Well, 3700 mi a start, I guess.

[Kai]

At least it's beyond low earth orbit.

WASHINGTON -- There's no firm date yet, but sometime in early 2014 NASA intends to take its first major step toward rebuilding its human spaceflight program.

The milestone is the maiden test flight of its Orion spacecraft, a launch that has come into sharper relief in the three months since NASA and manufacturer Lockheed Martin announced it.

As planned, an unmanned Orion capsule will begin its journey at Cape Canaveral and take two loops around Earth before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. What's now clear is that the capsule will be sent far beyond the lower Earth orbit of the International Space Station.

At its peak, Orion's orbit is expected to extend nearly 3,700 miles from Earth -- the farthest a NASA spacecraft built for humans has gone since the early 1970s.

That distance is "significantly higher than human spaceflight has gone since Apollo," said Larry Price, Orion deputy program manager at Lockheed Martin. "The reason for that is so we can get a high-energy entry so we can stress the heat shield."

The test will determine whether Orion can survive the re-entry into Earth's atmosphere -- where temperatures are expected to reach 4,000 degrees -- in preparation for a human flight in 2021. NASA hopes that Orion eventually can carry astronauts back to the moon or to nearby asteroids.

Besides the heat shield, the practice flight is designed to test 10 systems whose failure could be disastrous, including the capsule's flight software and parachutes. Like its Apollo-era predecessors, the four-person Orion capsule is designed to land in water.

The test also gives NASA, and Lockheed Martin, a chance to showcase part of the agency's new exploration program, details of which were agreed to last fall after a year of negotiation among the White House, Congress and industry.

The timetable for NASA's new exploration program envisions a first manned flight of Orion in 2021 aboard a new rocket -- still under development -- that NASA expects to be the most powerful ever. An unmanned test flight of that rocket, being built by Lockheed Martin rivals Boeing and ATK, is planned for 2017.

I was hoping we wouldn't have to wait 10 years, but I guess that's better than the alternative (which is never).

[Jasper]

Rubbish.  What we need is a way to move stuff off the planet that doesn't take six metric shitloads of fuel.  That is the next step.  Sending golfers to the moon again is pointless.

[Kai]

I suggest you start working on space elevator tech then.

[Elder Iptuous]

I wonder what the possibility of a new space race for the purposes of building an elevator (with, perhaps, China?) could be...
imagine the materials advances we could benefit from if we did that.

[Jasper]

I would happily donate to the cause if I found a credible group doing the work.  I'm more of a cog/neuro guy myself.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Why exactly do we use vertical travel to leave the planet anyway? Is that more efficient somehow? We might be able to save on fuel costs by making rocketplanes. Use Bernoulli's principle until the atmosphere gets too thin and then kick on the rockets and do the straight up thing.

[East Coast Hustle]

If I had to make a guess as an uneducated layman, I'd speculate that with current technology we can't deliver the thrust required to reach escape velocity in a package that would be aerodynamically feasible for that.

[Jasper]

I've heard tell of designs where planes lift rocket shuttles high up for them to escape orbit, so it might be a credible idea.

[Elder Iptuous]

is that not the idea behind Space Ship One and Space Ship Two from Scaled Composites?
(granted, they don't go into full orbit, but...)

[Kai]

Low Earth orbit is not out of the gravity well, no where near it. That's halfway to the moon or something like that. So once you're up to low Earth orbit, you still have to have enormous velocity to break 99% of the gravity well that is still out there. That's why a moon base makes sense to space travel. A gravity well 1/24th that of Earth, easily broken with small rockets.

[Jasper]

I've been thinking, and now I'll just blurt it out. 

If we had enough satellites harvesting solar energy, couldn't we use small rockets to get a craft up to LEO, then have our solar energy satellites power it's final escape with lasers?  I've seen a lot of noise on laser propulsion systems for spacecraft.

[Elder Iptuous]

i thought laser propulsion was to speed them up after they had already escaped the well...

[Jasper]

I don't know how strong the laser system would be.  Enough to conquer Earth's gravity?  Maybe slowly.  I don't know.

[Kai]

I don't know how strong the laser system would be.  Enough to conquer Earth's gravity?  Maybe slowly.  I don't know.

It's interesting how that, if there was a mountain high enough, you could WALK out of Earth's gravity well. The issue comes when the vehicle is ballistic (free floating), because that needs an escape velocity.

[Freeky]

I don't know how strong the laser system would be.  Enough to conquer Earth's gravity?  Maybe slowly.  I don't know.

It's interesting how that, if there was a mountain high enough, you could WALK out of Earth's gravity well. The issue comes when the vehicle is ballistic (free floating), because that needs an escape velocity.

That is interesting, not least because without a basic grasp of physics, your average person will say something like "Well obviously, because your on the ground walking!"