On 15/07/2011 12:30 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:
In , lid
says...
sigh It's not a rocket in airbreathing mode.
It's some ******* engine that does nothing well. It's not as efficient
as a turbofan (likely even a turbojet) aircraft engine when in air-
breathing mode and it's not as efficient as a liquid fueled rocket
engine when operating in pure rocket mode (LOX from internal tanks).
I fail to see how an engine which operates worse than the state of the
art in either mode is better than having two separate stages with two
separate types of engines on each.
All of this silliness is in pursuit of SSTO. Fully reusable TSTO would
be far easier to implement than this because it would require no new
technologies (i.e. fundamentally new engine) to be developed.
It's all about cost per kg payload in orbit. An SSTO, particularly one
that takes off and lands horizontally presents considerable operational
advantages.
While the SABRE engine is more complex than a standard rocket,
complexity is removed in other areas - there's no stage separation, for
example. It also eliminates a whole class of risks associated with
separation, such as collisions between the two parts of the vehicle,
partial separation, etc.
In any case, it's far from clear that a fully reusable TSTO is so easy
to achieve.
Getting Skylon to work in practice may prove more difficult than RE
think. It may prove impossible. But I don't understand the sheer
antagonism towards it evidenced by some in this group. Unless it's a
manifestation of a fear that RE will achieve a disruptive technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology
Sylvia.