Classic planes require an atmosphere to generate lift. There’s an outer limit where that would be a viable mechanism, and on Earth it’s still far below LEO. Still too deep in the gravity well for ion thrusters to ve viable.
It requires chemical rocket fuels to bridge that gap. Maybe someday fusion propulsion will break that limitations, but for now the best you can do is reduce the amount of fuel needed by flying to the upper atmosphere and reaching hypersonic speeds before kicking into rocket fuel propulsion.
Then after orbital injection, switching to ion thrusters to move around, and solar sails for exiting orbit into interplanetary/lunar routes.
turdas@suppo.fi 6 hours ago
I think Mars, assuming you terraform it, would be pretty close to that on both counts. Space planes might still be difficult, but the delta V is much lower and Olympus Mons would pretty much sit above the atmosphere.
YellowParenti@lemmy.wtf 6 hours ago
Holy shit, I hadn’t considered that you could use Olympus Mons as a launch site cause it sticks so high up.
turdas@suppo.fi 5 hours ago
The best part about it is that it’s an extremely gradual slope completely unlike the mountain ranges on Earth, so you could haul stuff up there on trucks or trains easily.
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
The problem is you can’t have mountains like that on tectonically active planets (a mountain that big on earth would sink into the mantle), which is kind of a prequisite for a long-term magnetosphere so its unfortunately not something a species could likely ever have except as a result of terraforming a world like mars and setting up some kind of artificial magnetosphere.