Good news! The Protolaunch-1 successfully towed the A500 Stratoglider to about 60,000ft, before the glider detached and flew down to Wright Airport.
So, on to the question: how to make the glider ascend to at least 75,000ft, and if possible, 90,000ft? In the original post, I explained that planned on using wind to ascend, but that's easier said than done. Does anyone know a good flight pattern with wind or some other solution to get the aircraft to ascend?
@TheFlightGuySP Yeah, that's probably a better option.
@HuskyDynamics01 After some brief testing, I found that using wind and an upward-spiral flight pattern isn't very efficient for the glider. I think I may just use a low-power, detachable solid rocket booster.
@HuskyDynamics01 That's what I figured I would need to do initially. I might run some tests to see what happens.
Due to the way wind is simulated, using it to climb in a glider is a bit difficult. Essentially, you need to fly directly into the wind while also maintaining enough forward speed to avoid stalling or getting blown backwards. In practice, this essentially means you'll end up going in a big spiral, and you may have to frequently adjust the wind direction until you get the hang of it.