"Joe Strout" wrote in message ...
In article om,
"Perplexed in Peoria" wrote:

"Peter Fairbrother" wrote in message
...
We have to design an orbiter. By an orbiter I mean a second stage of a
TSTO,
or the orbiting stage of a MSTO.

What shape should it be? It has to survive reentry from LEO, and land under
control - and that probably means on a runway.



I have been looking at this, and my orbiters look more and more like the
Star-Trek's Enterprise. It's a saucer or capsule, with two jet engines on
stalks. The saucer is to re-enter, and the stalks extend after re-entry to
power the landing.

Even the engine room is there, to put the landing wheels in, and to act as
a
tail. The main deflector dish is absent though.

Am I going nuts? Is this actually a good design?

You are going nuts. But you have a lot of company.

There is no reason why you should want any portion of the orbiter
to re-enter, except maybe for the people.

How do you propose to have the people re-enter without any portion of
the orbiter? (Let's assume the constraint that we want the people to
remain alive.)

I'll accept that stipulation. ;-)

And you may well be nuts in having people orbiting in the first place,
though that probably depends on the mission.

Yes, if the mission is to have people in orbit (perhaps because that's
what they're paying for), then it's hard to do this without people
orbiting.

Hmmm! So the mission is to reproduce the excitement of the Mercury
program, except that the passengers have to pay. And the question is
what shape of orbiter forces them to pay the least? Or do you want
them to pay the most?