A thought experiment on rockoons

Well, not exactly a rockoon.  A rockoon is a rocket launched from a balloon suspended platform.  This would be a twist on the concept.  Let's make the balloon into a rocket too.  The "balloon" isn't a balloon exactly, though.  It is an airship.

In an earlier post back in October, I came across Parkins' Microwave Thruster concept.  This concept employs microwaves to heat the reaction mass of hydrogen in order to provide thrust.  Now, what if you can employ this concept on airships?  Zap it with energy from the Dark Sky Station and heat up a reaction mass in order to provide thrust.  Parkin's device is efficient and could provide plenty of thrust.  The problem is getting something up there that could provide lots of energy so that the airship could have sufficient thrust to get to orbit.

The Dark Sky Station is huge.  I am supposing that the energy source can come from there.  It would have a short range available to it in order to give the Orbital Ascender sufficient thrust.  Parkins suggests an upwards trajectory above the atmosphere, then a short burst to get it up to orbital speed.   The idea I had was to use the ion engines to supply forward speed and the electrodynamic tethers to maintain altitude in combination with this concept here to provide the necessary thrust to reach orbital velocity.  Short bursts from the Dark Sky Station would be applied on each orbit to give additional thrust and to keep G forces from being too extreme.  The ion engines would supply thrust forward to maintain or increase speed while circling the earth on each revolution.

I wonder, could a concept like this work?

Update:  1/13/11, approx 11am cst

I am still thinking about this concept.  Here's another thought:  raise the Ascender to 200,000 feet using lighter than air flotation.  Once you've gotten that far, use Parkin's idea to raise it the rest of this distance into space.  But instead of giving forward speed, just increase altitude.  Once you've attained the altitude of 200 miles, release a conventional rocket which will be able to attain orbital speed before it can reenter the atmosphere.

You could also use an electrodynamic tether to aid in increasing altitude and maintaining it for launching the rockoon.