Sanger type craft could be intermediate step before orbital

The Sanger-Bredt (Brecht?) Silverbird, a.k.a. "Antipodal bomber", was to fly around the world from an initial speed of 13,000 mph by "skipping" off the atmosphere in a series of progressively lower skips, descending from space to as low as 100,000 feet before ascending again. The greatest technical hurdle would be the tremendous heat loads, as a Sanger vehicle would still be doing over 10,000 mph at the same alitude where the X-15 was reaching 4,000 mph.

I had no idea DASA's more modern Sanger 2 stage craft proyect was named after the WWII antipodal bomber proyect! Nice to know.

I supose this is the backbone of the USAF interest in rocket planes (see the bio on Pioneer Rocketplane's team leader).

When I was a kid, I read about similar ideas to make antipodal passanger planes, but now that we won't even have the Boeing Sonic Cruiser I'm not holding my breath for that.

Thanks for the link!