What fraction of a G could this thing give while continuously accelerating/decelerating on a trip towards Mars?
Gee, so this thing is restricted to being a SSTO shuttle between Earth Surface and Orbit?
Quote from: sanman on 07/14/2017 06:59 pmGee, so this thing is restricted to being a SSTO shuttle between Earth Surface and Orbit?You are acting like this is a bad thing? Considering that getting from earth to orbit is the toughest part, I am excited about a solution. Once you can cheaply "throw" lots of mass into orbit, everything else is much easier.
I don't see this happening on earth any time soon, but it could be great for somewhere like Saturn.
Quote from: KelvinZero on 07/16/2017 01:33 amI don't see this happening on earth any time soon, but it could be great for somewhere like Saturn.I certainly hope someone will do it. If not the US government or a US company, then maybe Russia or China will be clever enough to give it a go.
And yet nobody would want to risk a nuclear accident. Can a nuclear reactor be designed to withstand the stresses of a catastrophic rocket failure, while also remaining safe from any runaway meltdown?
How about Mars? Would people who worry about this on earth feel safe with it's use on Mars? Would it be good for that? Cruising around like a 747? shuttling to orbit?Although it is just a limited application compared to all the rockets on earth, you have to multiply that by the mass savings in payload, and that cuts straight into into the amount of chemical booster on earth. I think the ratio was something like 20:1? And maybe that was just to orbit so maybe it is greater. Is my logic screwy? Does that mean that one use on mars gives you similar savings to 20 uses on earth? (assuming the mars colony exists, a big assumption naturally)Building up a flight history would be a good step to opening discussion for use on earth.
NextBigFuture has posted again a series of articles on this concept.https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/07/turbo-rocket-economics-are-85-kg-to-leo-or-715-kg-to-luna.htmlhttps://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/07/us-government-should-dump-sls-and-make-turbo-rocket-instead.htmla 2018 presentation