Yeah, that's exactly the sort of thing that comes to mind and what might make the scheme work: not merely trying to serve an existing market but create an entirely new capability that can then command sufficient margins. Could the military have reusable birds on standby and then just be able to launch them for some specific conflict aiming for a quick lifetime at much lower altitude and with a path and period that wouldn't be known to adversaries? I haven't crunched the math, but in principle it seems like they could launch something stratospheric even, not high enough for a long term stable orbit but in turn could have higher mass and useful new intel gathering potential.
Of course economics still matters here even for the military, it still will be weighed against conventional satellites and spy planes and so on. But a sales pitch of:
>"We can pick up your bird from anywhere with enough runway, fly it to somewhere it can be launched at any time with minimal to zero worries about weather, other air traffic, or bothering (or even being visible to) populated areas, and hit any azimuth (no population overflight concerns either)"
seems like it might be worth something at least. It's certainly somewhat different beyond cost at least, even if it doesn't matter to most. The AF has their own robotic spaceplane project after all, seems like there is at least some interest in this kind of area?
From a quick google, a 200km orbit lasts roughly a day and it drops to zero very quickly after that, so I don’t think you could save too much by launching lower, but it might be worthwhile.
Of course economics still matters here even for the military, it still will be weighed against conventional satellites and spy planes and so on. But a sales pitch of:
>"We can pick up your bird from anywhere with enough runway, fly it to somewhere it can be launched at any time with minimal to zero worries about weather, other air traffic, or bothering (or even being visible to) populated areas, and hit any azimuth (no population overflight concerns either)"
seems like it might be worth something at least. It's certainly somewhat different beyond cost at least, even if it doesn't matter to most. The AF has their own robotic spaceplane project after all, seems like there is at least some interest in this kind of area?