[AR] Re: Flying to Orbit with Hydrogen?
- From: "John Stoffel" <john@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2019 14:42:03 -0500
"Henry" == Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
To put an X-37B in orbit requires a big rocket, unfortunately.
Henry> Yep, no less than an Atlas V. When it got moved off the
Henry> shuttle, it was first slated to go up on a Delta II, but that
Henry> would have meant launching it exposed, and all the usual
Henry> problems of putting a lifting shape on top of a rocket came up.
Henry> Using an EELV instead meant it could go up inside a payload
Henry> fairing, eliminating the aerodynamic and structural issues.
I wonder if launching a pair of them belly to belly on something big
would let you get away from a fairing? The loads *might* balance out,
though I could see some funky issues...
And what's interesting on a tangential note is that the Boeing CST
capsule is using the dual RL-10 Centaur engine, since they don't want
to have such a steep approach re-entry in case of problems. Basically
the Atlas would normally launch a pretty lofted trajectory, and the
Centaur Single RL-10 would then do most of the horizontal boosting to
achieve orbital velocity.
Which honestly does seem to not make sense, since the *key* metric is
orbital (horizontal) velocity as soon as you can get above a good
fraction of the atmosphere. Esp since the Atlas is just dumped into
the Ocean.
John
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