calculated G-force on take off would be about 6 to 7 gees, for around 140 seconds, tapering off to under 3 gees for 3 minutes after q-max.
But yeah, control would be a bitch... but all you'd have to do is keep the nose pointed up at about 60 degrees, and aim roughly east, to take advantage of the earth's rotation.
It's based off one of the early ICBM designs, just a big old solid fuel bucket of boom! Most of the guidance is ballistic. You'd get 45 minutes of flight, with 20 minutes of freefall before you hit atmo again... although, add a wooden ablative heat shield [yeah, really! that's what they used to use] and if you can get a 15 degree pitch, you could skip off the troposphere and double the flight time or better.
There's even a slight chance of survival then... at least until you hit the ground. parachutes are good idea, but they add weight. I figured, if you could somehow bail out after reentry, then you only need a chute large enough for a person... but you'd still need to slow down below Mach 1 first.
It gets complicated the more you try to do, and complicated decreases the probability of everything working right and being built on a budget.
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But yeah, control would be a bitch... but all you'd have to do is keep the nose pointed up at about 60 degrees, and aim roughly east, to take advantage of the earth's rotation.
It's based off one of the early ICBM designs, just a big old solid fuel bucket of boom! Most of the guidance is ballistic. You'd get 45 minutes of flight, with 20 minutes of freefall before you hit atmo again... although, add a wooden ablative heat shield [yeah, really! that's what they used to use] and if you can get a 15 degree pitch, you could skip off the troposphere and double the flight time or better.
There's even a slight chance of survival then... at least until you hit the ground. parachutes are good idea, but they add weight. I figured, if you could somehow bail out after reentry, then you only need a chute large enough for a person... but you'd still need to slow down below Mach 1 first.
It gets complicated the more you try to do, and complicated decreases the probability of everything working right and being built on a budget.