Henry,
I can totally see the case of SSTO going to low inclination LEO and having
a space tug take it from there, but I'm curious about the case where the
final destination is a high inclination/low-medium altitude orbit. It's
not very efficient to go to a low inclination LEO and then do a plane
change to high inclination. Are you imagining that the SSTO would have
enough performance to go to high inclination LEO? Would that be stretching
things too far? The SSTO could carry an expendable second stage for these
particular missions, but if the SSTO part can't make it all the way to
orbit then the landing location is quite constrained and you might as well
build a more balanced TSTO. Could we wind up with two architectures
dominating different niches like airplanes and helicopters?
Bob
On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 10:10 PM, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
If the SSTO is sufficiently cheaper than the "general purpose launcher"
(whatever that is), people will find ways to enhance it, or supplement it
with auxiliaries, to add the missing capabilities. Insisting that it must
be considered in isolation, rather than as part of a system, is a relic of
the artillery-rocket mindset.
Henry
