For personal drones, we could consider using railgun tubes to accelerate vertically and then glide. Without considering drag, a 100m vertical railgun could lift a craft to about 300m. With a 50-1 glide ratio, you could get to 15 km from launch without further propulsion.
If shot from a Burj Khalifa height at 2g, you'd accelerate for 9 seconds to 176m/s and reach a height of over 2000m in less than 30 seconds... allowing a glide of over 100km.
Another possibility is using aerostatic forces to support a giant platform in the sky, anchored to the tops of buildings. Would need to support an additional 200kg of weight climbing up the anchor line, to heights as high as 20km. From there, could rocket launch, fly, etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_satellite#High-a....
In addition to nanotube cables, we'd also need to develop ways to mitigate the acoustic and electrical vibrations in the cable. Might be a way to generate electricity and dampen at the same time.
For personal drones, we could consider using railgun tubes to accelerate vertically and then glide. Without considering drag, a 100m vertical railgun could lift a craft to about 300m. With a 50-1 glide ratio, you could get to 15 km from launch without further propulsion.
If shot from a Burj Khalifa height at 2g, you'd accelerate for 9 seconds to 176m/s and reach a height of over 2000m in less than 30 seconds... allowing a glide of over 100km.