From: Monte Davis 

"Geo"  wrote:

>you start to get lighter and lighter from the orbital forces so
>couldn't they use something like a booster to move thru the radiation belts
>at a more acceptable speed?

Well, the inner belt kicks in at 500-700 miles, where you're still ~90% of
ground weight. So you'd need almost 1G to climb, more to accelerate to say
10,000 mph to get through the belts in 2-3 hours. That adds up to a serious
rocket and lotsa propellant even with gravity dropping to ~4% by GEO
(23,000 miles).

And serious rockets with lotsa propellant are what you're trying to get
away from. :-(

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