Yes but if we're trying to defeat "the tyranny of the rocket equation" let's fuckin' defeat that bitch, shall we? No "stages" we're zero-stages-to-orbit, goddamn it.

What's funny is if you're willing to just accelerate in a straight line at 1.5G, you're at 10km/s after like 3200km. Which starts to make that rocket look positively frugal. 3Gs and I'm at 1300km, 10gs and I'm at a nice benign 100km track.

10gs is going to involve some compromises, for sure. You're probably not going to be higher than 10,000ft which is a bummer and which means yeah, you're going to need a second stage prolly. But you've got load in one direction, you've got it for a little over a minute and a half, you have no release mechanism to worry about, and aside from the heat of friction and the (substantial) complications of fluid mechanics, you're squarely in the realm of normie physics. It's a Grainger problem not an Unobtanium problem. Fuckin' Gerald Bull got 84kg 80km past the Karman Line with fucking cordite.

There's no real way around the fact that the minute you leave the barrel you're slowing down. But there's also no real way around the fact that the minute you decide to go in a straight line you solve almost all of your problems.

At this point, I'm surprised more people aren't speaking up about how much of a blatant scam this is.

The minute they take public money it's over. Theranos would be much less of a cautionary tale if (A) they didn't bait the Army into evaluating their bullshit (B) they didn't give a bunch of Walgreen's customers spurious "you're going to die soon" test results.