Energetics of getting into Orbit

I ran across this the other day and though you guys would appreciate
it.  It's a blog post about the energy cost of just getting into
orbit.  <a href="http://wiki.nasa.gov/cm/blog/waynehalesblog/posts/post_1251819060090.ht…; target="_blank">http://wiki.nasa.gov/cm/blog/<wbr></wbr>waynehalesblog/posts/post_<wbr>…;. 
The poster is a former NASA Flight Director and does some great posts. 
He compares a bunch of different activities from an energy
perspective.  The bottom line is that it takes over 1,000x as much
energy to get in to orbit with the space station as it does to fly a
commercial airliner at cruising altitude.  It's a good read.