How big would an SSTO be?

On Jul 15, 11:25 pm, (Rand Simberg)
wrote:
On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 06:35:23 -0700, in a place far, far away, Hyper
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

On Jul 14, 4:00 am, Sylvia Else wrote:
BradGuth wrote:

Those ratios that I pulled were nostly out of a NASA and ESA hat, are
those of what a least inert rocket can manage to get the most of
whatever into LEO.

Since SABRE is not a pure rocket, ratios for pure rockets are irrelevant.

Sylvia.

ROTFLMAO

Lady U R great. First time someone had Brad do a reality check.

Nonsense. Many people have "had Brad do a reality check" for years.
Being out of his mind, he is impervious to them. That's why most of
us have killfiled him. We wish that Sylvia would as well.

I sometime find his rants hillarious.
And his diatribes aimed at ppl who don't know him ... might be
considered a rite of passage :-))

On Jul 16, 11:09 am, Hyper wrote:
On Jul 15, 11:25 pm, (Rand Simberg)
wrote:





On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 06:35:23 -0700, in a place far, far away, Hyper
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

On Jul 14, 4:00 am, Sylvia Else wrote:
BradGuth wrote:

Those ratios that I pulled were nostly out of a NASA and ESA hat, are
those of what a least inert rocket can manage to get the most of
whatever into LEO.

Since SABRE is not a pure rocket, ratios for pure rockets are irrelevant.

Sylvia.

ROTFLMAO

Lady U R great. First time someone had Brad do a reality check.

Nonsense. Many people have "had Brad do a reality check" for years.
Being out of his mind, he is impervious to them. That's why most of
us have killfiled him. We wish that Sylvia would as well.

I sometime find his rants hillarious.
And his diatribes aimed at ppl who don't know him ... might be
considered a rite of passage :-))- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Oddly, on topic, I find that at minimum this SSTO Skylon is going to
be doing damn good at 42:1, meaning at best 6.7 tonnes to LEO.

However, their likely first level of best payload to LEO capability of
56:1 being worth 5 tonnes is more than likely the case, which still
isn't half bad considering the fully reusable worth of a very short
turn-around, as for the next launch which could take place within as
little as 12 hours.

Therefore 10 tonnes into LEO per day isn't bad at all.

A fleet of 10 Skylons could muster 100 tonnes per day.

BTW, why are Yids pretty much the only folks having such problems with
this SSTO via Skylon concept?
-
Brad Guth

Where's a good Usenet friendly Yiddish wizard when you need one? -
Brad Guth

On Jul 5, 4:26 pm, wrote:
BradGuth wrote:
On Jul 5, 3:16 pm, wrote:
BradGuth wrote:
On Jul 5, 1:08 pm, wrote:
This topic is way over your head, and as such you can't hardly
contribute much of anything but the obvious that has already been
taken into considerations as of years if not decades ago.

Not that a spendy, terribly energy consuming and NOx polluting Skylon
couldn't be refueled on the go, as in duh, no kidding folks.

How many extra tonnes of CO2 and NOx per kg of payload getting to LEO
is worth the all inclusive environmental birth to grave consequences?

Do you ever think of taking everything into consideration, and thus
thinking anything out to the final end-result?

It's called seeing the big picture.
-
Brad Guth

No need to be irritable.

Personally I think something on this order may happen one day. But
more immediate return to be more likelly to be drawn from something
purelly rocket powered.

Still, one of the ideas that has sometimes been floating around was
what I mentioned. It doesn´t have any bearing on the Skylon
necessarilly, which I´m bit surpriced actually is still under
discussion after all these years. But I think you mentioned that any
hypothetical SSTO craft probably wouldn´t be able to carry enough fuel
from takeoff and be able to carry a useful payload into orbit at the
same time. Ayrflight refuelling is a much practiced and reliable
method nowdays, though speeds have to be subsonic I understand. Such a
concept was once suggested by a Russian firm during the 90s.

In addition I find something based on lineral accelerators to be of
interest. Someone recently mentioned that instead of accelerating them
in a straight line, they could be accelerated in a circle somewhat
similar what they do in particle accelerators, and when finally enough
velocity has been built up, the package being accelerated could be
diverted towards a ramp...shooting it into orbit.

Cheers, Einar- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Shooting inert stuff, the likes of pizza, beer and spare fuel into LEO
via cannon and/or accelerated ramp should have been doable as of
decades ago.

Perhaps eventually really small and high density items are going to
happen that way. However, including a small nuclear kicker stage
might also become a requirement. Once all of that little stuff gets
into LEO; then what?
-
Brad Guth

At least with the idea of running the accelerator into a circle and
gradually accelerating the whatever stuff, may mean that components of
the accelerator can be commercially available stuff. The G forces
probably will still not still be trivial.

The source I read was hoping that satellites could be made robust
enough for such a launching method, pointing out that today there
exchist electronics that can survive inside cannon shells. Still, that
would at the very least call for a complete redesign. Comletelly
certain that lot´s of stuff would be precluted from using that method.

I expect that it´s unlikelly that such canisters could have theyr own
rockets attached, so that they could then power themselves towards
whatever additional destination. More likelly that some orbital tug,
preferably robotic, would process them subsequently to wherever they
are supposed to go.

Who knows, perhaps in the future we´ll have got a second accelerator
in orbit, which will then shoot the cansiters say towards Mars or the
Moon. Alternativelly tugs may handle them maybe.

Cheers, Einar- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Such alternatives for getting lots of stuff into LEO is going to need
some degree of clean up, as it's getting a bit close for much of
what's up there as is.

So much as an empty beer can is potentially a very nasty WMD,
especially if it's in retro LEO.

Perhaps an ABL cannon can vaporise much of whatever is unusable in
LEO.
- Brad Guth