4 ms·

I recall seeing this technology in Popular Science many years ago. It's a great idea but they have yet to demonstrate a full scale prototype. There's probably

by _Adam 9y ago

I recall seeing this technology in Popular Science many years ago. It's a great idea but they have yet to demonstrate a full scale prototype. There's probably a lot of technical hurdles just to making a whole new type of engine. But they also need to design and build a new space plane. That's a brand new supersonic airframe. There's a lot of engineering needed here. I hope we can see some indication of progress soon.

rbanffy 9y ago
They don't need to start from a spaceplane - an air-breathing booster that could give a delta-v higher than a Falcon 9 and still land would certainly be cool enough. If they manage to get enough speed from the air-breathing phase, they may even have a single-stage-to-orbit + VTOL vehicle. Now that's a seriously cool tech to have. The reason we do aerobraking and parachutes is that our engines are not efficient enough and we can't carry enough propellant to decelerate to a landing but if we have engines efficient enough, we can have a single stage drop a payload close enough to LEO that a cheap second stage can finish the job and the booster can still do a powered landing after circling the planet once, we have a game changer.