Interesting.<p>So Wiki says a fully-loaded B-52 can carry 35 tons of bombs.<p>Everybody knows 1) re-entry after achieving orbital speeds is non-trivial, and 2) doing a stationary drop from orbital heights is possible. There is even some talk of &quot;skydiving from orbit&quot;<p>So you take a B-52 out over the ocean. At 50,000 MSL, you extend two rocket pods, point the nose straight up, and take yourself out of the atmosphere post-haste. Somewhere around 200-400,000 MSL, you roll over into a standard orbit configuration.<p>Burn about half your fuel. Once you get to where you want to go, burn the other half, reach a dead stop, then parachute into the lower atmosphere, do an engine re-start, and be on your way.<p>I&#x27;m not saying it wouldn&#x27;t be a helluva ride, but I&#x27;m failing to see the part where we couldn&#x27;t have done this 20 or 30 years ago. Perhaps the problem was that folks tried to imagine some sort of new propulsion system -- and the numbers just don&#x27;t work out. Instead of solving SCRAMJET, maybe that money would have been better spent on truly reusable rockets and high-performance, plane-rated parachutes?<p>ADD: This comment was meant to address the problem of sub-orbital flight from point A to point B, not getting completely to orbit. Both SSTO and suborbital flight were mentioned in the article. My point was that suborbital flight doesn&#x27;t have as many problems as we might think it does.