Reach for the stars! No, really, reach! They are right there above you!
As mentioned in part one of this blog post, lifting yourself up off of the ground will require a lot of energy, as part of whatever system one tries to lift will be redundant weight of fuel, which of course may only last so long. The thought arises that there must be another way. Looking simply at Newton's third law, there are more ways to dissipate lifting energy than through the air. Rather than having fuel provide thrust up into the atmosphere, why not push off of the ground to launch something into orbit.
There are many ways of doing this: from cables on satellites to towers, using already in place physical systems could be an ideal way of lifting something out of the atmosphere. So, what are our options here?
First, let's look at a cable, as it is one of the simpler examples. In order to escape the atmosphere, an object should be able to travel about 50km into the air. In
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