Semi-ballistic aircraft

Semiballistic flight is a modern transport method used for long-distance, high-speed travel between the major metropolitan areas of the Sixth World.

Utility

Bodies that move on ballistic trajectories follow gravity. In semi-ballistic flight, the trajectory is not purely ballistic, but can also take on other forms through gliding. The principle was first applied to rockets and spacecraft designed for re-entry. In modern semi-ballistic flight, the aircraft is first shot like a rocket to a flight altitude of up to 90 km into the thermosphere , where it quickly covers a large distance. The aircraft then falls back to earth and begins gliding until it lands. So it describes a parabola that is interrupted by sliding distances.
For about 60% of the travel time of a flight, the aircraft is at the outermost edge of the earth's atmosphere and reaches a travel speed of 12,000 km/h there due to the low atmospheric density. The flight time to any point on earth is reduced to a few hours and the flight in the thin atmosphere enables energy to be saved. This is also necessary, because semi-ballistic flights are tightly calculated. The aircraft has no room for corrections when landing due to the high rate of descent and cannot fly holding patterns. If it comes in, it must land or risk a crash. When such machines crash, not a single passenger has ever survived. For this reason, anxious people abstain Even in the middle of the 21st century, they prefer to use semi-ballistic aircraft and prefer slower but subjectively safer routes. In addition, semi-ballistic aircraft are extremely noisy during take-off - just like suborbital aircraft - which usually causes real estate prices in residential areas near airfields designed for take-off and landing of semi-ballistic aircraft, such as in Graz -Thalerhof, to plummet.
Semi-ballistic flight is a form of sub-orbital flight : the plane comes close to the limit of space, but at around 3.3 km/s it does not reach the first cosmic speed that would be necessary to reach an orbit. However, suborbital aircraft are aircraft with a similarly high speed, but significantly lower flight altitude of typically 23 km.