Kind of disappointing in a way - have we come so ... short? Still ejecting reaction mass in a titanic explosion to fling tiny payloads into space. What happened to superconducting magnetic floating platforms? Antigravity pads? Space elevators?
More realistically, Orion (well, we can save that for responding to alien invasions) and laser launch. The latter is something we ought to be able to do today (the former's Environmental Impact Statement would be ... problematical :-).
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Kind of disappointing in a way - have we come so ... short? Still ejecting reaction mass in a titanic explosion to fling tiny payloads into space. What happened to superconducting magnetic floating platforms? Antigravity pads? Space elevators?
More realistically, Orion (well, we can save that for responding to alien invasions) and laser launch. The latter is something we ought to be able to do today (the former's Environmental Impact Statement would be ... problematical :-).