3 ms·
This design was also radically unrealistic, due to the shape in particular. Fighting your own reentry decelerator on your way up is a ridiculously ineffective w
by orbital-decay 6y ago
This design was also radically unrealistic, due to the shape in particular. Fighting your own reentry decelerator on your way up is a ridiculously ineffective way to reach space, for one. Spike engines are also suboptimal in many ways, the cost isn't exactly the reason they aren't used.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoWould it even reach orbit? The drag beyond Mach 1 must be huge, so the compression forces on the "saucer" would be huge too.
- rbanffy 6y agoThe path up is mostly vertical in the densest atmosphere, while the deceleration part is as horizontal as possible. It is fighting the saucer on its way up, but it's nowhere near as effective as it is when used correctly on the way down. I'm pretty sure the Boeing engineers ran the numbers on this one before proposing it to NASA.
- valuearb 6y agoThere are plenty of paper launch systems that engineers have run numbers on showing they could work, that won’t work in practice. This and VentureStar are two examples. In this case it’s not the shape as much as carrying way too much extra/dead mass, jet engines, aero spikes, and using a LH2 means much more massive tankage requirements.