On 2016-09-27 10:44, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Tue, 27 Sep 2016, Rand Simberg wrote:
A big disadvantage for SSTO, which will never go away, is that its off-nominal performance intrinsically sucks. It makes sense for high traffic to a low equatorial orbit, but not higher inclinations or altitudes.
A big disadvantage of your car, which will never go away, is that when
its gas tank is empty, you can't go any further. It can nevertheless
be used to get things or people to distances beyond that, either by
refueling it or by handing off the later part of the job to a
different system. Doing the equivalent of either of those in orbit is
vastly superior to doing it halfway up; that big first step is the
hardest part.
Any rocket has finite performance; if it's good enough in other ways,
you're better off using it and finding ways to work around its
limitations. If and when SSTO achieves the operational advantages (=
cost reductions) that it's capable of in principle, there will be ways
to boost its performance, or augment it with other systems, to deal
with missions that are beyond its unaided capabilities.
