[avz]

> I haven't seen anyone attempt to address the issue of how you "land" in the atmosphere without touching down on the surface?

Spacecraft in the Venera program successfully deployed balloons following atmospheric entry, see [1]. The balloons stayed up in the atmosphere for more than 46 hours.

> how do you launch a rocket within the atmosphere?

Atmospheric launch into a suborbital trajectory was demonstrated by White Knight, see [2]. There exist air-to-space missiles, see [3]. Admittedly, none of these are fully fledged space launches from the atmosphere, but they show it's not entirely outside the real of the plausible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program#Balloon [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_White_Knight [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT

[skykooler]

The Pegasus launcher launches satellites to orbit from an air-launched vehicle.

[ValleyOfTheMtns]

Thanks for the links.