On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 23:30:06 -0400, in a place far, far away, Len Lekx
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

I was reading a textbook the other day ("Space Propulsion Analysis
and Design" - Humble, Henry & Larson, McGraw-Hill, 1995) Under the
topic of 'Advanced Propulsion Techniques', they described a rocket
motor that uses ram-air to augment the on-board oxidizer supply -
using some air to aid in burning a fuel-rich mixture.

Which got me to thinking - could it be turned around...? Add a
supplementary oxidizer to current turbojet engine designs? This way,
the engine could still operate at higher altitudes. Also, using an
oxidizer that could absorb sufficient heat from the incoming airstream
(cryogens, maybe...?) would reduce the air temperature, thus allowing
the engine to operate at higher Mach numbers. Where air becomes too
thin, the air inlets could be closed, and the engine would operate in
a purely rocket mode.

Congratulations. You just reinvented the MIPPC concept, which is
being shown to not be very useful on the DARPA RASCAL program.