Comment Re:Of course you use force control to run fast. (Score 1) 90
I'm not a rocket scientist so I wouldn't know.
Operationally you have have several things working against you:
1. Lift capacity of the balloon will limit the total weight of both your payload and rocket.
2. Weather conditions have to be right for launch. The favorable weather conditions for balloon launches are more restrictive than rocket launches.The balloon is HUGE and you will want little to no surface winds below 100ft. If there is a little wind (slight breeze is more accurate), you need to have it blowing away from structures and towards the safety corridor.
3. Even if the surface conditions are right, you're most certainly limited to two brief periods during the year called "turnaround". This is when the jet stream is changing direction and the high altitude winds are the slowest. Why? Well you can't have the balloon or it's launch platform begin decent over populated areas (if you wanted to reuse the launch platform). If you don't care about recovery, you could plan to have the balloon go over water outside of turnaround but the speed and direction of the gondola could make reaching your desired orbit somewhat complicated.
I think at least for the short term. It's more reliable to just launch from the ground and because of the labor costs of everyone waiting for favorable balloon conditions probably slightly cheaper too. Especially when you'll have to use balloon control and launch people on the ground as well as rocket control and launch personnel at float. It's easy to focus on the rocket fuel costs and not consider the helium, gondola, balloon, balloon launch costs (labor) in the first phase.
I know there are people working on this. I'm not one of them.