[AR] Re: arocket Digest V6 #32
- From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2018 22:23:43 -0800
On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 10:08 PM, John Schilling
<john.schilling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
SSTO is hard no matter how you do it, but whenever I try to make a
concept close I do find tripropellant an attractive choice.Â
I think a better idea is Skylon. It is amazing how much gravity drag
you can offload on wings, even after running out of air to burn.
And judging
by the number of published studies, I'm not the only one by far. The
performance gains are marginal, but at the point where the margin is
between 1% payload fraction and -1%...
Skylon is supposed to get 15 tons (5%) to orbit out of 300 tons wet.
If you invest in a few GW of lasers in orbit to heat the hydrogen, the
payload for the same sized vehicle goes up to around 45 tons.
Keith Henson
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- » [AR] Re: arocket Digest V6 #32 - Keith Henson