Sub-Orbital Ballistic Transport

Recovery of rockets, and making rockets highly reusable, changes access to space, but it also changes access to Earth!

To fly ballistically from New York to Paris in 23 minutes requires a delta vee of 6.2 km/sec. A LOX/LNG propellant combination has an exhaust velocity of 3.8 km/sec. So, a rocket with this propellant combination requires that 80.4% of its take off weight is propellant and with 4.2% structure fraction this leaves 15.4% of its take off weight is payload.

The Boeing 737-800 has a design payload weight of 17,955 kg. So, a propellant tank with 5,147.3 kg of LNG and 19,817.1 kg of LOX a total of 24,964.4 kg of propellant -held in a tank massing 1,881.6 kg of structure. One of these systems attached to the payload of 17,995 kg - with up to 189 passengers - and three strap-on tanks - that boost to 3.46 km/sec and fly back to the launch point to be refuelled, while the payload flies to the destination adding another 3.10 km/sec - a total of 6.56 km/sec delta vee.

Economy tickets from New York to Paris cost $350 each way.

This system has a 125,339.0 kg take off weight of which 99,857.5 kg if propellant which at $0.15 per kg costs $14,978.62 divided across 189 passengers amounts to $79.25 per passenger. The take off weight of 125.3 tonnes is more than the Boeing 737-800 take off weight of 79.0 tonnes.

Each tank with rockets attached, costs $60 million - the payload section $100 million - the entire system consists of three boosters in New York and three boosters in Paris, one booster for the payload, and the payload section itself.

A total of $520 million capital cost. Now, with 40,000 flight cycles - this costs $13,000 per flight cycle. This is $68.79 per flight cycle per passenger for the capital cost.

Typical turn times are 53 minutes - and with flight times of 23 minutes - a total of 76 minutes. 18 flights per day. A single payload provides 9 round trips per day. 3402 passengers per day. 6,570 trips per year - 1,241,370 passenger seats per year. With maintenance costs of 4% of the purchase price per year - $20.8 million per year. Divided by the number of seats this is $16.76 per seat.

Shorter flights are easier. A ballistic flight from Paris to London is 343 km and requires a delta vee of 4.5 km/sec while taking only 1.6 minutes each way. This can be achieved with a single stage vehicle not requiring strap-on liquid booster. 24 flights per day is supported with 53 minute turn around. A LOX/LH2 rocket with a 4.5 km/sec exhaust speed, we have a 53..9 ton take off weight with a 18.0 ton 189 passenger payload. This is smaller than the Boeing 737-800 take off weight of 79.0 tons. Smaller than a Boeing 737-800, smaller take off space and landing space, similar logistics, shorter flight times. A single ship hauls more people than a fleet of airliners.



Busiest Air Routes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ger_air_routes

Haversine Formula
http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html

Ballistic Transport Formula
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-orbital_spaceflight

Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolk...ocket_equation



--------------- Range (km) Theta (radians) dV dT

--------------- 1.00 0.0045 0.0000785 99.05 0.238
--------------- 2.00 0.0090 0.0001571 140.08 0.337
--------------- 5.00 0.0225 0.0003927 221.46 0.533
--------------- 10.00 0.0450 0.0007854 313.13 0.753
--------------- 20.00 0.0900 0.0015708 442.65 1.066
--------------- 50.00 0.2250 0.0039270 699.07 1.688
--------------- 100.00 0.4500 0.0078540 986.71 2.393
--------------- 200.00 0.9000 0.0157080 1,389.99 3.402
--------------- 500.00 2.2500 0.0392699 2,172.49 5.462
--------------- 1,000.00 4.5000 0.0785398 3,014.84 7.914
--------------- 2,000.00 9.0000 0.1570796 4,111.03 11.709
--------------- 5,000.00 22.5000 0.3926991 5,880.35 20.634
--------------- 10,000.00 45.0000 0.7853982 7,193.78 32.217
--------------- 20,000.00 90.0000 1.5707963 7,903.69 42.200

New York Paris-- 5,839.15 26.2762 0.4586056 6,191.72 22.829 0.8040 0.1540
New York LA---- 3,937.14 17.7171 0.3092224 5,399.05 17.699 0.7585 0.1995
New York Tokyo 10,852.56 48.8365 0.8523580 7,325.28 33.810 0.8545 0.1035
LA Tokyo------- 8,818.65 39.6839 0.6926149 6,977.71 29.814 0.8406 0.1174