Future --- Air-Breathing Rocket --- Lift-off
Air-breathing rockets cannot provide the force for liftoff.
NASA is developing a plan to launch the air-breathing rocket vehicle by using magnetic levitation (maglev) tracks.
Using maglev tracks, the vehicle will accelerate to speeds of up to 600 mph before lifting into the air.
When the vehicle reaches twice the speed of sound, the air-augmented rockets will shut off.
Propulsion will then be provided by the ait-breathing rocket, which will inhale oxygen for about half of the flight to burn fuel.
One of the advantage of this is it need not store as much oxygen on board the spacecraft as the ordinary spacecraft need, thus reducing the cost. (see The mainpage of Astronauts)
When the vehicle reaches 10 times the speed of sound, it will switch back to a conventional rocket-powered system for a final push into the orbit.
As the air-breathing rockets extract the oxygen from the atmosphere, so the liquid oxidizer can be taken away, so the weight of the vehicle would quickly drop to about 3.1 million pounds.
Although it is still a heavy vehicle, but it would mean a huge reduction in cost of launching a vehicle into orbit.
As it will cut the weight of the oxidizer, the vehicle will be easier to maneuver than the current space shuttle, so travelling on an ar-breathing rocket-powered vehicle will much be safer.
Finally, the public will be able to travel on these vehicles into space.