08-19-2015, 05:36 PM
A few things about this idea; the inflatable tower would be very wobbly, but it could conceivably be stabilised by guy ropes. These ropes would effectively short out the electrical difference between the top and the bottom of the tower, which would be a challenging design consideration (but I wonder if it could be used to extract energy from the atmosphere somehow).
Secondly the runway on the top seems very short. I would change the design to incorporate a longer runway, or even an acceleration track - I seem to remember one interesting idea, which was a launch track suspended in the stratosphere by balloons. This track was many tens (possibly hundreds) of kilometres long, producing a concept like a Lofstrom Loop but held up by buoyancy.
Secondly the runway on the top seems very short. I would change the design to incorporate a longer runway, or even an acceleration track - I seem to remember one interesting idea, which was a launch track suspended in the stratosphere by balloons. This track was many tens (possibly hundreds) of kilometres long, producing a concept like a Lofstrom Loop but held up by buoyancy.