of arrival and departure for structures like Space Elevators and Launch Loops mostly amount to train stations, here's the bottom end of a Launch Loop emerging from underground somewhere near the equator.

[sacoyans]

a 2000 km long goodbye